“I've Never Been More Optimistic” (Flipboard’s Mike McCue On the Open Social Web)

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Feb 12, 2026

Mike McCue, serial tech exec who led Flipboard and helped shape the open web, discusses the shift from walled gardens to open social protocols. He talks about why follower counts no longer matter. He warns about rage-bait economics and the soullessness of AI content. He outlines creator-centered tools like Surf and why niche communities and human curation could win the future.

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INSIGHT

Protocols For Human Connection Matter

ActivityPub and other protocols standardize how people connect online, not just content.
That common protocol for connecting people is as big as the web's content protocol.

ADVICE

Design For Invisible Protocols

Make open social experiences simple so normal users don't pick protocols; focus on experience instead.
Build apps so anyone can follow creators and it "just works" regardless of the underlying protocol.

INSIGHT

Creator Agency Drives Open Social Growth

Creators are tired of chasing opaque algorithms and need alternatives to build sustainable businesses.
Open social lets creators own relationships and monetization independent of single platforms.

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Mike McCue has seen a lot of changes over the years to the open web. He was an executive at Netscape, which helped liberate the web from AOL's walled garden; he served on the board of Twitter but wasn’t able to prevent it from abandoning its open API ecosystem; and now, as the CEO of Flipboard, he's building towards a more open future.

“I've never been more optimistic than I am now about how the internet is going to develop and how the social media world and ecosystem is going to develop into a much more open, connected experience for people, independent of app, independent of platform,” McCue says.

But there are still big problems to fix, and today on Revolution.Social, Mike and Rabble talk about most of them, including the devaluation of follower counts, how rage bait economics poison platform incentives, and how AI-generated content lacks soul. As a board member at Patreon, McCue says he’s seeing a renewed demand for authentic human craft & niche communities; at this perilous and promising moment, which vision of the future will win?

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

5:14 From Netscape to the Fediverse

8:49 Elon, Zuckerberg, and the push toward alternatives

14:22 The shutdown of Twitter’s API and the birth of the AT Protocol

19:38 Follower counts don’t matter

22:12 Rage bait economics and platform incentives

25:51 Bluesky and Mastodon

27:50 Niche communities vs. the global town square

30:57 The craft of being human in an AI world

38:09 How to explain the open web to regular users

43:33 Surf and open protocols for social media

54:08 Patreon and business models for the internet

1:02:14 diVine and AI backlash

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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/