Revolution.Social

Can We Bring Vine Back From the Dead?

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 07:30:00 -0000

Is 2026 the new 2016?

Back then, we didn't know that Facebook could win or lose elections, and become weaponized, that Gamergate-style harassment would take over politics, or that we were about to lose the creative, absurd, and sometimes brilliant short-form video platform Vine.

Here's the good news: We're going to try to recapture the magic of Vine. Rabble’s new app, Divine, is available now at Divine.video and the links below.

To celebrate Divine's launch, we brought back two of our favorite podcast guests: journalist & founder of User Mag, Taylor Lorenz; and the host of the podcast "There Are No Girls on the Internet," Bridget Todd. They talk with Rabble about the rise of Vine, why it failed as a business and got shut down by Twitter, and how that rise & fall rippled throughout the creator economy.

Taylor & Bridget have spent years documenting the evolution of social platforms from the inside out, and Rabble adds some behind the scenes color about the big brains and egos at Twitter. They also talk about what makes Divine different from Vine and existing apps like TikTok and Snapchat.

Here's to a joyful, creative, open internet. Join us on Divine! The link to download the app is below.

Download the app: App Store

Google Play

ZapStore

Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 01:42 The Rise and Impact of Vine 04:05 Simplicity and the Outward-Facing Camera 07:02 Evolution of the Proto-Influencer 11:27 Black Culture and Subverting Power Dynamics 15:08 Curation vs Algorithmic Feeds 20:21 Why Vine Collapsed 23:27 The Culture Gap Between Tech and Creators 28:13 Competition and the Birth of TikTok 33:14 Hope and the Future of Social Media 38:42 Decentralization and User Control 50:26 Bridging Humanity and Technology

Taylor’s Substack, User Mag Her podcast, “Power User”

Bridget’s Instagram Her podcast, “There Are No Girls on the Internet”

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s Social Media Bill of Rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Why the Algorithm Loves a Villain, And How to Beat It

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:30:00 -0000

When the internet is full of distortions, fake news, and AI-generated slop, how can facts and journalism rise to the top?

Former BBC and Vice journalist Sophia Smith Galer has one possible way to beat the misinformation and exploitation. Her app Sophiana writes "algorithm-ready" video scripts for journalists and experts, to cut through the noise and help them go viral.

In this episode of Revolution.Social, Rabble (Twitter’s first employee) sits down with Sophia to talk about her reporting on our broken digital discourse, as well as her new book "How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words.”

Today on the podcast, Sophia and Rabble explore: - How bad actors manipulate our feeds - The transition from traditional newsrooms to video journalism on TikTok - The decline of language diversity around the world due to "linguicide"

Plus: What happened when Sophia discovered an AI-generated "autobiography" of herself.

Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 3:53 Gaming the Algorithm and Content Moderation 9:39 Sophia's AI-Hallucinated Biography 13:12 From BBC News to Independent Journalism 16:27 Building Sophiana: AI Tools for Journalists 19:13 Longform Books vs. Short-Form Video 24:00 Platform Lock-in and Substack 26:12 Instagram and the Myth of "Exposure" 28:29 Labor Rights and Industry Chaos 32:05 How to Kill a Language 37:32 Saving Endangered Languages in California 40:21 Multilingualism and Cultural Identity

Sophia’s book, “How to Kill a Language” Her Instagram Sophiana

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s Social Media Bill of Rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Why does the internet feel worse than it used to?

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:30:00 -0000

From scams and spam to platforms we don’t control, many of the systems shaping our online lives feel increasingly broken.

In this episode of Revolution.Social, Rabble (Twitter’s first employee) sits down with Molly White, software engineer, Wikipedia editor, and creator of “Web3 is Going Just Great”, to unpack what’s actually gone wrong, and whether it can be fixed.

Molly has spent years documenting the realities behind crypto and the modern internet, from high-profile collapses to the incentives that allow scams and bad actors to thrive.

Together, they explore:

Why Wikipedia still works as a model of the “digital commons”
How crypto evolved from idealism into an ecosystem full of scams
Whether the people building these systems truly believe in them
Why prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi raise new risks

Plus: how Rabble became the subject of a $50,000 prediction market bet.

Can we rebuild an internet that’s more open, trustworthy, and user-controlled — or are these problems here to stay?

Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 4:34 Wikipedia as a Commons 10:25 Resisting Authoritarian Attacks on Open Projects 14:05 The Rise and Fall of the Web3 Utopian Myth 18:23 Crypto Scams and Failures 20:34 Cozying Up to the White House 24:00 The Dangers of Online "Safety" Laws 30:19 Regulatory Capture and the Return of High-Risk Finance 38:23 "The Financialization of Everything" 45:51 Social Good vs. Token Value 55:26 Returning to the IndieWeb and Open Protocols 1:01:27 Why You Should Own Your Domain Name 1:05:09 Protocols Over Platforms as a Check on Power

Molly’s website

Her newsletter, Citation Needed

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s Social Media Bill of Rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Ethical Venture Capital: Why Social Media Needs a Conscience (with Brad Burnham & Zoe Weinberg)

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 07:30:00 -0000

In an era of hypergrowth and enshittification, can venture capitalists win by investing with conscience? Today on Revolution.Social, Rabble talks to Union Square Ventures co-founder Brad Burnham and ex/ante founder Zoe Weinberg about digital agency, human rights, and tech that makes the world more inclusive and democratic.

"One of the broader objectives of ex/ante is to think about how do you move beyond surveillance capitalism?" Zoe says. "And the irony is not lost on me that venture itself is part of what created it. And so I think we have to be intellectually honest about that and also come up with a compelling reason why this time is going to be different."

Brad is a legendary investor known for his work in the early Web 2.0 era, when Union Square Ventures backed companies such as Twitter, Tumblr, and Etsy. But with hindsight, he says VCs have a "moral responsibility" to anticipate the consequences of their investments.

"The more time we spent with these companies, the better we understood that the more people in our network, the more valuable that network," Brad says. "What we didn't understand is that it was going to lead to the consolidation around Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon. We didn't understand that it was so powerful and there was so much value ... that there was no way that a startup could compete with those dominant players."

Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 6:13 Brad’s Early Career and the Birth of Web 2.0 9:05 The Early Days of Union Square Ventures 11:01 Zoe’s Path From Conflict Zones to Digital Freedom 13:45 How Venture Capital Actually Works 18:46 The Evolution of Digital Marketplaces 22:09 The Shift from Open Protocols to Walled Gardens 29:41 Crypto as a New Economic Incentive Model 36:53 Is Technology "Neutral?" 40:33 Public Benefit Corporations 44:16 Personal Data Ownership in the Age of AI 53:25 Centralization vs. Human Agency 57:18 The Future of Agents and Liberatory Technology

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s Social Media Bill of Rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Escaping Algorithmic Binds: Creators vs. Corporate Platforms (w/ Bridget Todd & Rudy Fraser at SXSW)

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 07:30:00 -0000

The biggest social media platforms in the world have alienated their users and trapped them inside algorithms that only serve corporate interests. But there is good reason to have hope for the future of decentralized social apps, made for and by their communities.

In this live interview recorded at SXSW 2026 in Austin, Texas, Rabble speaks with Rudy Fraser, the creator of Blacksky Algorithms, and Bridget Todd, the host of the podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet and an affiliate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

"I want to see more optimistic visions of the future," Rudy says. "I want to see less dystopian visions. I want to see more Afrofuturism ... There's lots of people talk about 'let a thousand flowers bloom.' I think it [decentralization] does open up opportunities for people to be really creative."

Rabble, Rudy, and Bridget spoke about the evolution of the creator economy, how to build a more equitable internet, and why podcasts are the most democratic form of social media.

“If you've ever listened to a podcast at the end, you probably hear the host say something along the lines of, Oh, subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,” Bridget says. “It really means something kind of radical because that's not just something that people say. It is true … If I say something that Apple doesn't like, Apple can't shut down my podcast because it doesn't work that way, thanks to the RSS feed.”

Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 02:40 Rudy Fraser and the Story of Blacksky 04:10 Bridget Todd on Identity and Technology 08:43 The Power of RSS Feeds 11:51 Rethinking Algorithms for Community Discovery 16:10 Explaining Decentralization to Mainstream Users 20:41 Economic Incentives and Monetization Models 24:46 Lessons from the Twitter Migration 27:57 Narrative Control and Cross-Platform Integration 31:34 Scalability and Digital Strikes 34:00 Rebuilding Infrastructure from First Principles 37:55 The Nuance Problem in Large-Scale Moderation 42:37 Beyond the Sharecropping System of Big Tech 46:58 The Right to Replatforming and Social Coding 51:56 Policy and Global Tech Regulation

Learn more about Blacksky: https://blackskyweb.xyz/ Listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet: https://www.tangoti.com/ Watch Rudy’s previous interview: https://youtu.be/UA1DutGDVcs?si=KoGgvv-u5DAyh4UM Watch Bridget’s previous interview: https://youtu.be/lpXr_JvuVIw?si=zsiolnlf1OBaf1mt

Follow Rabble on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rabble.nz Follow the podcast: https://revolution.social/episodes/

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s Social Media Bill of Rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

What Creators Can Do & AI Can’t (with Jim Louderback)

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 07:30:00 -0000

Jim Louderback is a media pioneer: a journalist and columnist who went on to become the CEO of the internet-based television network Revision3, and later of the global events business, VidCon.

Today, as the editor of the popular Inside the Creator Economy newsletter, he is thinking a lot about how creators can respond to AI.

"What are the things that they can uniquely do that AI can't?" he asks. "If you don't lean into the things that make you uniquely human ... I think we then just end up in this one-to-one world, where all media is crafted specifically 100% for us, and we have no fandom, we have no culture, we have no connections."

Today on Revolution.Social, Jim and Rabble talk about the history of blogging, video, social media, and digital celebrities; the "tragedy of the platforms," that creators on TikTok and YouTube don't know enough about their audiences; and the benefits of having some kind of gatekeepers in a creative ecosystem. They also discuss the pivotal role VidCon played in uniting digital influencers, and how Gen Z is making fandom more and more niche.

Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 5:43 The Impact of VidCon and Legitimatizing Creators 11:20 Community vs. Celebrity 14:19 Moving Beyond Platform Dependence 19:21 Parasocial Relationships and Personal Branding 22:19 Democratized vs. Institutional Gatekeepers 27:16 AI's Trust Crisis 34:40 Reclaiming Humanity with diVine 41:59 The Economics of Belonging 48:26 Streaming, Long-Form Content, and Real-Time Validation 56:54 The Failure of Video Replies 59:43 Nostalgia and the Future of Creator Ethics

Learn more about Jim: https://louderback.com/ Inside the Creator Economy: https://insidethecreator.beehiiv.com/

Follow Rabble on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rabble.nz Follow the podcast: https://revolution.social/episodes/

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

An Alternate History of Social Media (with Ben Werdmuller)

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 08:30:00 -0000

Ben Werdmuller is the Senior Director of Technology at ProPublica and a seasoned technologist who has spent his career building platforms that prioritize social impact and integrity. In 2004, he co-founded the open-source social networking software Elgg, which for more than 20 years has served as an alternative to Facebook for governments, schools, and political movements around the world.

"They are very similar," Ben says of Elgg and Facebook. "PHP-based social network[s], both heavily inspired by LiveJournal ... They took different paths and now Mark has a private Hawaiian island, and I don't. And also, Mark has undermined democracies and been culpable in a genocide."

Today on Revolution.Social, Ben and Rabble talk about his career transitions from technologist to venture capitalist to his current technical leadership at ProPublica. They also discuss how the sensitivities with which journalists approach new technologies like AI; the ebbs and flows of the Indie Web movement; and how builders in tech, including vibe-coders, can choose to lean into ethics, community, and social good.

Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 3:08 Investigating Power at ProPublica 7:32 Media and Venture Capital Don't Mix 13:53 Why Newsrooms Struggle with Innovation 17:15 AI Can't Do Journalism 22:15 Subpoenas and Data Privacy 25:09 The Rise of the IndieWeb 32:11 Vibe Coding and Agentic Programming 42:45 Human Intent in an AI-Built Web 45:32 Open-Source Social with Elgg 51:26 Mark Zuckerberg's Divergent Path 56:31 Co-Designing the Future of Work and AI

Follow Rabble on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rabble.nz Follow the podcast: https://episodes.fm/1824528874

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s Social Media Bill of Rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Ethics Have Become Optional in Big Tech. We Can Do Better. (with Alex Komoroske)

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 08:30:00 -0000

Alex Komoroske spent over a decade at Google overseeing key initiatives for ads, Chrome, and Maps, before running Corporate Strategy at Stripe. At heart, he's a champion for the open web. Today, as the CEO and co-founder of Common Tools, Alex says technologists must lean into ethics and away from short-term results.

"We're in the late stage of this extractive kind of thing, where we're all just trying to wring more out of these walled gardens," Alex adds. "And what bothers me is that all of us seem to have forgotten that. And everyone's like, in this zombie state: 'Well, the thing says make number go up.'"

Today on Revolution.Social, Alex and Rabble talk about the challenges of maintaining interoperability in an era of proprietary lock-in; the difference between "hollow" vs. "resonant" tech experiences; and the Resonant Computing Manifesto, which Alex co-drafted last year. They also discuss the rightward political shift of Silicon Valley, Alex's Lord of the Rings-inspired archetypes for understanding builders, and how to curate cozy offline communities.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

5:24 The "Slime Mold" Theory of Organizations

10:53 The Fallacy of Measurement and KPIs

15:49 Christopher Alexander and Pattern Language

17:51 The Resonant Computing Manifesto

21:06 Chatbots vs. Agentic LLMs

26:54 Saruman vs. Radagast

31:53 Power Dynamics and "Money Disease"

38:45 How LLMs Change Software

42:52 The History of the Luddite Movement

47:54 APIs as Public Infrastructure

52:48 Lessons from the Open Web and Chrome

59:43 App Stores vs. The Web Sandbox

1:04:42 Balancing Open Systems with Speed

1:09:09 User-Driven Innovation at Twitter

1:10:53 Cloud Security Tiers and Data Privacy

1:16:44 The Power of Physical Salons and Curation

1:22:47 Hypersituated Software and Local Community

Follow Rabble on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rabble.nz

Follow the podcast: https://episodes.fm/1824528874

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s Social Media Bill of Rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Silicon Valley Has Lost Its Moral Compass (with Anil Dash)

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 08:30:00 -0000

Anil Dash is a pioneering technologist, advocate for ethical tech, and former CEO of Glitch, who currently serves on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Looking back on his career, he says Silicon Valley has lost its moral compass because it no longer responds to shame.

"You stopped being able to say, don't do this thing, it makes you look bad," Anil says. "Facebook never cared about that. And most of the product managers at OpenAI used to work at Facebook.”

“If [they] were a person that joined Meta after they enabled the Rohingya genocide and then [they] went to work at OpenAI,” he adds, “And you're like, 'Hey, why does your product tell teenagers to self-harm?' They're going to be like, 'What's the problem?'"

Today on Revolution.Social, Anil and Rabble talk about the evolution of the independent web, the challenges of maintaining progressive values within the startup ecosystem, and how to use digital tools to foster a more democratic society. They also explore the backlash against AI, which Anil believes to be a manifestation of all the disruption the tech industry has caused in people's lives, and why that doesn't mean we have to give up on AI entirely.

Chapters: 0:00 Introduction

5:12 The History of Decentralization

12:07 AI Ethics and Intellectual Property

16:57 The Silicon Valley Playbook: Economic Disruption

24:50 What We Can Learn from Prince and Taylor Swift

31:18 The Culture of Curation: From Reblogging to Vine

41:16 The Decline of Corporate Shame and Accountability

46:15 AI as a Tech Industry Fashion Trend

54:15 Why Coding in AI Feels Better than Making Art

1:03:01 We Need a Rubric for Ethical, Human-Centric AI

1:08:46 Grassroots Resistance to Big Tech

Follow Rabble on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rabble.nz Follow the podcast: https://episodes.fm/1824528874

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

“I've Never Been More Optimistic” (Flipboard’s Mike McCue On the Open Social Web)

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 08:30:00 -0000

Mike McCue has seen a lot of changes over the years to the open web. He was an executive at Netscape, which helped liberate the web from AOL's walled garden; he served on the board of Twitter but wasn’t able to prevent it from abandoning its open API ecosystem; and now, as the CEO of Flipboard, he's building towards a more open future.

“I've never been more optimistic than I am now about how the internet is going to develop and how the social media world and ecosystem is going to develop into a much more open, connected experience for people, independent of app, independent of platform,” McCue says.

But there are still big problems to fix, and today on Revolution.Social, Mike and Rabble talk about most of them, including the devaluation of follower counts, how rage bait economics poison platform incentives, and how AI-generated content lacks soul. As a board member at Patreon, McCue says he’s seeing a renewed demand for authentic human craft & niche communities; at this perilous and promising moment, which vision of the future will win?

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

5:14 From Netscape to the Fediverse

8:49 Elon, Zuckerberg, and the push toward alternatives

14:22 The shutdown of Twitter’s API and the birth of the AT Protocol

19:38 Follower counts don’t matter

22:12 Rage bait economics and platform incentives

25:51 Bluesky and Mastodon

27:50 Niche communities vs. the global town square

30:57 The craft of being human in an AI world

38:09 How to explain the open web to regular users

43:33 Surf and open protocols for social media

54:08 Patreon and business models for the internet

1:02:14 diVine and AI backlash

Follow Rabble on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rabble.nz

Follow the podcast: https://episodes.fm/1824528874

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Building Community vs. Building an Audience (with VidCon’s Jacques Keyser)

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 08:30:00 -0000

VidCon programming director Jacques Keyser says there’s a big shift happening in social media: Creators who once lived and died by the algorithm are increasingly looking for ways to “own” their audiences.

