Jul 9, 2026 · 1 hr 20 min · 15 segments
What happens when the person who once architected one of social media’s biggest platforms decides it needs to be entirely re-thought? From day one Blaine Cook helped build Twitter creating the @…
Blaine CookGuestRabbleHost
Alice ChanHostBlaine is someone who has been incredibly influential in designing the technology that becomes social media.
And so, so much of what we use every day was built by Blaine.
And I really wanted to get him on the podcast so that he could tell his story about how he built these things and the trade-offs that were in them.
And then we talk about the very sort of very complicated decisions that were made in the design of these social media ecosystems, the design of what goes viral, what is abuse, what, you know, do you build a system that is open to harassment or not? And the power dynamics that went into these decisions.
And so the, the podcast ends with us talking about the work that Blaine is doing now and building healthier social media, building social media that's based on research on how it can be more pro-social.
And so the arc of this conversation, it's a longer conversation, but it goes into how was Twitter created? What were the power dynamics and the decisions that shaped what it became? And then how can we build something new, this new product he's building called Roundabout, which doesn't replicate these kinds of problems?
Yeah, I think it's really interesting because there's kind of two camps when you hear about the history of social media.
There's people like Kara Swisher, who's obviously a longtime commentator on the industry and is convinced that from the very beginning, the intentions were bad and were designed to basically either create harm or only in the self-interest of those that were building the apps.
And then there's people like you and Blaine who are like, well, no, actually, we were trying to do something good in the beginning, but other forces took over beyond our control.
So I think that there were people who were entirely predatory and just wanted to make money on it.
But I don't think those were the people there in the very beginning because there was no money to be made in social media when it was created.
You know, we tried to convince people to do podcasting and no one was interested.
And so what...
What Blaine and I talk about in this podcast is when did it start to shift and how is it that dynamics of power and money and trade-offs that we make when we're designing these things, how did that shape what we have today and what went out?
Yeah, and obviously that's a very real dilemma that we face today in building divine, right? Like we need to make money to cover our costs.
And we want to make sure we're not repeating any of that predatory behavior that people have become so dissatisfied with.
Blaine is someone who has been incredibly influential in designing the technology that becomes social media.
And so, so much of what we use every day was built by Blaine.
And I really wanted to get him on the podcast so that he could tell his story about how he built these things and the trade-offs that were in them.
And then we talk about the very sort of very complicated decisions that were made in the design of these social media ecosystems, the design of what goes viral, what is abuse, what, you know, do you build a system that is open to harassment or not? And the power dynamics that went into these decisions.
And so the, the podcast ends with us talking about the work that Blaine is doing now and building healthier social media, building social media that's based on research on how it can be more pro-social.
And so the arc of this conversation, it's a longer conversation, but it goes into how was Twitter created? What were the power dynamics and the decisions that shaped what it became? And then how can we build something new, this new product he's building called Roundabout, which doesn't replicate these kinds of problems?
Yeah, I think it's really interesting because there's kind of two camps when you hear about the history of social media.
There's people like Kara Swisher, who's obviously a longtime commentator on the industry and is convinced that from the very beginning, the intentions were bad and were designed to basically either create harm or only in the self-interest of those that were building the apps.
And then there's people like you and Blaine who are like, well, no, actually, we were trying to do something good in the beginning, but other forces took over beyond our control.
So I think that there were people who were entirely predatory and just wanted to make money on it.
But I don't think those were the people there in the very beginning because there was no money to be made in social media when it was created.
You know, we tried to convince people to do podcasting and no one was interested.
And so what...
What Blaine and I talk about in this podcast is when did it start to shift and how is it that dynamics of power and money and trade-offs that we make when we're designing these things, how did that shape what we have today and what went out?
Yeah, and obviously that's a very real dilemma that we face today in building divine, right? Like we need to make money to cover our costs.
And we want to make sure we're not repeating any of that predatory behavior that people have become so dissatisfied with.
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