Shows
Revolution.SocialBuilding Human Rights Into the Social Web (with Mallory Knodel)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 W...
2025-11-1350 min
Revolution.SocialHow to Overthrow Dictators Without Violence (with Srđa Popović)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...
2025-11-061h 23
Revolution.SocialBanning Kids From Social Media Isn’t the Answer (with Pamela Wisniewski)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...
2025-10-3055 min
Revolution.SocialJeff Jarvis on the Death of Mass Media, Twitter vs. UberMedia, and Section 230’s BrillianceIn 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 a...
2025-10-231h 07
Revolution.SocialHarper Reed on Building for Obama, Social Media for Bots & Why Tech Isn't Always the Solution2389 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. ...
2025-10-161h 12Revolution.Social“Think Like a Commoner" Author David Bollier on the Commons & Why Open Platforms Aren't EnoughWhen 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 t...
2025-10-0957 min
Revolution.Social“The Etymology Nerd” Adam Aleksic on Algospeak, AI Slop, and the End of WritingAdam 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...
2025-10-0258 min
Revolution.SocialRudy Fraser on Blacksky, Mutual Aid & Reclaiming Social MediaRudy 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...
2025-09-251h 04
Revolution.SocialTechdirt’s Mike Masnick on Growing Bluesky, Clueless Regulators & the Case for OptimismTechdirt 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 y...
2025-09-181h 14Revolution.SocialBonus: Cory Doctorow on Sci-Fi Influences & the Social Media Bill of RightsWe 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 airpla...
2025-09-1320 min
Revolution.SocialCory Doctorow on Escaping Big Tech, Privacy Battles & “Enshittification”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 th...
2025-09-111h 08
Revolution.SocialTaylor Lorenz on Moral Panics, Tech Villains & Protecting Free ExpressionJournalist 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...
2025-09-041h 04
Revolution.SocialChris Messina on Hashtags, Google+ & the Unintended Consequences of Building Social MediaChris 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.
Follow Rabble:
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Bluesky
This episode was prod...
2025-08-281h 05
Revolution.SocialMedium CEO Tony Stubblebine on AI Slop, Quality Content & Social Media FragmentationAfter 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...
2025-08-211h 11
Revolution.Social"Invisible Rulers" author Renee DiResta on Propaganda, Disinformation, & Online AbuseRenee 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 printi...
2025-08-141h 17
Revolution.SocialSubstack CEO Chris Best on Democratizing Media, Content Moderation & Freedom of Speech"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...
2025-08-0756 min
Revolution.SocialWhy We Need a New Social Media Bill of RightsThanks 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.
Follow Rabble:
YouTube
Bluesky
This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm, and executive produced by Alice Chan fro...
2025-08-0220 min
Frontiers of Commoning, with David BollierRabble Evan Henshaw-Plath: How Network Protocols Enable Digital Commons & Open MarrketsEvan Henshaw-Plath, better known as Rabble, is a pioneering programmer for social media platforms and decentralized technologies. Here, Rabble explains how network protocols are critical infrastructure for enabling -- or impeding -- commons and open markets, not to mention privacy, free speech, and community control. Their ambition is a future in which everyone has "access to authentic, private online communities built on care, connection, and sustainable relationships.” [More on commons at www.Bollier.org.]
2025-08-0157 min
DecenteredRabble from Nos.SocialToday, our podcast features an interview with an Internet OG: Evan Henshaw-Plath, aka Rabble. We talk about Twitter, Secure Scuttlebutt, and the evolution of Nostr!
2025-07-311h 39
Revolution.SocialYoel Roth on Banning Trump, Battling Bots & the Difficult Job of Trust & Safety"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.
2025-07-3156 min
Revolution.SocialKara Swisher on Tech Founders' Flaws & Why Social Apps Are the New CigarettesThe 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...