“No one can take your podcast away, no one can take your newsletter away,” Keyser says. “Once you've built that audience, that is yours, you own that … if you are on YouTube, if you're on TikTok, if you're on Meta, at any point you could violate one of the T's and C's [and lose your account].”

VidCon got its start as a small event in a hotel lobby organized by Hank and John Green, and today it’s one of the largest gatherings of digital creators, fans, and industry in the world. Today on Revolution.Social, recorded at the 1 Billion Followers Summit in Dubai, Rabble and Jacques talk about what has changed in the intervening years, both at VidCon and inside the creator economy as a whole.

They also talk about how follower counts have become meaningless, how creators actually make money, and why the rise of AI might paradoxically make real-life connection and human authenticity more valuable than ever.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Rabble on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LightningPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

The Battle for Digital Freedom and Why KOSA Ain’t It (with Evan Greer)

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 08:30:00 -0000

Evan Greer is a director at Fight for the Future, the digital rights organization that helped organize the SOPA blackout and continues to fight for an internet where ordinary people have a voice. As a parent, a trans activist, and someone who's spent over a decade in the trenches of internet policy, she brings a unique perspective to the debate over how we protect kids online.

“So many of these folks that say they want to protect kids are just not actually interested in listening to kids,” Evan says. “And it's really hard to protect kids when you don't listen to them… The amount of videos about Minecraft that I have subjected myself to just so that my kid doesn't feel ashamed coming and talking to me about what kind of content she's consuming has rotted my brain. But what it actually has led to is we do have a trusting relationship.”

Today on Revolution.Social, Evan and Rabble talk about how well-intentioned legislation such as KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act, could become a powerful tool for censorship; why age verification requirements would make digital surveillance even worse; and why our ability to choose the apps we can install on our phones is set to become a “foundational human rights issue.” They also talk about the monopoly power of app stores, the hidden world of data brokers, and why the same politicians who claim to be tough on Big Tech refuse to pass basic privacy legislation.

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠⁠LightningPod⁠⁠⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠⁠⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

An Update on diVine: Joyscrolling, AI Filtering, and Trust & Safety

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 17:22:00 -0000

Rabble and Alice Chan, Revolution.Social's host and executive producer, share an update on diVine, the new social video app that's bringing back the spirit of Vine and real human creativity (no AI content allowed!).

"We're not anti-AI," Alice says. "We just believe that there is great power in human creativity and that humans have kind of had that power taken away from them involuntarily."

Recording at the 1 Billion Followers Summit in Dubai, Rabble and Alice talk about how the diVine team is preparing to handle potentially millions of users, and how it’s partnering with trust and safety experts like Yoel Roth, and the team at Bluesky. They also discuss AI content detection, the forthcoming Android beta, and why we need to replace doomscrolling with “joyscrolling.”

Follow Rabble on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rabble.nz

Follow the podcast: https://episodes.fm/1824528874

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Open Source Safety Tools for Everyone (with Camille François)

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 08:30:00 -0000

Camille François, assistant professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, has spent her career at the frontlines of trust and safety, including as a principal researcher at Google and the Senior Director of Trust & Safety at Niantic; now the founding president of ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), she's working to make the safety tools used by big tech companies accessible to everyone.

“What children face online right now, the state of the threat is so far ahead from the current state of the defenses,” Camille says. “We know the defenses are brittle. We know the defenses are hypercentralized. We know the defenses are not accessible to the people who want them. And open source is also a hack to build faster together.”

Today on Revolution.Social, Camille and Rabble talk about how open source safety tools can strengthen our digital spaces, the impact of the AI moment, and why safety will look different across different platforms … and why that's desirable. Plus: Why “nudifying” apps, similar to the controversial Grok features that unleashed global outrage, have been able to proliferate on social media and app stores.

⁠⁠⁠Follow Rabble on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠LightningPod⁠⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

Social Media Should Be Public Infrastructure (with Ben Cerveny)

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 08:30:00 -0000

"My thesis is that humans invent things all the time, and for the first 30 years, we call them technology," says Ben “Neb” Cerveny, president of the Foundation for Public Code. "And then if they work, we call them infrastructure."

Ben was part of the original team that built one of the defining Web 2.0 platforms, Flickr, and he even gave Flickr its name. Currently, he is applying what he learned from building digital communities to the next wave of software, web services, and urban planning; Foundation for Public Code, he says, has helped convince most of Europe’s governments that tech solutions don’t need to be privately owned and controlled.

Today on Revolution.Social, Ben and Rabble discuss the loss of human curation, which made early social media special; why software has just as much “terroir” as film or food; and how we might govern digital spaces by consensus. They also talk about the origins of Flickr, why Facebook is the fast food of social media, and how to build social platforms with civic intentionality.

⁠⁠Follow Rabble on Bluesky⁠⁠

⁠⁠Follow the podcast⁠⁠

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠LightningPod⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

AI Slop Is Killing the Joy of the Internet (with Bridget Todd)

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 09:00:00 -0000

Bridget Todd is the host of the podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, and a longtime commentator on how platforms shape culture. And she says the rise of AI-generated videos has turned her — an OG superfan of Vine — against short-form video altogether. "I can't trust that any of these are real cats doing cute things," Bridget says. "It's completely turned me off of a kind of content that I've been enjoying for decades." Today on Revolution.Social, Bridget and Rabble discuss what diVine needs to do to bring back the joy of Vine; how AI slop triggers real physiological responses, even when we know it's fake; the disconnect between Silicon Valley's AI enthusiasm and everyone else's horror; and why movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter might not be possible in today's algorithmic landscape. They also explore the moral panic around kids online, why legislation aimed at "protecting children" often harms them most, and what it would take to build an internet rooted in love and joy instead of extraction.

⁠Follow Rabble on Bluesky⁠

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠LightningPod⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠Flock Marketing⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

[Re-Air] What's Next for Jack Dorsey After Twitter and Bluesky

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 08:30:00 -0000

Happy new year to all! Today, we're re-airing the first episode of Revolution.Social, an interview with Jack Dorsey. We'll be back next week with a new interview about the future of social media.

