“Nothing Is Ever Over”

There’s no shortage of diagnosis of what went wrong with the social web, most of it on the social web. It’s a familiar space for writer, speaker, and researcher Erin Kissane, who’s spent a career with a sharp eye and an indefatigable resolve doing what she fully admits isn’t really anyone’s job.

Sorting out the why we’re building new apps, networks, and protocols is just as important as the how, and Erin is a steady guide. In this wonderfully wide-ranging conversation, she and Jim work through familiar arcs of technology with some important takeaways for a new generation of network builders.

Links and Resources

Erin’s work

• Erin Kissane’s research studio, wreckage/salvage
• “Meta in Myanmar”, Erin’s multi-part series on Facebook and the Rohingya genocide
• Unflooding the zone with the Unbreaking Project
• The Covid tracking project
• Erin’s talk at XOXO about not retreating from the big-world social internet
• “Against the Dark Forest” further explores some of the ideas from her XOXO talk
• Erin’s Fediverse governance project (co-authored with Darius Kazemi), which we didn’t even have a chance to get into
• “People in Platforms” Erin’s 2025 Atmosphere Conf talk
• “Landslide / Holdfast” Erin’s 2026 Atmosphere Conf talk

People and ideas referenced

• Twitter and Tear Gas by Zeynep Tufekci
• John Perry Barlow’s “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”
• “The street finds its own use for things” from William Gibson’s Burning Chrome
• Karen Hao’s work with whistleblower Sophie Zhang
• Amnesty International: “Facebook’s systems promoted violence against Rohingya; Meta owes reparations”
• UN Human Rights Council’s independent international fact-finding mission on Myanmar
• C. Thi Nguyen’s Hostile Epistemology
• Vices of the Mind by Quassim Cassam
• The Engine Room
• Yancey Strickler’s Dark Forest Theory collection of posts
• “The Dark Forest and the Cozy Web” by Maggie Appleton
• Bonfire networks

The archive for this episode, including a generated transcript, is available at https://atproto.com/off-protocol/2026-07-22-erin-kissane.

Off Protocol is a production of the Bluesky developer relations team. For more about AT Protocol and an archive of this show, head to atproto.com.

Our theme music was composed and produced by Saleem Reshamwala.

Catch our livestream every other Wednesday at stream.place/atproto.com.