"The Internet should benefit you, not benefit from you."

In short, Aava is a content network that aims to give the user a browsing experience without the problems of the modern Internet, such as behavioral data collection and marketing cookies. If this sounds foreign to you, remind yourself of how you have to click on "accept cookies" or "reject cookies" every time you visit a website. On Aava, you will never have to do that again.

1. No behavioral data collection
2. Aava is safe for children
3. Emphasis on information, not entertainment
4. Your site is hosted for free
5. You should have rights on the Internet
6. No centralized social media
7. Aava is a collective ideology that you have a say in
8. How is Aava different from other projects?
9. Aava is ecological and practical
10. AI
11. Wait, Aava has its own web browser?

1. Aava does not host services or pages that collect and analyze your behavioral data

"Big Tech", a handful of large companies, owns most of the world wide web. Big Tech makes trillions by giving people services, such as social media sites, and then harvesting the behavioral data that is generated as a result. Your search engine searches, the videos you watched, the links you clicked.. everything is logged and processed, and your personality gets profiled. Many people ignore this fact, because their friends use these services as well, or simply because the content on them is too addictive.

It's almost impossible to avoid becoming a victim to this corporate spying and profiling these days, which is why we at Aava want to make sure you have at least one safe haven where you can rest assured knowing your privacy is safe. Every site on Aava is free to access anonymously, with no marketing cookies. The only cookies on Aava are ones that store your session between different pages and tabs, and you don't even need to use them. Creating a profile on Aava is not necessary by any means, and the functionality only exists to facilitate certain tasks like uploading and managing your content on the network. Aava Browser is an open source Python web browser and the idea is to develop it together as a community.

2. Aava is safe for children. No need for ID checks or gatekeeping!

A growing issue with the Internet is that children start to use it at a young age, but are not protected from content or people that might harm them. So far no decent result has been found to fix this problem. Since Aava is all about informative and educational content, Aava is safe to view by children and there is no R-rated content.

It's entirely possible that some day in the future there might be age restrictions on the world wide web, imposed by governments or other parties. We're already seeing popular social media sites asking us to send them our ID's. Aava will never ask you to show your ID to access content. Free access to information should be granted to everyone without gatekeeping. We keep Aava's content safe for children by default so that no legislation will ever have to impose restrictions on it.

People are often under the impression that the current Internet is "free", because it's decentralized. In reality, social media is becoming heavily regulated against hate speech and abusive content, with methods you most likely don't like. We already have AI's that analyze your social media behavior to detect and predict unwanted content. These AI's categorize you into different personality types based on your writing style, meaning you might be labeled a problem client even before you do anything.

3. Aava focuses on useful information, not addictive entertainment

Websites today are purposely designed to target your reward system and get you hooked, keeping you online checking for notifications for several hours per day. By now, this phenomenon has become harmful to us on a collective level. One of the main principles of Aava is to give people an alternative network where companies aren't constantly targeting their reward system, giving you brainfog. The world wide web has always existed for information, so that's what Aava should be about. In this regard, Aava goes back to the roots of why the www was invented in the first place. The Internet doesn't need to turn generations of people into smartphone addicts and behavioral data slaves.

People seem to require more "me time" after a hard day at work. This "me time" is usually mindless entertainment in the form of videos, meme pictures, and gossip. The problem is that this entertainment that's consumed to alleviate stress doesn't really remove the stress. In many cases, extended Internet use makes you even more prone to stress. Technology seemingly makes life easier by making certain tasks faster to perform, but we're not seeing an increase in human happiness. You might have a dozen communications platforms that you're logged in to, and you're subconsciously always on high alert, waiting for one of your apps to beep and notify you of a new message. This creates stress that you might not even be aware of. Ever find yourself just scrolling on a page or clicking through dozens of browser tabs mindlessly, without actually focusing on anything? Imagine if you could use that brainfog time on something useful. This collectively deteriorative nature of the www is one of the reasons why the current world wide web is not socially or culturally sustainable.