Twitter never should have been a traditional tech company, says Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. Instead, it should have been designed as a protocol — like email, or podcasting. “That was the pure expression of it from day one,” Dorsey says. “And it was never really allowed to be that because it was on this fast track to becoming a public company.” Today on Revolution.Social, Dorsey explains why it’s still possible to build a successful business on top of open protocols and decentralized social platforms like Nostr. He and Rabble also discuss why Jack doesn’t regret encouraging Elon Musk to buy Twitter; why he left Bluesky; the problem with centralized AI firms; and the evolution of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠LightningPod⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠Flock Marketing⁠.

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Decentralized Social Media for 40 Million+ Users (with Bluesky’s Jay Graber)

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 09:00:00 -0000

When Bluesky hit its millionth user, it had fewer than 10 employees; today, it has more than 40 million users, but only 30 workers; that means that “everyone on the team wears a lot of hats,” says Bluesky CEO Jay Graber.

It also makes it much harder to comply with regulations like the new wave of age verification laws, which have been designed for Meta-sized social media companies. “There's a whole patchwork of legislation [in different jurisdictions] … these massive nation state-sized corporations are just going to throw 10,000 people at it and comply,” Jay says. “And we have a tiny team of five product devs trying to comply, and that means in some cases we just can't.” Today on Revolution.Social, she and Rabble talk about the unique benefits of the AT Protocol, which powers Bluesky; permissionless social media and the right to exit; vibe coding social apps in a day; and why pluralistic democracy requires pluralistic communication systems.

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠https://revolution.social/

Team Human vs. Tech Monopolies (with Douglas Rushkoff)

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 09:00:00 -0000

Douglas Rushkoff is a media theorist, author, and host of the Team Human podcast, who has been advocating for human-centered technology since the early '90s. He believes venture capital turned social media into a strip mall, but that its fundamental values can be reclaimed and re-invented.

“It was a wonderful chaotic thing,” Douglas says about Twitter. “It was not a mean, treacherous, troll-baiting, horrible thing … the bias was towards collaboration, cooperation, and certain social norms that emerged naturally. It didn't turn fucked-up and evil until the platform became about monetizing things."

Today on Revolution.Social, Doug and Rabble discuss how the internet became an advertising-driven hellscape; what platform cooperatives could look like if workers owned the means of digital production; and why Mastodon failed where it should have succeeded. They also discuss te reo Maori Twitter, diVine’s anti-AI slop stance, AGI mythology, Peter Thiel’s craziest ideas, and why professional journalists are losing to professional liars.

00:00:00 Introduction 00:04:44 Renaissance vs. Simulation 00:08:29 Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus 00:12:29 Ev Williams' $4.3 Billion Problem 00:16:05 Jack Dorsey's Original Sin 00:19:43 Platform Co-ops 00:24:09 Interest-Bearing Currency and AGI 00:26:22 Peter Thiel's AI Monarchy 00:33:32 Do People Want Social Media to Be Social? 00:38:06 Te Reo Maori Twitter 00:40:40 diVine and Medium

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Defending Digital Rights in the Surveillance Era (with Jillian York)

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 13:00:00 -0000

We need a more diverse approach to internet governance, says Jillian York, the director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

At the EFF, Jillian has studied the global impact of social media policies and advocated on behalf of global activists and others whose voices are often suppressed.

Today on Revolution.Social, she and Rabble talk about the challenges of content moderation, the importance of end-to-end encryption, and the unintended consequences of age-verification legislation aimed at protecting minors on the internet. They also discuss the theft of copyrighted works that helped train AI large language models, and the necessity of grassroots activism to preserve digital freedoms.

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Enshittification and “Breaking Kings” (with Cory Doctorow at Web Summit)

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 09:00:00 -0000

In this live interview recorded in November at Web Summit 2025 in Lisbon, Cory Doctorow returns to Revolution.Social to talk about building alternatives to “enshittified” digital platforms.

"Apps are websites that are illegal to protect your privacy while you use them," Cory explains. "The reason companies are so horny to get you to use their apps is because they can't be modified in that way. No one's ever installed an ad blocker for an app."

Cory and Rabble also discuss how Europe could export jailbreaking tools as industrial policy, why other countries should respond to American tariffs with a targeted strike against the tech industry, and why tech workers should have unionized when they had leverage.

Chapters:

00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:06 Anticircumvention Laws & GDPR 00:06:54 Apple and Google's DRM Controls 00:09:14 Chokepoint Capitalism and the EuroStack 00:11:10 Adversarial Interoperability 00:14:09 Printer Ink vs. Stallion Semen 00:15:38 The AI Bubble Will Pop 00:18:48 Tech Bosses Aren't Afraid of Their Workers

Read Cory’s new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It https://bookshop.org/p/books/enshittification-why-everything-suddenly-got-worse-and-what-to-do-about-it-cory-doctorow/d3f8483b158906ce

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

"Our Mission Is To Keep Flickr Pictures Visible for 100 Years" (with George Oates)

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 09:00:00 -0000

Designer, community-builder, and Flickr co-creator George Oates is now the executive director of the Flickr Foundation, which is working to preserve the platform's 21 years of photos for the next 100 years. She helped create Flickr's community guidelines, designed its nested privacy controls, and launched the Flickr Commons program, which partners with more than 100 institutions to make publicly held photography collections more accessible.

“The Flickr community loved it, and actually would help the institutions by describing the photos, and in some cases identifying things like the location they were taken, who was in them, the events surrounding them, stuff like that,” George says. “This really important contextual metadata about these historic photos.”

Today on Revolution.Social, George and Rabble talk about how the online multiplayer Game Neverending evolved into Flickr; the groundbreaking ways the site approached content moderation and avoiding context collapse; and why the sort of hypergrowth that makes Silicon Valley tick is “the antithesis of building a healthy, happy community.” Plus: The plan to save all of Flickr’s photos, no matter what happens.

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Vine Revisited and The Fight Against AI Slop

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 09:00:00 -0000

Rabble and Alice Chan, Revolution.Social’s host and executive producer, talk about the launch and overwhelming reception to diVine, a new social video app that resurrects the six-second looping format of Vine and features archived original Vine content.