2025-07-2449 min
Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech LeadersS11 Bonus: Evan Henshaw-Plath (aka Rabble), Rabble Labs & VerseEvan Henshaw-Plath, also known as Rabble, was born in Berkeley while his Mom was a student. His parents were hippies, and he grew up near Silicon Valley, which gave him access to work with startups as early as High School. He founded Odeo, which eventually became Twitter. He got the name Rabble cause it was founded by three Evan's, which didn't work - so he went with his online nickname. He has a cool track record of working not only on Twitter, but Flickr, Palm, and other big names. He lives in New Zealand, enjoying all the outdoor activities...
2025-07-1732 min
Revolution.SocialJack Dorsey on Selling Twitter, Leaving Bluesky & What He's Building NextTwitter 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 encoura...
2025-07-1750 minRevolution.SocialThe Internet Doesn’t Have to Be Like ThisRevolution.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.
2025-07-1103 min
Decentered Media PodcastBuilding Participatory Media with Evan Henshaw-Plath (aka Rabble)In this episode of the Decentered Media Podcast, Rob speaks with Evan Henshaw-Plath, widely known as Rabble, a technologist, activist, and early contributor to what would become Twitter. Their conversation offers a deep and reflective exploration of how digital communication platforms have evolved, and what can be done to reclaim them for civic participation and community empowerment.
Drawing on his early experiences with Indymedia, Rabble recounts how technology was once used to support activist-led media during pivotal global protests, most notably the 1999 WTO demonstrations in Seattle. He describes how these early experiments in collaborative, decentralised media laid...
2025-06-101h 27
Future Tech And ForesightThe Future of Social Media: Decentralization, Free Speech, and Nostr -(Ep #177)Social media is at a crossroads—can decentralization offer a better future? In this episode, we explore the evolution of digital platforms, the challenges of free speech, and how Nostr could reshape the landscape.About the Episode:In this episode, Evan Henshaw-Plath and I dive into the evolution of social media and its broader impact on society. We discuss the challenges of maintaining free speech and decentralization on digital platforms, the role of community leaders in shaping online interactions, and the need for healthier engagement in digital spaces. We also explore the potential of...
2025-02-1155 min
The "What is Money?" ShowFree Speech in the Digital Age with Rabble (WiM552)// GUEST //Nos.social: https://nos.social/Website: https://evan.henshaw-plath.com/X: https://x.com/rabbleLinkedIn: https://nz.linkedin.com/in/rabble // SPONSORS //The Farm at Okefenokee: https://okefarm.com/Heart and Soil Supplements (use discount code BREEDLOVE): https://heartandsoil.co/In Wolf's Clothing: https://wolfnyc.com/NetSuite: https://netsuite.com/whatismoneyOn Ramp: https://onrampbitcoin.com/?grsf=breedloveMindlab Pro: https://www.mindlabpro.com/breedloveCoinbits: https://coinbits.app/breedloveEmerge Dynamics: https://emergedynamics.co...
2025-02-071h 58
Looks Like NewWhat if social media were under our control?Political discourse around social media has become increasingly significant, particularly during the recent presidential transition. Debates about TikTok’s viability, new censorship policies on Meta platforms, and the ongoing turbulence on X underscore the growing importance of decentralized media development.
On this month's episode of Looks Like New, we're bringing you a conversation between guest mentors from MEDlab's Open Social Incubator, where community organizers from all over the world come together to explore alternatives to dominant corporate platforms. These innovators prioritize community building, safety features, and governance structures in their designs. The discussion featured Rudy Fraser, founder of...
2025-01-2359 minLooks Like NewWhat if social media were under our control?Political discourse around social media has become increasingly significant, particularly during the recent presidential transition. Debates about TikTok’s viability, new censorship policies on Meta platforms, and the ongoing turbulence on X underscore the growing importance of decentralized media development.
