Whitepaper

A private, algorithm-free internet built on RSS.

How SocialWeb reimagines the social internet around an open, transparent, privacy-respecting foundation, and why that foundation is RSS.

socialweb.cloud · 2026

Executive summary

SocialWeb is a mobile application that reimagines the social internet around an open, transparent, and privacy-respecting foundation: RSS. Instead of relying on opaque engagement algorithms, ad-driven feeds, and platform-controlled messaging, SocialWeb lets you subscribe directly to the sources you trust, organize them into personal stacks, search the web through a privacy-preserving proxy, and chat privately using a new, end-to-end encrypted RSS-based group messaging protocol.

You choose where your data lives. Self-host on your own server for maximum control, or use SocialWeb’s managed cloud for convenience. Either way, there are no engagement rankings, no ads injected into the feed, and no behavioral profiles built from your reading habits.

At $0.99/month, SocialWeb is priced to be accessible to anyone who cares about their privacy, roughly one-fifteenth to one-twentieth the cost of comparable privacy-focused services. The core value proposition is a calmer, faster, more trustworthy internet for the price of a cup of coffee per year.

The problem

The modern social internet has drifted far from the open, user-controlled medium it was meant to be. Three problems define the status quo:

Algorithmic capture. Feeds are ranked by engagement models optimized for attention, not intent. People routinely see content they did not subscribe to and miss content they did.

Surveillance by default. Site-specific apps are instrumented environments. Every tap, scroll, and dwell time is logged and used to build behavioral profiles that are monetized through advertising or sold to data brokers.

Platform lock-in. Messages, contacts, videos, and social graphs live on corporate servers. Users cannot take them elsewhere, cannot truly delete them, and cannot verify what happens to them. The cost is not only privacy. It is attention, trust, and time.

The SocialWeb approach

SocialWeb is built around a straightforward thesis: if the foundation of social software is an open, pull-based protocol instead of a closed, push-based platform, most of the privacy and attention problems of the modern internet go away as a side effect. That protocol is RSS, the same reliable technology that has powered podcast distribution for two decades.

RSS is a one-way, on-demand format. A publisher posts a file listing their latest content; a reader app fetches that file on a schedule you control. The publisher sees that a request happened, not which items you read, how long you lingered, or what you did next.

An analogy

A site-specific app is like walking into a store where a clerk follows you aisle by aisle with a clipboard, noting what you pick up, what you put back, and how long you stand in front of each display. An RSS feed is like subscribing to a magazine: the publisher knows your address, but not which articles you read or which pages you dog-eared. Both deliver the same content. Only the first one also tracks you.

Product overview

The feed

Subscribe directly to the sources you trust: news sites, blogs, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube channels, independent journalists. You see them in chronological order. No ranking model, no sponsored content, no notifications engineered to pull you back in. The feed stops when there is nothing new.

Stacks

Organize feeds into custom stacks such as Sports, Finance, Tech, or Family. A stack is a named group of feeds, and you switch between them to get a focused view of one part of your life at a time, closer to a set of personal newspapers than an endless mixed-topic feed.

Proxied web search

Search the open web without exposing yourself directly to a search engine. Your query is sent to SocialWeb’s servers, which call the search provider on your behalf and return the results. From the provider’s perspective, the request comes from SocialWeb, not from your IP address, user agent, device fingerprint, or cookies. On Premium, search is rate-limited to 15 queries per day to keep costs in line with the price point; Premium Plus removes the limit.

Private messaging via RSS group chat

SocialWeb introduces an extension to RSS that turns the protocol into a private, end-to-end encrypted, group-chat-capable transport. When you create a group chat you become the host, and the conversation lives on your server. Other members are guests who subscribe to the host’s feed to receive messages. Messages, contacts, and attachments are stored on the host’s chosen server, whether self-hosted or on SocialWeb’s managed infrastructure, giving the host the ability to revoke access, delete history, and move their data at will. Because the messaging layer rides on the same open protocol as the rest of the app, there is no separate proprietary infrastructure to trust.

Private video sharing (coming soon)

A form of video sharing modeled on podcasting, but private. Each video lives in a private room on a user’s server and is accessible only through a secret feed link shared with specific friends. Video streams directly between servers without passing through a corporate platform; no algorithm decides who sees it, no company stores a copy, and it is not used to train AI models.

Hosting choice: self-host or managed cloud

On first launch, you choose how your data is hosted. Self-hosting gives you complete control: your feeds, messages, and media live on a server you own. Managed hosting on SocialWeb’s infrastructure is the convenience option for people who do not want to run a server, while still benefiting from the same protocol-level privacy properties.

Optional privatized AI

AI features are entirely optional. Self-hosted users can run a local model on their own server, so their data never leaves their infrastructure. Managed-hosting users can opt into a cloud AI provided through Baseten, under terms that keep prompts out of training pipelines.

Technical architecture

SocialWeb is a cross-platform mobile and web application built with React Native and Expo, targeting iOS, Android, and the web from a single TypeScript codebase. The client communicates with a small, focused API surface (login, signup, posts, groups, stacks, search, and settings) kept minimal so that self-hosted deployments remain approachable.

The messaging system is built on a new extension to the RSS specification designed by the SocialWeb team. Each group chat has a single host whose server stores the conversation and publishes it as a private, authenticated, end-to-end encrypted feed; guests subscribe to receive messages. Because the underlying format is still RSS, messaging inherits the protocol’s pull-based, low-surveillance characteristics by default.

Privacy and data ownership

Privacy on SocialWeb is a property of the architecture, not a policy promise. Because the app reads content through RSS rather than logging into site-specific platforms, the sites it reads from cannot see what you clicked, how long you spent, or what you read next. Because messages and media are stored on servers you choose, there is no central corporate repository to breach, subpoena, or monetize. Specifically:

• —Feeds are fetched without per-user authentication to the originating site, so publishers cannot build behavioral profiles of SocialWeb readers.
• —Web search is proxied through SocialWeb's servers, so providers never see your IP, device fingerprint, or cookies.
• —Messages are end-to-end encrypted and stored on a server you choose; self-hosted users can delete shared information knowing no other copies exist.
• —The default cloud AI runs through Baseten under terms that keep prompts out of training pipelines; self-hosted users can run a local model instead.

Pricing and business model

SocialWeb is a direct-pay subscription product. There are no ads and no data sales, so the subscription is the entire revenue model, positioned an order of magnitude below comparable privacy-focused services.

Annual billing saves about 16%: $10/year for Premium and $39.99/year for Premium Plus. For context, comparable privacy-oriented services typically charge $15–$20 per month. SocialWeb’s pricing assumes that accessibility is itself a privacy feature: a tool only the wealthy can afford is not a meaningful answer to mass surveillance.

Roadmap and vision

The near-term roadmap focuses on deepening the core reading, stacking, and messaging experience, shipping private video, and expanding the self-hosting story with simpler deployment. In the medium term, the RSS group chat extension will be proposed as an open standard so other clients can interoperate with SocialWeb users.

The long-term vision is a social internet that looks more like email and podcasts than like today’s walled gardens: many independent clients, many independent servers, one open protocol, and users who own their data by default.