# Securing Free Speech in a Permissionless Future with Ben Rubin

- Channel: [Ethereum Denver](https://streameth.org/ethereum-denver)
- Date: 2023-10-07
- Duration: 14:00
- Topics: Entertainment
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-YiiRGWz2W6Q
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiiRGWz2W6Q

## Description

During the talk we will cover principles for designing a decentralized communication network that can scale with societies while ensuring freedom of speech. We will make a case for the new opportunities this opens such as responsible no-censorship, programmable incentive alignment for public conversations, and smart contract based moderation. Lastly we will argue that freedom of speech hinges on global acceptance of diverse local governance in a permissionless setting rather than a fixed hierarchical framework.

https://twitter.com/benrbn
Ben Rubin
CEO and Co-Founder
HNT Labs
Ben Rubin is the CEO and Co-Founder of Here Not There Labs (HNT), a team looking to challenge and advance legacy communication tools. As a serial entrepreneur working to reshape communication tools and social trends, Ben previously founded two venture-backed startups. Ben was the Co-Founder & CEO of Houseparty, where he scaled the product to hundreds of millions of users and raised over $70M in funding from Sequoia and Greylock. After Houseparty was sold to Epic Games in 2019, Ben went on to found HNT. HNT is building a chat protocol for online communities to create programmable, self-governed spaces to communicate. HNT is backed by a16z, Benchmark and Framework. For the past five years, Ben has also served as a venture scout at Sequoia.