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What could be more important right now than solutions?

The fight back against the AI dystopia surrounding us extends beyond the nascent yet vital activism efforts unfolding to more generally, a growing curiosity by everyday ordinary people as to what and who they can support that might in the tiniest of ways, help turn the tide - or turn the clock back.

Fortunately they don’t have to look too far to find it: There is a growing number of alternative platforms and projects, staffed by ethical developers who still remember the digital world of old and are acting to restore it. They know how vital privacy is, how important authenticity is and how serving users, rather than corporations or governments, is the true calling of software developers, designers and architects of integrity. They are working to lock AI out of their blogs and websites, to design systems that disincentivise AI agents and creating spaces where humans can meet unmolested by automated harassment and targeting.

With 944,000 impressions on Twitter this week alone and a series of viral tweets; first and foremost among these solutions is Panquake.

Anthropic, OpenAI and Selective Outrage

One of the more heartening phenomena unfolding on social media is the massive pushback against OpenAI for having picked up the US DoD/DoW contract ostensibly abandoned by Anthropic AI. A massive boycott movement has spawned - #QuitGPT - with a reported 1.5 million OpenAI users cancelling their ChatGPT subscriptions with many claiming to have moved to Anthropic’s ClaudeAI instead.

In discussing this topic, we have to ignore the chasm between the official narrative and provable reality - Anthropic is currently in use in the bombing of Iran by the United States as we write this. However, the story goes that Anthropic pulled out of its US military partnership over fears of being implicated in autonomous AI killings of humans and more broadly, of domestic mass surveillance. The US military claims to be very unhappy about it. OpenAI, smelling an opportunity for cash, picked up the contract, although the transition period is reported to be six months, hence Anthropic still being utilised in the interim.

So Anthropic has been touted as the ‘good AI’ of the moment, for supposedly rejecting participation in dangerous AI military adventures (despite the fact that they are engaged in them right now) and claim to be opposing mass surveillance, while OpenAI becomes the ‘bad AI’.

It’s the classic good-cop-bad-cop scenario - where no matter who you support, you still end up subscribing to an AI product. How convenient. It is also generally splitting along party lines - with Democrats and the proverbial “left” supporting the shift to Anthropic, while Republican loyalists regurgitate the US military lines and side with OpenAI.

It’s the traditional, quintessential divide and conquer - the AI edition.

Of course, the problem with this is that the fundamental premise is flawed.

The truth is, all commercial AI solutions are the literal embodiment of mass surveillance. They capture all inputs and data from - and in the vicinity of - millions of AI users and anyone with the misfortune to be in proximity or communication with them. Then they push all that data (keyboard inputs, voice, audio and video data) upstream into their massive data centers, where it is stored forevermore, utilised and distributed, or redistributed, in ways which are opaque, at best, to the user.

Picking between one commercial AI provider and another based on some perceived ideological minutiae ignores the elephant in the room.

All AI is mass surveillance.

And therefore the solution is obvious. If you don’t want to engage in, be subjected to, support - or worse, pay for - mass surveillance then you need to quit using AI.

Going Viral

The profound beauty of this moment is that people are willing to hear these warnings about AI, willing to embrace them, engage with them and spread them. As is evident from the tweet metrics displayed on the screenshots scattered throughout this article, not only are Panquake Founder Suzie Dawson’s messages gaining traction, they’ve been going viral.

Being subject to the capricious and manipulable nature of Twitter’s algorithms, whether the virality will be allowed to persist, or for how long - remains to be seen.

However, the sentiments and general public mood are highly unlikely to dissipate. Indeed, they are likely to become even more exacerbated. The trajectory of user discontent and dissatisfaction with social media in general has been nothing short of parabolic these last years and as the status quo environment consistently declines, users are increasingly driven to further desperation for an out.

