Revolution.Social

How Social Media Platforms Use Regulation To Stifle Competition

Are we regulating the wrong tech problems? Many opponents of Big Tech cheered recent lawsuits that found Meta and YouTube liable for violating consumer protection laws and designing their products to addict kids and teens. But in the battle over user safety, is free expression going to end up as a casualty? In this episode of Revolution.Social, Rabble (Twitter’s first employee) sits down with two influential voices in digital media: Mike McCue (CEO of Flipboard) and Mike Masnick (Founder of Techdirt). McCue and Masnick explain why social media regulations could have unintended consequences. Masnick cites a 2016 carveout to Section 230 of America's Communications Decency Act, known as FOSTA-SESTA, that was supposed to crack down on online sex trafficking. In reality, it made it harder for police to track down sex traffickers, and pushed sex workers into taking more dangerous offline work. Today on the podcast: - Why is Section 230 — which provides limited immunity to online platforms for content posted by their users — the most misunderstood law on the internet? - Could regulations aimed at punishing Meta actually kill off its competitors? - And should governments be responsible for checking the power of AI giants? Plus: Why the right to exit has prevented Gmail from becoming "enshittified." Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 2:45 Section 230 and Regulatory Moats 7:10 The History of Moral Panics and Technology 10:25 From AOL Centralization to the Open Web 15:26 The Hidden Costs of Losing Section 230 22:17 GDPR and Unintended Consequences 27:36 Lessons from the Meta Privacy and Safety Trials 33:24 Internal Research Is Not a Scandal 38:22 How Content Moderation Gets Weaponized 45:31 The Case for Profile Portability 53:21 Regulating Incentives vs. Mandates 1:03:56 AI Regulation and the Risk of New Walled Gardens 1:10:38 Replicating the Open Web's Success Flipboard [https://flipboard.com/] Techdirt [https://www.techdirt.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 [https://lightningpod.fm/]. Alice Chan, Flock Marketing [https://flockmktg.com/], is our exec producer. To learn more about Rabble’s Social Media Bill of Rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/ [https://revolution.social/]

Can We Bring Vine Back From the Dead?

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 [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/divine-video/id6747959501] Google Play [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.openvine.app] ZapStore [https://zapstore.dev/] 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 [https://www.usermag.co/] Her podcast, “Power User” [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLu4srHCWJrrjFyF0hHNi7lVFYssn35zog] Bridget’s Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/?hl=en] Her podcast, “There Are No Girls on the Internet” [https://www.tangoti.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. To learn more about Rabble’s Social Media Bill of Rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/ [https://revolution.social/]

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

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 [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/789811/how-to-kill-a-language-by-sophia-smith-galer/]” Her Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/sophiasgaler] Sophiana [https://sophiana.app/] 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 [https://lightningpod.fm/], and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing [https://flockmktg.com/]. To learn more about Rabble’s Social Media Bill of Rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/ [https://revolution.social/]

Why does the internet feel worse than it used to?

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 [https://www.mollywhite.net/] Her newsletter, Citation Needed [https://www.citationneeded.news/] 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 [http://lightningpod.fm], and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing [https://flockmktg.com/]. To learn more about Rabble’s Social Media Bill of Rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/ [https://revolution.social/]

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

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 [https://www.usv.com/] co-founder Brad Burnham and ex/ante [https://www.buildexante.com/] 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 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 [https://lightningpod.fm/], and executive produced by Alice Chan from Flock Marketing [https://flockmktg.com/]. To learn more about Rabble’s Social Media Bill of Rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit https://revolution.social/ [https://revolution.social/]