On this month's episode of Looks Like New, we're bringing you a conversation between guest mentors from MEDlab's Open Social Incubator, where community organizers from all over the world come together to explore alternatives to dominant corporate platforms. These innovators prioritize community building, safety features, and governance structures in their designs. The discussion featured Rudy Fraser, founder of...
2025-01-2359 min
SeedsRabble (Evan Henshaw-Plath) on using the decentralised web to support social movements and helping create TwitterEver wondered about the origins of Twitter and the role of social media in movements? I got the chance to sit down with Rabble (Evan Henshaw-Plath) who was there at the start as the first employee of the company that created Twitter. We talk about that but begin with the early days in Northern California growing up as a child of hippies and counterculture thought that and being immersed in that as a child. We also talk about computers back when that was a new tech, the internet and what social movements can use technology fo...
2024-09-011h 24
RevolutionZEp 294 AI and Society with Evan Henshaw PlathEp 294 of RevolutionZ has for a return engagement as guest Evan Henshaw Plath, popularly known as Rabble. We talk about AI and society, first describing where we are now and how we got here, and then likely impacts on various sectors, from software development to music, and video generation. What is the role of training data? How intelligent can AI get? Will it attain AGI? Is there an existential threat? What are the more immediate social and ethical risks and rewards? What are AI researchers like? As a community, do they have cultural connections or even share a quasi...
2024-08-041h 36RevolutionZEp 286 Evan Henshaw Plath on Social Media, Digital Identities, and People's PlatformsEp 286 of RevolutionZ has Evan Henshaw Plath, also known as Rabble, a visionary technologist with personal roots in developing Indymedia and even Twitter. He replays the history, logic, and implications of social media from its root democratic and participatory intentions to its corporatization and erosion of privacy and meaningful engagement. Plath takes us, as I suspect few if any others could, from the shift from social media's early, open protocols to the centralized corporations like Twitter and Facebook that came to dominate. He then explains his ongoing quest to reclaim the decentralized spirit of the web including working on mo...
2024-06-091h 33
Fail Wisdom Podcast: Turn Startup Failures into SuccessMeet Twitter's Co-Creator; Rabble! The man that hired Jack Dorsey!Summary
In this episode, Evan Henshaw-Plath (Rabble) the co-founder of Twitter and an experienced entrepreneur, discusses his experiences and insights from his time at Twitter from the very beginning as an audio blogging startup that evolved into a social media platform. He was the man that hired Jack Dorsey. He discusses his background, early startups, failures, and pivots.
He emphasises the importance of building networks and credibility. Rabble also shares the story behind his nickname 'Rabble' and how it came to be. He talks about keeping in touch with former colleagues from...
2024-02-261h 45
The Transformation of Value with Cody EllinghamSolarpunk Visions: Nostr, Bitcoin, Whakapapa, Creative Work, and New Ways of Living with RabbleI talk with Rabble, a software developer and hacker based in Wellington, New Zealand. Rabble was lead engineer at Odeo, where he hired Jack Dorsey into the company, which would later pivot into becoming Twitter.
Since then he has been focussed on building impactful projects and social media with the open & decentralised vision that Twitter originally had in its early years but which was eventually lost.
Rabble has created the Nostr client Nos.social, and is involved with Ahau.io, a Māori community tool built on Nostr’s predecessor protocol, Secure Scuttlebutt.
We...
2023-12-0157 min
The Progressive BitcoinerTPB59 - Nostr: The Everything App of Freedom with Ben Arc & Rabble"The history of social change shows us that it's not fear that leads to better situations. It's Hope." - Rabble My guests today are Ben Arc and Rabble. Ben is a FOSS (free and open source software) hobbyist and activist, founder of LNbits, bitcoin/lightning software and hardware builder, and creator of one of the first twitter clones utilizing the nostr protocol. Evan “Rabble” Henshaw-Plath is a social media pioneer, Jack Dorsey's former boss at Odeo (where they worked together on code that would become what we now know as twitter/x), and and creator of Nos socia...
