This week we feature the “Open Communities in the Age of Control” panel, recorded live on September 20th at the Imagine IF conference in Nashville. The discussion dives into the erosion of trust in a digital age dominated by surveillance, opaque algorithms, and centralized platforms.

Trust Revolution host Shawn Yeager joins Matt Odell and Derek Ross to explore how broken incentives turn users into products, with censorship and deep fakes threatening livelihoods and verifiability. They advocate for open, user-controlled communities via protocols like Nostr, emphasizing personal responsibility, parental tools, and creator-owned ecosystems to reclaim digital sovereignty.

Highlights

• Shawn diagnoses broken money as the root of exploitative business models and creeping KYC regulations.
• Matt reveals how censorship can erase years of online work, pushing for user-controlled algorithms.
• Derek highlights deepfakes and the need for verifiable identity in the AI era.
• The panel discusses Nostr’s potential to empower individuals, with Shawn recommending Primal as an entry point.
• Parental control and kid-safe Nostr apps are proposed to combat radicalization and unhealthy tech use.

Quotes to Remember

• Shawn Yeager: “With broken money come broken incentives, and from that flow business models that turn us into the product.”
• Matt Odell: “Years of hard work can be taken away because you built your digital life on somebody else’s foundation.”
• Derek Ross: “We need easy tools for parents to choose how their kids are interacting with these things.”

Resources and Links

• Primal.net - User-friendly Nostr client recommended by Shawn.
• Soapbox Tools - Derek Ross’s platform for creator-owned apps.
• Imagine IF - A two-day convergence of dreamers and doers

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