Privacy
Privacy is structural, not promised.
Most apps protect your privacy with a promise. Social Web protects it with architecture. Your data stays yours because the system is built to limit tracking, reduce exposure, and keep control in your hands from the start.
What real privacy looks like
No profile. No ad model. No data product.
Most apps say they care about privacy while still building a business around tracking, targeting, and advertising. SocialWeb is different because the product is not designed to collect a behavioral profile on you in the first place. We do not show ads because we are not building an ad system. We do not sell your data because there is no advertising profile or data product for us to sell. Your feeds are fetched through SocialWeb, your searches are proxied, your conversations are encrypted, and self-hosted users can keep their data on their own infrastructure. Privacy is not just a promise we make after the fact. It is built into how SocialWeb works.
Built differently
Four structural guarantees.
Your subscriptions are fetched through SocialWeb.
When you subscribe to a source, your feed requests are handled server-side through SocialWeb instead of coming directly from your device. The publisher sees a request from SocialWeb's infrastructure, not your personal IP address, account, or device identity. That means publishers cannot build a direct reading profile around you based on every feed you follow or every post you load.
Web search is proxied before it reaches a provider.
When you search from SocialWeb, your query is routed through SocialWeb's main server before it reaches a search provider. The provider sees the query coming from SocialWeb, not directly from you. Your device, account, and IP address are not exposed to the provider in the normal way, which helps prevent your searches from being tied back to a personal search profile.
Self-hosted users control their own infrastructure.
If you run your own SocialWeb instance, your data lives on the server you control. Your feeds, messages, settings, and stored content remain inside your own infrastructure, not on a shared corporate platform. You can inspect it, move it, delete it, or shut it down completely. SocialWeb does not need a central copy of your data for the product to work.
AI is opt-in and separated from the core product.
SocialWeb does not apply AI to your content by default. If you enable AI, you choose how it runs. Self-hosted users can use local models on their own infrastructure, so the content does not need to leave their server. Cloud AI runs through Baseten under terms that prohibit using your content for model training. In both cases, AI is an optional tool, not a hidden system watching your activity or building a profile in the background.
The difference
Two models for getting information.
The magazine model.
When you subscribe to a magazine, the distributor delivers it to you. The publisher may know that a subscriber exists, but they do not follow you after it arrives. They do not track which articles you read, how long you spent on each page, or what you skipped. The reading is yours.
The platform model.
Most social platforms work differently. You do not just receive content from the people and sources you choose. You consume that content inside the platform, where every click, pause, search, view, and skip can be tracked. Over time, that activity becomes a profile of your habits, interests, and attention. Then that profile becomes part of the business.
SocialWeb is built like the magazine model. We deliver the sources you choose. We do not turn your reading into a profile.