2023-10-311h 45The Progressive BitcoinerTPB59 - Nostr: The Everything App of Freedom with Ben Arc & Rabble"The history of social change shows us that it's not fear that leads to better situations. It's Hope." - Rabble My guests today are Ben Arc and Rabble. Ben is a FOSS (free and open source software) hobbyist and activist, founder of LNbits, bitcoin/lightning software and hardware builder, and creator of one of the first twitter clones utilizing the nostr protocol. Evan “Rabble” Henshaw-Plath is a social media pioneer, Jack Dorsey's former boss at Odeo (where they worked together on code that would become what we now know as twitter/x), and and creator of Nos socia...
2023-10-311h 45
FT News BriefingPeak social media: The futureIn the final episode of this Tech Tonic season, FT correspondents weigh in on the trends that will determine the future of social media. From Meta’s Threads to artificial intelligence, we ask how platforms will look and feel in years to come. The FT’s deputy Lex editor, host Elaine Moore, speaks with social media reporter Cristina Criddle, global technology correspondent Tim Bradshaw and San Francisco-based tech reporter Hannah Murphy. Plus, we hear from Evan Henshaw-Plath, one of the creators of Twitter.Presented by Elaine Moore. Produced by Edwin Lane and Josh Gabert-Doyon, executive producer is M...
2023-08-1221 min
FT Tech TonicPeak social media: The futureIn the final episode of this Tech Tonic season, FT correspondents weigh in on the trends that will determine the future of social media. From Meta’s Threads to artificial intelligence, we ask how platforms will look and feel in years to come. The FT’s deputy Lex editor, host Elaine Moore, speaks with social media reporter Cristina Criddle, global technology correspondent Tim Bradshaw and San Francisco-based tech reporter Hannah Murphy. Plus, we hear from Evan Henshaw-Plath, one of the creators of Twitter.Presented by Elaine Moore. Produced by Edwin Lane and Josh Gabert-Doyon, executive producer is M...
2023-08-0121 min
FT News BriefingPeak social media: Trouble at TwitterElon Musk took over Twitter with the promise of promoting free speech and making the loss-making platform profitable again. But his critics say he’s destroying Twitter’s culture and driving it to bankruptcy. How much danger is the company really in? In the first episode in a new series of Tech Tonic, Elaine Moore, deputy editor of the FT’s Lex column, asks whether Musk will save Twitter or destroy it.In this episode we hear from Evan Henshaw-Plath, one of the original creators of Twitter; Rumman Chowdhury, Twitter’s former head of machine learning, ethics...
2023-07-0129 min
FT Tech TonicPeak social media: Trouble at TwitterElon Musk took over Twitter with the promise of promoting free speech and making the loss-making platform profitable again. But his critics say he’s destroying Twitter’s culture and driving it to bankruptcy. How much danger is the company really in? In the first episode in a new series of Tech Tonic, Elaine Moore, deputy editor of the FT’s Lex column, asks whether Musk will save Twitter or destroy it.In this episode we hear from Evan Henshaw-Plath, one of the original creators of Twitter; Rumman Chowdhury, Twitter’s former head of machine learning, ethics...
2023-06-2729 min
Looks Like NewHow did open social media platforms originate?In the aftermath of a chaotic Twitter takeover, many people have moved away from centralized social media platforms to a new set of social platforms that are open-source, decentralized, and user-centered—like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Nostr. But civic-minded social platforms are nothing new.
This episode presents some of Open Social Media’s origin stories from three speakers who have been involved in the development, culture, and communities of their platforms: Christine Lemmer-Webber (co-editor, ActivityPub), Evan Henshaw-Plath (founder, Nos), and Golda Velez (early participant, Bluesky). We will explore how queer experiences and activist movements, for instance, have played a vi...