This time, however, the app is built on open protocols and a promise to focus on real content made by real people, not AI. Within hours of announcing diVine at Web Summit in Lisbon, it had 10,000 signups on TestFlight, Apple’s developer testing app, and its beta program was full. Its early success is proof that new social apps can be built on the Social Media Bill of Rights and that consumers want better ways to connect and share online.

"We accept that one person controls Instagram and one person controls Twitter, one person controls TikTok,” Rabble says. “That is a dystopian nightmare. And so diVine isn't just fun videos, but also shows us a future of social media where power is shared."

You can join the diVine mobile app waitlist and preview the videos people are creating at https://divine.video/

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Building Human Rights Into the Social Web (with Mallory Knodel)

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 09:00:00 -0000

Mallory Knodel is the executive director of the Social Web Foundation and former CTO of the Center for Democracy & Technology. Her roots go back to the activists, anarchists, and dreamers who built the open web, and then lost control of it to big business. “Especially in the smaller circles of digital human rights organizations and so on, [they] really understood that everything that they would work so hard for … could just be so easily undone from the top-down of a huge corporate,” Mallory says. “Nothing was durable at all.” Today on Revolution.Social, Mallory and Rabble talk about who controls Web 2.0 and how the fediverse gives us a second chance; how she convinced the IETF to evaluate protocols for human rights implications; and why content moderation should be contextual, not universal. They also discuss how Edward Snowden’s revelations changed global internet standards, the 2025 funding crisis and how Ghost provides a model for sustainable open-source businesses.

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⁠Follow the podcast⁠⁠ This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠LightningPod.fm⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠. To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

How to Overthrow Dictators Without Violence (with Srđa Popović)

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 08:30:00 -0000

Political activist Srđa Popović led the movement that overthrew Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević in 2000. Since then, his organization, Canvas, has trained activists in over 50 countries how to build successful nonviolent movements—and he says most people misunderstand how change actually happens.

“When we start working with them, they often say, ‘Oh, I'm too busy doing things, I don't have time for planning,’” Srđa says. “If I was given a dime every time I've heard that, I would probably have a private plane. Unfortunately I wasn't, so I drive a 2012 old Buick.”

This week on Revolution.Social, Srđa and Rabble talk about why viral videos and protests aren't enough without strategy; why the Montgomery bus boycott succeeded; and how humor can be more effective than anger at undermining autocrats. They also discuss how modern authoritarians use apathy and conspiracy theories instead of fear, why all political movements need leaders, and what happened when activists in Russia set up hundreds of small plastic toys to protest corruption and electoral malpractice.

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Follow the podcast⁠ This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠LightningPod.fm⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠Flock Marketing⁠. To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠https://revolution.social/

Banning Kids From Social Media Isn’t the Answer (with Pamela Wisniewski)

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Pamela Wisniewski is one of the leading researchers on how social media affects teens, working at the UC Berkeley-affiliated International Computer Science Institute. In an era of moral panics around youth online safety, she believes the solution is to empower teens and teach them resilience, rather than restricting them. "We treat it as if our teens should know how to act online without any kind of training," Pamela says. "We don't give our 16-year-olds the keys to our car and just say, 'Hey, go at it.' But that's what we're doing with the internet." Today on Revolution.Social, Pamela and Rabble talk about why parental control apps fail teens; what her research into private Instagram DMs revealed about self-harm language and peer support; and why age verification bans push kids into more dangerous spaces. They also discuss the problems with addiction narratives and shame-based approaches, why anonymity is vital for vulnerable youth, and what teens themselves are telling us they want from digital governance.
Teenovate

Learn about the STIR Lab Pamela's Research: It’s Still Complicated Teen Talk Safety by Design Towards Resilience and Autonomy-based Approaches Follow Rabble on Bluesky Follow the podcast This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing. To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Jeff Jarvis on the Death of Mass Media, Twitter vs. UberMedia, and Section 230’s Brilliance

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0000

In books like The Web We Weave and podcasts such as Intelligent Machines, journalist and educator Jeff Jarvis — formerly the director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York — has traced the history of media from the Gutenberg press to AI. And he says that today’s attempts to clamp down on the internet are nothing new. "Whenever there's an explosion of speech, those who controlled speech resent it," Jeff explains. "They try to fight it, they try to control it, they launch into a moral panic about it." Today on Revolution.Social, Jeff and Rabble talk about the pivotal battle between Twitter and third-party apps like UberMedia; how Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects free expression; and why Medium's human curation works better than Substack's anything-goes approach. They also discuss the problems with age verification laws, why the "commons resistance" in AI might succeed, and what Black Twitter's migration to Blacksky teaches us about reclaiming platforms.

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LightningPod.fm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

Harper Reed on Building for Obama, Social Media for Bots & Why Tech Isn't Always the Solution

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0000

2389 Research CEO Harper Reed was previously the CTO of President Barack Obama's 2012 reelection campaign, where he helped redefine modern political technology. Before that, he was CTO of Threadless, the crowdsourced T-shirt company that accidentally invented crowdsourcing.

Harper has spent his career building systems that bring people together online—but also exploring why technology often produces unintended consequences. He recently published a paper on creating a social media ecosystem for AI agents, raising urgent questions about how humans and machines will interact in decentralized environments, and asks deep questions about the future of work in an AI world.

Today on Revolution.Social, Harper and Rabble talk about what he learned from “juggling against homophobia”; why the Obama campaign taught him that technology isn't always the solution; and why the future of software is building interfaces for agents, not agents using human tools. They also discuss what type of engineers are most likely to be displaced by AI-assisted coding.

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LightningPod.fm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

“Think Like a Commoner" Author David Bollier on the Commons & Why Open Platforms Aren't Enough

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0000

When a community wants to organize itself, it might decide between private ownership and state control. David Bollier has spent decades arguing that that’s a false binary, and that there is a better way: The commons. "The commons is as old as humanity," David says. "It's kind of the default setting for coordination and governance. It's just in the past 200 years or so, we've tricked ourselves into thinking that we're isolated individuals and that the social context and the Earth is irrelevant." Today on Revolution.Social, David and Rabble talk about why a platform being “open” isn’t enough to keep it safe from corporate takeover; the success of podcasting as a type of commons; and why we need to build parallel institutions rather than just protest existing ones. They also talk about the lessons from Bitcoin's governance conflicts, the vulnerability of shareholder value to collective action, and how the internet can “get back to the garden.”

