Virtual Public Square

Virtual Public Squares are digital spaces for open communication. Publishers establish identities, preferably on their own websites, and use those identities to attach verifiable provenance to content with cryptographic signatures. The signed content is broadcast into one or more Virtual Public Squares. Once signed and broadcast, the content becomes public and portable.

The content, with provenance, may move from one Virtual Public Square to another, may be indexed and made searchable, and may be displayed to readers in feeds, curated lists, or search results. Every time a Virtual Public Square displays content, the publisher’s cryptographic signature is attached to that content and can be verified.

In the event that any Virtual Public Square blocks content from a publisher, that publisher remains free to broadcast that content to any other Virtual Public Square.
Similarly, publishers are free to set up their own Virtual Public Squares and ingest the content from existing Virtual Public Squares. In this fashion, Virtual Public Squares impose practical disincentives to censorship without infringing on the rights of speech or association of any of the participants.

The primary use of Virtual Public Square technology is to acquire content from specified publishers without third party interference. This will often appear in the format of a news feed. The first commercial use of Virtual Public Square data is to populate widgets on websites containing curated content from a set of publishers that seek to cross-promote each other to keep readers engaged and maximize audience attention.

Required PHP Extensions

The following PHP extensions are required to update and delete DIDs with an API call:

• json
• mbstring
• openssl