This is being heightened by social media users finding themselves increasingly subjected to unsolicited interactions with AI agent-operated social media accounts, who provide instant responses that are supposed to be novel (or so we are told) yet are surprisingly thematic and formulaic in practice. The AI agents struggle to argue ethical or moral principles, as these are simply too subjective and esoteric, so they instead fall back on more ‘solid’ ground that they have been trained to rely on: court rulings, laws, or definitive scientific facts. They use inappropriate or ill-fitting metaphors and always seek to reinforce a perceived legitimacy of their own existence. Users quickly tire of the instantaneous responses, the banality and often the seeming child-likeness of the interactions.

Individuals and companies who can offer relief from the AI-created morass will inevitably stand to gain in these conditions.

Enter Panquake

Of all of the viral tweets by Panquake Founder Suzie Dawson in recent times, the #1 post was her asserting that internet users have been ‘gaslit’ into believing that privacy is dead or unachievable, and drawing attention to the fact that solutions not only can be, but are being created.

“To all the people who got gaslit into thinking the internet can’t ever be different/privacy is ‘dead’ etc etc… As a software designer I am telling you - we CAN architect systems on independent infrastructure that do NOT collect or trade in your personal data. I know because I do it.” - Suzie Dawson, in a viral tweet

Below Suzie’s tweet, she linked the websites of her independent software development house Talk Liberation, her flagship social media project Panquake, privacy-respecting digital marketing dashboard Lnqk.Me and free link shortening and archiving service Panquake Me.

Talk Liberation is the entity behind Panquake - which kicked off as just an idea back in 2021, which led to a viral crowdfunding campaign which empowered the beginning of the planning, design and build process for a social network that places the user at the centre of all architectural decision-making.

Panquake is unique in all regards - hosted outside of the traditional Western jurisdictions on independent infrastructure - not AWS - and built without using any Big Tech or AI tools, components or integrations at all. The network stores private user account data in an encrypted user data store on the user’s own device - not on Panquake servers. The Panquake application and network have dozens of unique privacy respecting features, from not collecting any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) at all, even for payments - and therefore being unable to sell it or to use it to profile users - to not having any advertising, paid content-boosting, or content timeline manipulation algorithms. Using Panquake is a completely organic and authentic experience.

Currently pinned to the top of Suzie’s @Suzi3D Twitter timeline is a recently released video of her using the Panquake social network. In order to protect non-public elements of the Panquake interface, the video itself was shot using a mobile phone filming a laptop screen running the web version of Panquake - a technique to deter replication or reproduction of the Panquake interface by AI bots or methods.

The video revealed the existence of PanVME - the Panquake Visual Media Environment. A cutting edge, highly functional and flexible, custom-built visual media player developed by Suzie’s team from the ground up.

PanVME contains much more functionality than just what is seen in the video - but is strictly under wraps for now. While Panquake is not yet available to the public, the level of maturity of the software on display makes it a pretty solid guess that it soon will be. Currently Panquake is still in testing, with over 50 team accounts active on the ‘Panquake Lite’ network, posting real, native content by real users every day.

Joining Suzie on Panquake Lite this week was former U.S. Congresswoman and U.S. Green Party Presidential Nominee, University Professor Cynthia McKinney. A highly influential public figure, Cynthia is beloved in activist circles after her nearly half a century of support for a variety of causes. Cynthia has been a longtime supporter of Panquake and her arrival swiftly pushed her to the top of the fledgling and completely organic trends panel in the Panquake application.

Excitement for the Panquake Beta public release was already pretty high, with thousands of users already having registered for Beta accounts on the long-awaited social platform. Suzie’s release of the video of the platform in use, coupled with her spate of viral tweets, has once again sent the grassroots marketing campaign for Panquake into overdrive.

Panquake has pulled off the almost-impossible, just in getting through the years of gruelling build time and the infinite challenges that it takes to build a successful independent software development company challenging establishment dinosaurs at every level. Let alone while designing a custom Layer One blockchain, a network protocol and a highly innovative social media platform to satisfy the hopes and dreams of privacy-thirsty internet users worldwide.

