Live from Imagine IF 2025

This week we feature the “Open Communities in the Age of Control” panel, recorded live on September 20th at the Imagine IF conference in Nashville. The discussion dives into the erosion of trust in a digital age dominated by surveillance, opaque algorithms, and centralized platforms.

Trust Revolution host Shawn Yeager joins Matt Odell and Derek Ross to explore how broken incentives turn users into products, with censorship and deep fakes threatening livelihoods and verifiability. They advocate for open, user-controlled communities via protocols like Nostr, emphasizing personal responsibility, parental tools, and creator-owned ecosystems to reclaim digital sovereignty.

With broken money come broken incentives, and from that flow business models that turn us into the product.

— Shawn Yeager

Timestamps

  • 00:00 Panel introduction: Open communities in the age of control
  • 03:30 Broken money, broken incentives, users as products
  • 07:15 Surveillance, opaque algorithms, and censorship
  • 11:00 Deep fakes and the verifiability crisis
  • 15:00 Nostr: User-controlled communities
  • 18:30 Personal responsibility and parental tools
  • 21:00 Creator-owned ecosystems and digital sovereignty

Resources