4. Aava hosts your websites for free

Having your own website hosted for free should be a human right. Back in the day it was very common for people to have their own "homepage", even if it was made using a third-party website generator. To honor this, we want to encourage users of Aava to create their own HTML-based websites and upload them. It's also why websites are called pages, not sites, on Aava. Today the art of having your unique homepage is lost, and people instead just create their own profile on some popular social media site, resulting in everyone's page looking the same. The Internet desperately needs digital diversity and more individual websites.
Aava will have a simple website generator in the future, but for now you should learn a bit of HTML and CSS, which is definitely a good skill to have.

5. Introducing the concept of "Internet rights"

On Aava, you have more rights than just the right to have your own website and the right to free information without being tracked or profiled. You also have the right to have all discussion and information about you removed from the entire Aava Network if you so choose. In short, you have the right to be forgotten.

Many facets of the Internet came to people as a complete surprise. The "eternal" nature of the Internet is one of them: when something goes online, it's often there forever. Humans didn't evolve to deal with eternal consequences that are just a button click away.

Slanderous discussion, doxxing, and character assassinations have become a big issue on the Internet and these are the unfortunate side effects of social media, as well as people's growing need for entertainment and drama. Sometimes search engines refuse to delete their results about you even if you invoke GDPR. This is because search engines thrive on information, and it's not their business to go deleting it. And even if one search engine will respect your rights, another one might not. The decentralized nature of the Internet makes it impossible to have any meaningful control over your online identity. But Aava makes it happen. We believe you should have the final say in what is posted about you online.

6. No massive social media - just civil discussions

Aava doesn't support massive, centralized social media. Instead, we want to encourage users to create small and cozy discussion boards for various topics. Humans didn't evolve to know a million other people. That's why Aava discussion boards are called "Tribes". Join one of our tribes, or create your own.

7. Democratic guidelines that you have a say in

The centralized nature of Aava is one of its many strong suits. But to make sure Aava is truly a "people's Internet", all of Aava's policies are up for discussion, and most development work is done as a collective. The (humble) source code of Aava Browser is open source and you can start improving it today.
Aava doesn't try to become just another content platform, but a friendly think tank of people who are interested in answering the question "what should the Internet be like?"

8. How is Aava different from other projects?

People are slowly waking up to the realization that the web is in need of alternatives. Many dream of completely decentralized platforms and networks, and "web 3.0" is often associated with AI implementation. What makes Aava unique is that its starting point is in science and human psychology. Aava looks further than others and sees that the Internet is already a fundamental part of the life of homo sapiens. How will the Internet affect our evolution? How should the Internet operate in order to benefit us the most? These questions are hardly ever asked let alone answered. Capitalism is the driving force behind most technology, so human well-being is not very high up on the list. But it should be.

9. Aava is ecological and practical

We talk about carbon footprints and responsibility a lot, but how many have really cut back on their social media consuption? Do you know how much energy is consumed in large server halls when you stream videos online? Aava is like a condensed world wide web. The goal is to have every basic service you might need, in a form that's easy and fast to access. But we can't have it guzzling electricity like the current web. So, Aava relies on pretty simple solutions. Even file sizes are purposely limited to a reasonable degree. Big Tech and their vast server halls have taught people not to compress their videos and simply waste as much space and bandwidth as possible, but this is hardly in tune with the responsibility movement that's going on. Aava works because every part of it has been designed from the perspective of sustainability from the ground up. This, of course, requires some necessary sacrifices like having to rethink what you will upload and why.

10. AI

Unlike many social media platforms, Aava does not use AI in any way. Popular platforms use it to analyze and monitor their users.

11. Why does it need a new browser?

That's a good question. Today it's all about "download this, download that". We don't really want to download any more apps than necessary, right? Aava was first only accessible with Aava Browser, but was made public on the regular world wide web due to popular demand. But there are very good reasons why Aava has its dedicated browser. First of all, it's a simple and effective way to detach the network from the conventional world wide web. But it also opens up new possibilities. When the browser and the content it displays are developed together, the result is a seamless browsing experience - every user sees the pages the same way. So far browsers have kind of had to guess what kind of content they'll be displaying, and different browsers display sites differently. And it's not just about consistency. Having a dedicated browser enables new technical functionalities as well.


More perks of Aava:
-Aava Browser has a built-in functionality that allows you to check the copyright owner of every site you visit.