Next.ID Developer Interview Series with Contributor John Dickerson

Next.ID has always believed that an open, collaborative community will bring innovation forward and accelerate the adoption of our technology in the Web3 space. In the pursuit of that idea, we openly welcome community contributors participating in the development and evolution of Next.ID. In this interview we sat down with John Dickerson to discuss how he became involved as a community contributor and hear his insights on working with Next.ID.

Let’s get right into it

Q: Hi John, please introduce yourself for our audience

My name is John Dickerson (JD) — I am an English Viking who has spent a lot of his software days coding Java and more recently also a lot of TypeScript. I have worked in low latency trading platforms and dot com companies in Europe. Some years ago I relocated to Kenya, married a Kenyan and got involved with the web3 ecosystem. My specialization in the web3 space is trust. I am involved with multiple web 3 trust projects, including UTU Trust and Symbiont Trust (my own).

Q: When did you meet Next.ID?

Around September or October 2023

Q: What feature or functions have you added to Next.ID, and what was your reason for coming up with this?

Let me start by describing a problem space for both the users of a social media platform and the platform itself.

Then let me show how Next.ID fits into the puzzle for solving the problem.

Let me start with the Users of the platform:

Users of social media platforms’ potential problems

Users of social media platforms have different ideas on what:

• is good or bad
• offensive or not
• misinformation or fact

Malicious actors can add comments to social media which can even sway election results.

Malicious actors can muddy a platform with rubbish so people give up using the platform.

Users can write a comment which other users find offensive and the offended users can ask the platform to censor those comments.

The staff of the platform may themselves have different opinions on what is offensive or not.

Other users can find their comments censored and complain to the platform that their comments are the truth and are not offensive and should not have been censored.

With centralized software the owners of the platform can have teams to censor comments and try and keep the users of their platform happy and engaged.

However, this is more problematic with decentralized platforms which are more the “wild west”.

In the absence of such teams, malicious actors can destroy the usability of the software.

The platform problem

A centralized platform wants happy and engaged users who engage well with adverts and result in conversion for the platform’s advertisers.

When their users are not happy and complain, they can become worried that users will complain to authorities and their platform will be closed down.

Advertisers do not want to advertise with a platform that has problems with its users and authorities.

The platform however has a problem because users have different views, and those views can cause offense to others.

They may also be called on by authorities to censor,

However, they may not have sufficient knowledge in the area to know how to tweak their AI censorship algorithms to meet the demands of all stakeholders.

The platform has to second guess what adverts are good for which users. They can do that by using cookies and tracking which can be considered an invasion of privacy to the end user.

The solution: short and quick answer

The quick and short answer is:

Build trust relationships where users themselves decide:

• what they see or do not see
• what is miss-information or not

The users can also tell the platform what kind of adverts they want so the platform has improved conversion, and the users do not get annoyed with the adverts, as the adverts relate to their interests.

The solution: in-depth answer

Interest Site

The user goes to an interest site where people can find others with similar interests. Having connected with others they interact with them through message boards called groups.

A user has a decentralized profile where they can decide what is shown in the profile.

They sign what is included in the profile with a private key which proves they have made that decision.

Next.ID provides proof that social media handles are associated with one or more wallet addresses.

This identity proof is part of the profile if the user wants it to be part of the profile.

When registering with the interests site, the user states their interests and the nearest town or city to them.

They can then search for people who have the same interests who have the same nearest town or city.

They can make Friend Requests.

They can create groups in the interests they signed up with.

A group is like a Message Board where one can add comments. A comment can have embedded videos or other resource types like images. Comments can be replied to in a similar way to how they are replied to with message boards.

A user can endorse another user who is their friend, as being skilled in an interest. People who have been endorsed more are considered more vetted in the area of interest.

The user can optionally decide to include their friends and endorsements in their profile.

When they do this the information becomes public knowledge.

Apps consuming the Decentralized Profile

Apps can consume the profile if the user who owns that profile signs up to the platform. i.e. the profile travels with the user. The profile allows the platform to give enhanced behavior to its users.

For example, the profile allows a system of self-censorship to function. Users can tag content with a tag like “racist” and other users can subscribe to not see content tagged “racist” using certain filters.

Filters could say:
- subscribe not to see “racist” content that was tagged as “racist” by ten of your endorsed friends.

In these trust networks linked by interests we have the concept of “step” — one’s immediate friends are step 1. The friends of our friends are step 2, etc.

When subscribing not to see tags the friends can be defined in steps. The more steps the wider the trusted audience.

Whatsapp example

Let us say the Whatsapp Group was for the community and the thread starts filling up with spam of people trying to sell products like shoes which is against the spirit of the group.

By integrating with the signed profiles, one could eliminate the noise coming from these shoe sellers. People who are friends in the chat can tag the user as “selling shoes” and other friends can subscribe to not see any messages from the users “selling shoes”.

These platforms have a financial incentive to integrate. They are better able to provide interest specific adverts which improve the conversion and revenue of their advertisers. This translates into higher profits for the platform. It also means the user gets adverts they are interested in.

Chrome extension I am creating

As part of this interest and decentralized profile work, I am also creating an app which consumes the decentralized profile. The app is a chrome extension which allows one to create a message board leading off any page one is accessing.

People subscribe to societies which are equivalent to interest groups, and they can comment on any web page within that society name space.

This chrome extension means people can be abusive about the content of the web page but the people who published the web page cannot remove the comment.

However, the integration with the decentralized profiles, allows the chrome extension to provide self-censorship using the tag system outlined in the Whatsapp example.

The idea is I demonstrate with the chrome extension how integrating with Decentralized profiles can solve a lot of problems.

Conclusion

I described 3 elements:

(i) Interest Site where one builds a decentralized profile and can find, chat to and endorse friends. Next.ID proof adds identity to wallet addresses which is also associated with a profile.

(ii) Whatsapp example consuming the decentralized profile offering a form of spam protection / self-censorship.

(iii) Chrome Extension example consuming the decentralized profile allowing for self-censorship.

Now for some Jargon:

(1) Symbiont Trust Network (STN) — describes the technology and idea

(2) Symbiont — The chrome extension that consumes profiles.

(3) The Interest Site — The site where the people build their profile and find people of similar interest.

(4) Symbiont Trust API — the API which “The Interest Site” calls to configure profiles. Also, the API the consumers of the profile call.

Q: Last question, any recommendations for developers who want to be contributors to Next.ID?

Answer and Ask questions on the Next.ID GitHub discussion board. Get to know who is doing what and ask to join projects. You can also ask others if anyone wants to join your project.

NextDotID proof_server · Discussions

We are sincerely grateful to John for his efforts and taking the time to have this interview with Next.ID

Next.ID has sponsored numerous hackathons and developer communities, including events like ETHGlobal Paris, ETHGlobal New York, ETHGlobal Connect, ETHGlobal Istanbul, and Devcon. Developers are actively building apps based on Next.ID services. Join us today!