Bana is aimed at private social networking. It is both a server and a mobile web app, and is federated: anyone can operate a server, and people on one server can communicate with people on any other Bana server. Bana uses ActivityPub, ActivityStreams, and the Activity Vocabulary protocols.

Mainstream social networks treat every connection as a potential data source and every interaction as content for a global audience. Bana deliberately scales in the opposite direction: personal networks among people who already know each other.

This reduces surveillance risk because interactions are not funnelled into a corporation-wide behavioural graph. It reduces harassment risk because communities are smaller and governed locally. Federation ensures that users are not locked into a single operator: if an instance changes its policies or shuts down, people can move without losing the ability to communicate across the Bana network.