2023-06-2359 min
Looks Like New – KGNU Community RadioLooks Like New: How did open social media platforms originate?In the aftermath of a chaotic Twitter takeover, many people have moved away from centralized social media platforms to a new set of social platforms that are open-source, decentralized, and user-centered—like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Nostr. But civic-minded social platforms are nothing new.
This episode presents some of Open Social Media’s origin stories from three speakers who have been involved in the development, culture, and communities of their platforms: Christine Lemmer-Webber (co-editor, ActivityPub), Evan Henshaw-Plath (founder, Nos), and Golda Velez (early participant, Bluesky). We will explore how queer experiences and activist movements, for instance, have played a vi...
2023-06-2300 minLooks Like NewHow did open social media platforms originate?In the aftermath of a chaotic Twitter takeover, many people have moved away from centralized social media platforms to a new set of social platforms that are open-source, decentralized, and user-centered—like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Nostr. But civic-minded social platforms are nothing new.
This episode presents some of Open Social Media’s origin stories from three speakers who have been involved in the development, culture, and communities of their platforms: Christine Lemmer-Webber (co-editor, ActivityPub), Evan Henshaw-Plath (founder, Nos), and Golda Velez (early participant, Bluesky). We will explore how queer experiences and activist movements, for instance, have played a vi...
2023-06-2359 minLooks Like NewHow did open social media platforms originate?In the aftermath of a chaotic Twitter takeover, many people have moved away from centralized social media platforms to a new set of social platforms that are open-source, decentralized, and user-centered—like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Nostr. But civic-minded social platforms are nothing new.
This episode presents some of Open Social Media’s origin stories from three speakers who have been involved in the development, culture, and communities of their platforms: Christine Lemmer-Webber (co-editor, ActivityPub), Evan Henshaw-Plath (founder, Nos), and Golda Velez (early participant, Bluesky). We will explore how queer experiences and activist movements, for instance, have played a vi...
2023-06-2300 min
DenizenDecentralized Social Media with Evan Henshaw-PlathWe all know about all the things that are wrong with social media as we know it. It's a model where everything is centralized and the market dynamics foster very few competitors who just get bigger and have more power. Who builds? Who governs? Who owns? Where are the servers? Where do the applications sit? Where does the data live? It's largely in just a few companies that in many cases have walled gardens of content. This dominant model yields a tremendous centralization of power for tech executives who are incentivized by market dynamics, to grow and to extract...
2022-12-061h 04
Half Past CapitalismTactics for a cooperative digital commons w/ Evan Henshaw-PlathEvan Henshaw-Plath was one of the key organizers of the Indymedia network, employee #1 at Twitter, and started two worker co-ops and a bunch of other companies. He has worked at Fortune 500 monoliths and in anarchist collectives. In this episode, we discuss how software is a commons, what the cooperative movement can learn from Silicon Valley, and how cooperative tech projects can scale up.
Evan is at @rabble and www.planetary.social (part of a larger attempt to create a decentralized social media platform) is his current project.
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2021-06-211h 10
Reimagining the Internet02 Evan Henshaw-Plath, Planetary.SocialEvan Henshaw-Plath (aka Rabble), founder of Planetary.Social and member of Twitter's founding team, joins the podcast to talk about decentralized social media, how context collapse makes content moderation on platforms like Facebook and Twitter impossible, and building a platform that's safe for people like furries while keeping away people like neo-Nazis. Vist our episode web page for links to Planetary.Social and a transcript of this interview.
2020-11-0327 min
GeniusnomicsHow to decentralize & protect social networks? (with Evan Henshaw-Plath)In this episode, we connect the dots with decentralized social networks.
Today’s conversation with Evan Henshaw-Plath. Over his journey, he was a member of Twitter’s founding team, worked at Yahoo, MIT Media Lab. Now he is working on Planetary – open, humane and decentralized social network that respects your privacy and honors makers and creators.
Community: geniusnomics.com
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OST / Intro
Based (remixed) on the "Dreamer" by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3676-dreamer
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
2020-05-1045 min