What's Next For Social Media?

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 bookshop.org/p/books/enshittific... To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit revolution.social

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. Follow Rabble on Bluesky Follow the podcast To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit revolution.social

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. ⁠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 ⁠revolution.social

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. Follow Rabble: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠revolution.social

Guest: Jeff Jarvis

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 Follow Rabble: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠revolution.social

Guest: “Think Like a Commoner" Author David Bollier

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. Read more about mutual aid Follow Rabble: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠revolution.social

Guest: Rudy Fraser

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. Follow Rabble: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠revolution.social

Guest: Cory Doctorow

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. Follow Rabble: ⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠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 ⁠⁠⁠revolution.social

Guest: Chris Messina

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. Follow Rabble: ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ ⁠⁠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 ⁠revolution.social

Guest: "Invisible Rulers" author Renee DiResta

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

Guest: Yoel Roth

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. Special thanks to Sebastién Moret. To learn more about Rabble’s social media bill of rights, and sign up for our newsletter, visit revolution.social

Guest: Jack Dorsey