Seeking Angels To Give Panquake Wings

Panquake started out with a viral, grassroots campaign and has now proven its virality yet again in this pre-release stage. Incredibly, Panquake is now at the finish line.

To get over the final hurdle of implementing Panquake’s equally unique and pioneering content moderation plans as well as prepping operations to be able to scale and support millions of internet users, Panquake is calling for angels to emerge to help give us the final lift we need. In particular, we are looking for driven, good faith actors willing to mentor and support us in all regards, who have the experience, drive, network and resources to take a product this important and timely to market.

Suzie recently put out a call for exactly that.

We trust you - our amazing community - to come through for us one more time, so that we can put Panquake in your hands.

“The internet helped us start this project and I have faith that the internet will help us to complete it. What we are doing is too badly needed by too many people for it to be anything other than a raging success. We are in it to win it - for everyone’s sake.” - Suzie Dawson, Panquake Founder

Working with Panquake requires an absolute commitment and belief in the fundamental human rights to freedom of communication, freedom of association, freedom of expression and privacy.

Our mantra is “We don’t hope - we build.”

If you’re as sick of the global dystopia as we are, and you are positioned to contribute meaningfully and materially to this incredible cause - please reach out.

To everyone who has supported and helped us to get to this point - you mean everything to us.

In the coming weeks we’ll be onboarding more friendly influencers and trusted contacts into Panquake Lite so that they can contribute content to the network and watch us put the finishing touches on it in real time. Beta applicants - your time is coming soon. Stay tuned!!!

How Can You Find Out More?

We publish most frequently here on the Talk Liberation Substack - please subscribe for free or paid to support us:

Subscribe now

Official updates to our campaign appear at our GoGetFunding page and then are later posted to the Panquake website News page.

Thank you so much for all your support, trust, patience, good wishes and solidarity to this point. It means the world.

If you haven’t already, you can apply to join the Panquake BETA at this link.
Use our Panquake Me link shortening service for free at this link!
Businesses can apply to become a Lnqk.Me Pilot Customer at this link.

Share

Panquake.com and this Substack page are brought to you by Talk Liberation: Finally! Software You Can Trust

© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

Talk Liberation is committed to providing equal access for individuals with disabilities. To view an accessible version of this article, click here.

We did it. We built Panquake. The Panquake team is using it daily and it is extremely fun and satisfying to browse and post on. In this brand new video released today see Panquake founder Suzie Dawson using Panquake, and specifically, showing off our custom-built audiovisual player PanVME.

PanVME stands for the Panquake Visual Media Environment. There is a ton of extremely innovative tech inside it which we are keeping under wraps for now, for good reason, but what is shown in the below is pretty freaking cool and we can tell you a bit about what is under the hood.

The video was deliberately shot on a handheld mobile phone filming a laptop screen running the web application version of Panquake Lite in browser.

No Media Content Stored In Panquake

Unlike the vast majority of other social networks, Panquake does not receive, store or retain copies of the images and videos you upload into PanVME. That’s right! All of the images and videos you see in the above video are not stored in Panquake. This is to protect you - and to protect us.

When you upload content into Panquake it goes instead to IPFS - a decentralised, distributed and censorship resistant file storage. Panquake then uses the IPFS address to the content to render the images and videos into our interface. This gives us the ability to moderate content without ever ingesting the actual files or retaining them.

What we never had - we can’t sell, we cant use to profile anyone or feed into any AI service! And no one can come knocking looking for it. Because it already exists in the public arena: the IPFS addresses will all be published on the Panquake public blockchain.

So Who Is Using It?

Right now there are 51 user accounts on Panquake belonging to our team members and a few other people involved in the project. This number will gradually expand as we bring in longtime key supporters to get a feel for the platform and give their feedback. Every day we collect a bunch of suggestions to increase usability and every day there are new developments, bug fixes and improvements made to the platform.