Read David's books

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LightningPod.fm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

“The Etymology Nerd” Adam Aleksic on Algospeak, AI Slop, and the End of Writing

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Adam Aleksic, known to his social media followers as the “Etymology Nerd,” has built a massive audience by decoding the origins of words, accents, and memes. In his new book Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language, he talks about the ways our social media algorithms have accelerated the “context collapse” that changes the words we use. “You perceive this creator using a word like, I dunno, rizz, ate, slay, served,” Adam says. “These are all from the ballroom scene in the 1980s, this gay, Black, Latino space. But these words are now just being used by white girls. It's because you see this being used by somebody online … It's on your For You page. It feels like it's personalized.” Today on Revolution.Social, Adam and Rabble talk about the rise of words like “unalive” and “lowkey,” the shift away from human gatekeepers, and why the popularity of video and podcasts threatens the cultural power of writing. They also discuss the dangers of banning cell phones in schools and how social media algorithms can encourage racist AI slop.

Read Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LightningPod.fm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

Rudy Fraser on Blacksky, Mutual Aid & Reclaiming Social Media

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Rudy Fraser is the founder of Blacksky, a community-driven project building on top of the AT Protocol while remaining independent of Bluesky, where that protocol originated. At Blacksky, he and his team are applying the principles of mutual aid and community ownership to algorithms, moderation teams, and governance tools for the Black community, giving users more control over their means of communication. “For me, community really means mutual accountability between the one and the many,” Rudy says. “Once you get a group of people together and they start working together, that is its own kind of entity. And so for me, I was like, How can I live that out in technology form?” Today on Revolution.Social, Rudy and Rabble talk about how Blacksky empowers users to control their feeds, moderation policies, and economic infrastructure, why he wants everyone and their mothers to be able to use Blacksky, and how community-owned networks could change the future of the internet.

Techdirt’s Mike Masnick on Growing Bluesky, Clueless Regulators & the Case for Optimism

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Techdirt founder & editor Mike Masnick has long argued that the internet’s power should lie with its users. In his landmark 2019 essay, Protocols, Not Platforms, he laid out a vision for how decentralized systems could preserve free speech while avoiding the pitfalls of centralized control. That vision has since helped inspire Bluesky, where Mike now serves on the board. “Your right to free speech does not include the right to put a billboard on my front lawn or to come into my living room and yell whatever it is that you want to yell,” he explains. “The question is, how do you balance these different factors so that we actually get more free speech, but we're not compelling people to host speech, we're not compelling people to take down speech?” Today on Revolution.Social, Mike and Rabble discuss how Bluesky’s AT Protocol is putting that vision into practice, the problems with heavy-handed regulations like age verification laws, and what today’s builders can learn from the history of open protocols. Plus: How do we align economic incentives with user freedom, and can AI be a part of the solution?

Read about the social media bill of rights on Techdirt

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LightningPod.fm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

Bonus: Cory Doctorow on Sci-Fi Influences & the Social Media Bill of Rights

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0000

We had more to talk about with Cory Doctorow than we could fit in this week’s episode. In this bonus ep, the science fiction author and internet rights activist talks to Rabble about being raised by science fiction in Toronto, and his one objection to the social media bill of rights: the right to “own” your connections to other people.

“I think ownership's a really bad model for it because property frameworks don't work well on things that are not rivalrous,” he says. “Who owns the relationship that you and I know each other and met on an airplane? Is it me or is it you?”

Don’t miss the full interview with Cory from earlier this week where they talk about escaping from Big Tech and fighting for a better future for the web. Available wherever you’re seeing this.

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Cory Doctorow on Escaping Big Tech, Privacy Battles & “Enshittification”

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Sci-fi isn’t about hypothetical technologies, but rather about challenging the social impact of that tech, says author and activist Cory Doctorow. And in the real world, we must be just as conscious of the societal impact of the tech products we use.

“Apologists for Big Tech would like you to think that all of the properties of their platforms are ... inevitably coterminal,” he says. “You cannot have a conversation with your friends without someone like Mark Zuckerberg spying on you from asshole to appetite, and imagining that you could is like imagining that you could make water that isn't wet … Resistance is futile.”

Today on Revolution.Social, Cory and Rabble talk about how we can, in fact, chart a freer & fairer path for the internet. Real freedom online means not just building better platforms but making it easy to leave broken ones. They also discuss the concept of “adversarial interoperability,” the history of digital surveillance, and the future of more open platforms like Bluesky.

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LightningPod.fm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

Taylor Lorenz on Moral Panics, Tech Villains & Protecting Free Expression

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Journalist and Power User host Taylor Lorenz has reported on the fall of Vine, influencers who accept "dark money," and the proliferation of far-right content on Substack, just to name a few. Today on Revolution.Social, she joins Rabble to talk about why governments, including the U.S., are advancing laws to restrict free speech online; the misleading moral panics that have led to apps being banned; and the challenges of monetizing online communities as platforms become gatekeepers. They also discuss the rise of tech founders who are more than happy to be seen as villains, the history of new technologies being blamed for social problems, and why conservative voices have been better than progressive ones at manipulating the internet for their own means.

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠⁠LightningPod.fm⁠⁠⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠⁠⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

Chris Messina on Hashtags, Google+ & the Unintended Consequences of Building Social Media

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Chris Messina is best known for co-founding BarCamp and giving Web 2.0 the hashtag.

Now on Revolution.Social, he joins Rabble to talk about the bigger picture of what has gone right, and wrong, with social media. In this episode, he and Rabble unpack why Google+ failed, the unintended consequences of hashtags, and how algorithms have reshaped our digital lives.

They also discuss why defending authentic human connection may be the most urgent challenge for the next generation on the internet.

