Despite numerous scandals about data protection in established social networks (Facebook, Google+), the platforms still enjoy great popularity. Alternative social networks, which have focused on protecting the data of their users, lack attractiveness, so they regularly fail. If users remain loyal to social networks despite poor data protection, ways must be found to protect their data. A hybrid approach enables the natural use of the platform and uses another communication channel to exchange sensitive data.

The goal of this work was to work out a concept for a hybrid social network and to validate it with a prototype. Within the scope of the concept, the interests of the stakeholders were identified, and requirements for the hybrid solution were defined. For the implementation, we mentioned concrete solution strategies for architecture and client. The prototype was created as an Android app for Twitter. The IPFS protocol for decentralized data storage in combination with the distributed GUN database was used for secure data exchange.

The result shows that the concept is implementable and that the defined goals lead to a high-quality solution. The Hybrid OSN prototype meets the previously defined requirements almost entirely. For Likes and Tweets, the user can decide which network should be used for data exchange with other users. The solution is user-friendly and requires minimal configuration effort.