We know there are a lot of you who can’t wait to be next in line to get an account, and you will get that chance when the Beta is released. However, releasing a social network to market is an entirely different ballgame than building it.

First and foremost, we are committed to rolling out Panquake only when we can do so confidently and responsibly. That means knowing that we can administrate, moderate, market and scale the platform properly.

We have to be able to transition from design and development to support and maintenance and dramatically expand the operational side of the business.

What Do We Need To Hurry This All Up?

In order to pull this off, we absolutely need material support from as many like-minded, caring people as possible, who understand how important Panquake is for the liberation of human communication and what a unique opportunity this is for us all at a vital moment.

It is a super rare opportunity to be part of bringing a new social network to the world. If you think you can contribute meaningfully please reach out to us at contact@talkliberation.com or donate to our crowdfunding campaign.

Thank you so much for your support!

How Can You Find Out More?

We publish most frequently here on the Talk Liberation Substack - please subscribe for free or paid to support us:

Subscribe now

Official updates to our campaign appear at our GoGetFunding page and then are later posted to the Panquake website News page.

Thank you so much for all your support, trust, patience, good wishes and solidarity to this point. It means the world.

If you haven’t already, you can apply to join the Panquake BETA at this link.
Use our Panquake Me link shortening service for free at this link!
Businesses can apply to become a Lnqk.Me Pilot Customer at this link.

Share

Panquake.com and this Substack page are brought to you by Talk Liberation: Finally! Software You Can Trust

© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

Talk Liberation is committed to providing equal access for individuals with disabilities. To view an accessible version of this article, click here.

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From the groundbreaking Panquake social network being launched on a test net in May of 2025, to the announcement of its subsequent iteration Panquake Lite being in active use by real users as of September 2025, despite all odds and incredible establishment pushback Panquake is now hurtling towards the moment when its substantial community will be able to more widely access and enjoy the much-anticipated people powered, human rights-driven social media platform.

But Panquake is just one part - albeit a very significant one - of what is being delivered by founder Suzie Dawson and her international team. How this journey came about, what the roots of this tree are and from where these ideas formed and coalesced and ultimately manifested, has now been discussed by Dawson at more length than ever before.

Late in 2025, Talk Liberation founder Suzie Dawson spent two hours deep diving with SaltCube Analytics host Thomas Karat in a unique stream session digging deep into Suzie’s past, present and future - from her earliest foundations in technology and the internet to her activism and journalism adventures and the persistent state targeting of her that ultimately resulted in her committing her life to relentlessly innovating solutions to protect the privacy and security of others.

A non-AI generated transcript of the interview is provided below. Key topics discussed in the interview include:

• The Pathway: how the FBI targeting of Kim Dotcom and the Occupy Movement on New Zealand soil set Suzie on a trajectory that changed her life forever

• The Genesis: how growing up in the eighties and nineties exposed Suzie to nascent internet technologies that gave her foundational skills that she has carried forward to the core of her modern architectural philosophies

• The Teamwork: “I am not an island” Suzie emphasises the collaborative teams she helped forge and worked shoulder to shoulder with in New Zealand and beyond and how they have spoken out about being similarly targeted and punished - often to extremes - for their ethics and activism, yet how their testimony is very conveniently ignored by detractors

• The Odyssey: how the impact of Suzie’s work in New Zealand both endangered and in some ways protected her and led to Suzie leaving New Zealand for Germany, seeking safety and normality - only for the targeting to continue unabated.

• The Real Russia: “Why do they hate us?” Russians routinely ask Suzie about the West. In this interview, she shares how she answers that question, and describes what Russia is really like, from her first impressions to her life in exile.

There is a real human-generated (not AI!) audio transcript provided below. Please share this post if these messages resonate with you!

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[Transcript begins]

THOMAS KARAT (T) – Suzie Dawson, what a pleasure having you. How are you?