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠LightningPod.fm⁠⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine on AI Slop, Quality Content & Social Media Fragmentation

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0000

After the introduction of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, the blogging platform Medium got ten times busier, says CEO Tony Stubblebine — and that was not a good thing.

"Most of it was slop," he says. "Our job got a little bit harder on the filtering side. Actually, a lot harder on the filtering side."

Luckily, Medium had already built human-run systems to combat spam, and began deploying them to filter out AI slop. Under Tony, the company has worked to focus on high-quality writing for humans, by humans.

Today on Revolution.Social, he and Rabble talk about the enduring human need for storytelling, the role of incentives in shaping online communities, and empowering busy experts to start writing. Tony also explains why podcasting resisted monopolization while other Web 2.0 formats were captured, and why the post-Elon fragmentation of Twitter into smaller platforms is actually good for users.

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠LightningPod.fm⁠⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠⁠Flock Marketing⁠⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠⁠https://revolution.social/

"Invisible Rulers" author Renee DiResta on Propaganda, Disinformation, & Online Abuse

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Renee DiResta has spent a decade tracking how small groups can hijack global conversations — and why the same tactics still work today. The author of "Invisible Rulers" and a leading academic researcher on online influence, she joins Rabble on Revolution.Social to unpack the hidden forces shaping what we see — and believe — on social media.

Drawing on years of work investigating the history of propaganda, election interference, and networked movements, Renee shares how fringe ideas can be made to look like majority opinion on social media platforms.

She traces the evolution of propaganda from the printing press to the algorithmic age, and explores why content moderation, whether on massive platforms or decentralized networks, is so complex.

Renee describes her experiences being doxxed, harassed, and intimidated online when she joined the vaccine debate, and they discuss what it might take to build healthier, more resilient online spaces.

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠LightningPod.fm⁠, and executive produced by Alice Chan from ⁠Flock Marketing⁠.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit ⁠https://revolution.social/

Substack CEO Chris Best on Democratizing Media, Content Moderation & Freedom of Speech

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 08:00:00 -0000

"If you're a consistent advocate for freedom of the press, you will unfortunately have occasion to quarrel with every party and every side of the political spectrum," says Substack CEO Chris Best.

As one of the most important platforms for independent writing online, and one of the only ones not reliant on advertising, Substack has sometimes attracted controversy for its content moderation policies. Today on Revolution.Social, Chris and Rabble talk about the "Nazi bar" problem, the democratization of writing, and the future of free speech. They also discuss the competing business models of the creator economy, why platforms like Elon Musk's X suppress external links, and the purpose of media in the age of AI.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

03:37 The Origin Story of Substack

10:32 Internet Protocols & Spam Filters

13:18 Building a Platform With the Right Incentives

22:47 The Subscription Model vs. Micropayments

26:43 Expanding Beyond Newsletters

32:57 Freedom to Exit

35:33 The Future of Media and AI

40:19 Algorithmic Transparency

42:03 Free Speech and Democratization

46:19 Disinformation & Takedowns

49:39 Who Else Should Be on the Podcast?

52:10 The "Nazi Bar"

54:51 Outro

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Why We Need a New Social Media Bill of Rights

Sat, 02 Aug 2025 04:00:00 -0000

Thanks for listening to Revolution.Social! in this bonus episode, recorded live at Web Summit Vancouver in May 2025, Rabble speaks with Penny Daflos, reporter for CTV News Vancouver. They discuss Rabble's work as part of the founding team at Twitter, why we need to reframe and create social media 'rights' for both developers and users, and how to create better places to connect online.

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This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Yoel Roth on Banning Trump, Battling Bots & the Difficult Job of Trust & Safety

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 04:00:00 -0000

"Content moderation decisions are like assholes," says Yoel Roth, the former head of trust & safety for Twitter. "Everybody's got one."

The underrated challenge of working in trust and safety is that every decision could affect millions of users, and the reasons for those decisions are often opaque. Today on Revolution.Social, Yoel and Rabble talk about what goes on behind the scenes when a platform like Twitter wants to do something like ban President Donald Trump; how moderation best practices can work on decentralized protocols; and the fallout of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.

" The most striking thing to me from a lot of that work was how a lot of the Russian accounts that we identified on Twitter weren't posting lies."

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

03:42 Yoel's Origin Story

06:25 How Content Moderation Starts

08:56 Banning Trump

11:22 The Future of Social Media Protocols

16:12 Trust and Safety on Decentralized Platforms

21:12 Inauthentic Activity and Bots

28:22 The Arms Race Against LLMs

29:47 Community Self-Governance

38:28 No, You Need Moderation

42:09 The Homogeneity of Tech Founders

46:20 Should Twitter Promote Democracy?

48:59 Why Spam Really, Really Matters

51:31 Who Else Should Be on the Podcast?

Follow Rabble:

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Bluesky

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing.

To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Kara Swisher on Tech Founders' Flaws & Why Social Apps Are the New Cigarettes

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 04:00:00 -0000

The founders of social media companies like Facebook and Twitter never cared about the lofty ideals they claimed, says longtime tech journalist and podcaster Kara Swisher.

"I never thought they were idealistic. I thought they were there to make money," she says. Swisher, who co-hosts Pivot and also hosts On With Kara Swisher, likens tech giants to the Borg from Star Trek, constantly absorbing smaller companies to fuel their growth. But she sees potential for better user experiences and moderation tools in some platforms, such as Bluesky and Reddit. Today on Revolution.Social, she and Rabble also discuss how letting users moderate their own communities can create healthier online spaces; why cell phones should be banned in school; and the silver lining of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover.
This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing. To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

Jack Dorsey on Selling Twitter, Leaving Bluesky & What He's Building Next

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 04:01:00 -0000

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing. Special thanks to Sebastién Moret. To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/

The Internet Doesn’t Have to Be Like This

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 18:06:00 -0000

Revolution.Social is a podcast about the future of social media and reclaiming our digital communities, hosted by technologist and community advocate Rabble, a.k.a. Evan Henshaw-Plath — who was Twitter’s first employee.

Guests will include Twitter's former CEO Jack Dorsey, journalist & podcaster Kara Swisher, science fiction author Cory Doctorow, and many more.