rabble
@rabble is a seasoned hacker, open-source enthusiast, and tech instigator who’s been building and breaking systems for decades with a focus on community, autonomy, and decentralized power. They cut their teeth in the early internet underground, helping launch Indymedia, a pioneering independent media network that gave activists a global voice, and protest.net, a hub for grassroots organizing in the pre-social-media era. As a co-founder of Odeo, rabble shaped the podcasting revolution, laying groundwork for what would become a new medium.
Most famously, @rabble was instrumental in creating Twitter, hacking together the early infrastructure that turned a simple idea into a global phenomenon—before stepping back to champion truly decentralized alternatives. Recently, they’ve poured their energy into Nostr, a minimalist, censorship-resistant protocol for social networking, and Secure Scuttlebutt, an off-grid, peer-to-peer system for resilient communication. Both projects reflect rabble’s commitment to open-source principles and a hacker’s disdain for centralized control.
Sessions
Learn how to build end-to-end encrypted social apps including the newly released Bitchat using Nostr and MLS (Messaging Layer Security). We'll go from Nostr basics through to encrypted groups, explore the open source libraries and apps already in production, and show how to build your own. Includes live coding demonstrating how to create secure, private social tools that actually scale. You'll leave knowing how to build real e2e apps using tested, working tools.
Our digital communities are controlled by corporate platforms that surveil, manipulate, and arbitrarily deplatform us. We need a Bill of Digital Rights—ensuring privacy, ownership, algorithmic control, and self-governance. This talk lays out the Four Freedoms for Social Media and how open protocols like ATProtocol, ActivityPub, and Nostr make them possible. The future of social media must serve communities, not corporations—and we must demand it.