A podcast about the future of social media and reclaiming our digital communities. Revolution.Social is hosted by technologist and community advocate Rabble, a.k.a. Evan Henshaw-Plath — who was Twitter’s first employee and hired Jack Dorsey. In weekly interviews, Rabble will interview thought leaders, technologists, academics, and more about the need for a new social media "bill of rights." Just as the original Bill of Rights protected individual freedoms from government overreach, we need f ...
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Rabble A.k.a. Evan Henshaw Plath Podcasts
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Techdirt’s Mike Masnick on Growing Bluesky, Clueless Regulators & the Case for Optimism
1:14:48
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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 n…
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Bonus: Cory Doctorow on Sci-Fi Influences & the Social Media Bill of Rights
20:33
20:33
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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 own…
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Cory Doctorow on Escaping Big Tech, Privacy Battles & “Enshittification”
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1:08:42
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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 …
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Taylor Lorenz on Moral Panics, Tech Villains & Protecting Free Expression
1:04:58
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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 misleadi…
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Chris Messina on Hashtags, Google+ & the Unintended Consequences of Building Social Media
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1:05:39
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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 d…
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Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine on AI Slop, Quality Content & Social Media Fragmentation
1:11:38
1:11:38
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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-ru…
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"Invisible Rulers" author Renee DiResta on Propaganda, Disinformation, & Online Abuse
1:17:17
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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…
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Substack CEO Chris Best on Democratizing Media, Content Moderation & Freedom of Speech
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56:04
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56:04
"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 attrac…
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Why We Need a New Social Media Bill of Rights
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20:50
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 c…
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Yoel Roth on Banning Trump, Battling Bots & the Difficult Job of Trust & Safety
56:48
56:48
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"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 …
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Kara Swisher on Tech Founders' Flaws & Why Social Apps Are the New Cigarettes
49:21
49:21
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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 t…
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Jack Dorsey on Selling Twitter, Leaving Bluesky & What He's Building Next
50:04
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50:04
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 pub…
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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, a…
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