Revolution.Social

Building Community vs. Building an Audience (with VidCon’s Jacques Keyser)

VidCon programming director Jacques Keyser says there’s a big shift happening in social media: Creators who once lived and died by the algorithm are increasingly looking for ways to “own” their audiences. “No one can take your podcast away, no one can take your newsletter away,” Keyser says. “Once you've built that audience, that is yours, you own that … if you are on YouTube, if you're on TikTok, if you're on Meta, at any point you could violate one of the T's and C's [and lose your account].” VidCon got its start as a small event in a hotel lobby organized by Hank and John Green, and today it’s one of the largest gatherings of digital creators, fans, and industry in the world. Today on Revolution.Social, recorded at the 1 Billion Followers Summit in Dubai, Rabble and Jacques talk about what has changed in the intervening years, both at VidCon and inside the creator economy as a whole. They also talk about how follower counts have become meaningless, how creators actually make money, and why the rise of AI might paradoxically make real-life connection and human authenticity more valuable than ever. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Rabble on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow the podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LightningPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, 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/

The Battle for Digital Freedom and Why KOSA Ain’t It (with Evan Greer)

Evan Greer is a director at Fight for the Future, the digital rights organization that helped organize the SOPA blackout and continues to fight for an internet where ordinary people have a voice. As a parent, a trans activist, and someone who's spent over a decade in the trenches of internet policy, she brings a unique perspective to the debate over how we protect kids online. “So many of these folks that say they want to protect kids are just not actually interested in listening to kids,” Evan says. “And it's really hard to protect kids when you don't listen to them… The amount of videos about Minecraft that I have subjected myself to just so that my kid doesn't feel ashamed coming and talking to me about what kind of content she's consuming has rotted my brain. But what it actually has led to is we do have a trusting relationship.” Today on Revolution.Social, Evan and Rabble talk about how well-intentioned legislation such as KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act, could become a powerful tool for censorship; why age verification requirements would make digital surveillance even worse; and why our ability to choose the apps we can install on our phones is set to become a “foundational human rights issue.” They also talk about the monopoly power of app stores, the hidden world of data brokers, and why the same politicians who claim to be tough on Big Tech refuse to pass basic privacy legislation. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Rabble on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow the podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠ This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠⁠LightningPod⁠⁠⁠⁠, 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/

An Update on diVine: Joyscrolling, AI Filtering, and Trust & Safety

Rabble and Alice Chan, Revolution.Social's host and executive producer, share an update on diVine, the new social video app that's bringing back the spirit of Vine and real human creativity (no AI content allowed!). "We're not anti-AI," Alice says. "We just believe that there is great power in human creativity and that humans have kind of had that power taken away from them involuntarily."  Recording at the 1 Billion Followers Summit in Dubai, Rabble and Alice talk about how the diVine team is preparing to handle potentially millions of users, and how it’s partnering with trust and safety experts like Yoel Roth, and the team at Bluesky. They also discuss AI content detection, the forthcoming Android beta, and why we need to replace doomscrolling with “joyscrolling.” Follow Rabble on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rabble.nz Follow the podcast: https://episodes.fm/1824528874 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/

Open Source Safety Tools for Everyone (with Camille François)

Camille François, assistant professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, has spent her career at the frontlines of trust and safety, including as a principal researcher at Google and the Senior Director of Trust & Safety at Niantic; now the founding president of ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), she's working to make the safety tools used by big tech companies accessible to everyone. “What children face online right now, the state of the threat is so far ahead from the current state of the defenses,” Camille says. “We know the defenses are brittle. We know the defenses are hypercentralized. We know the defenses are not accessible to the people who want them. And open source is also a hack to build faster together.” Today on Revolution.Social, Camille and Rabble talk about how open source safety tools can strengthen our digital spaces, the impact of the AI moment, and why safety will look different across different platforms … and why that's desirable. Plus: Why “nudifying” apps, similar to the controversial Grok features that unleashed global outrage, have been able to proliferate on social media and app stores. ⁠⁠⁠Follow Rabble on Bluesky⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Follow the podcast⁠⁠⁠ This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠LightningPod⁠⁠⁠, 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/

Social Media Should Be Public Infrastructure (with Ben Cerveny)

"My thesis is that humans invent things all the time, and for the first 30 years, we call them technology," says Ben “Neb” Cerveny, president of the Foundation for Public Code. "And then if they work, we call them infrastructure."  Ben was part of the original team that built one of the defining Web 2.0 platforms, Flickr, and he even gave Flickr its name. Currently, he is applying what he learned from building digital communities to the next wave of software, web services, and urban planning; Foundation for Public Code, he says, has helped convince most of Europe’s governments that tech solutions don’t need to be privately owned and controlled.  Today on Revolution.Social, Ben and Rabble discuss the loss of human curation, which made early social media special; why software has just as much “terroir” as film or food; and how we might govern digital spaces by consensus. They also talk about the origins of Flickr, why Facebook is the fast food of social media, and how to build social platforms with civic intentionality. ⁠⁠Follow Rabble on Bluesky⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Follow the podcast⁠⁠ This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠LightningPod⁠⁠, 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/