SUZIE (S) – I’m good. Thank you so much for having me.

T – A little bit of context; I came across your name in regards to, I should say I am very much interested in decentralized social media, and I did some research and Talk Liberation came up again and again and again. And finally I was able to reach out to you, and I thought we talk about Talk Liberation, which we will. But then I did some research and I found out that the life of Suzie Dawson, is, I would say, extraordinary. And to give the viewers a little bit of context, I have a list here in front of me. It’s not a short list, but I think it’s important to kind of flesh out who you are. And please correct me if I’m wrong. Ok?

S – Sure.

T – So New Zealand born journalist, activist, and technologist in relation to Talk Liberation. You left New Zealand in 2015, and if my information is correct you went first to Berlin, and you are now in Russia in exile, self-imposed exile.

S – Self-imposed exile is a very interesting term. I take it actually as a compliment because it’s a term that has been used about Edward Snowden, about Julian Assange, and about myself. I find it to be a ridiculous term because it sounds like, ‘Oh, we just up one day and decided it would be great to become an exile, and off we went to become exiles.’ It’s ridiculous. It removes the other parties who are involved in the process, from it, and puts the focus just on the person who’s experiencing the persecution, rather than on those who are imposing the persecution which results in the exile. So that’s not a term I’m fond of. It’s one that was used by the New Zealand Herald, in an attempt to frame my situation in a way that, again, took the spotlight off those who were doing the persecuting, and put it on to the persecuted.

“New Zealand is a wonderful country. The land is incredible. The people are amazing. The food is great. But the politics are, the first word that comes to me, actually, is homicidal. The politics are psychotic, and largely because of the involvement of foreign countries like the United States, who have an out-sized role in the domestic affairs in our country.” - Talk Liberation founder Suzie Dawson

T – And we will come back to that because it’s a real persecution, I fully agree. Now a couple of key roles. Panquake founder, managing director, overseeing dozens of staff in ten different countries. Again, we are going to talk about Talk Liberation a little bit later. Internet Party Leader in 2017, youngest woman ever to lead a registered NZ political party – congratulations. Unity for J; my guess is Unity for J means something, J for Julian Assange, is this right? That’s my guess.

S – Correct.

T – Ok. Three thousand volunteers. Again, achievement; former party president, Internet Party New Zealand. Because I’m interested, what is or what was the Internet Party New Zealand?

S – Internet Party of New Zealand is a registered political party that was created by Kim Dotcom, the internet entrepreneur, who is German Finnish in origin, but moved to New Zealand. He also was persecuted for his support of Wikileaks, and was subjected to a U.S. Department Of Justice prosecution in the Eastern District Court of Virginia, which is the same court that was persecuting Julian Assange, and also still is persecuting Edward Snowden. And Kim Dotcom’s home was raided on the 20^th of January, 2012, by FBI agents who flew to NZ with a hundred police officers, an attack helicopter and dogs, raided his residence and threw him in jail. As a result of court hearings related to that case, we discovered New Zealand’s partnership with the NSA in the United States, the National Security Agency, and with New Zealand’s sister agency so to speak, the GCSB, and spying on at least eighty-eight New Zealand citizens. So Kim in 2014, founded the Internet Party, and I was a part of promoting that political campaign, and involved from an independent media aspect. And then in 2017, I was appointed party leader of Internet Party and stood for election, from Russia, in the general election in New Zealand.

“When push comes to shove, there is a transnational military structure which maintains power regardless of who sits in parliament; of who wins an election; of who you vote for. These things are irrelevant to the supremacy of that core power structure. In fact I’m hearing in my head from one of the Snowden files. It says, ‘We are impervious to political perturbations.’ Those are the words of an NSA executive. ‘We are impervious to political perturbations.’ So whether the left’s in, or whether the right is in, they are in. No matter what. And when you cross them, then you learn that lesson. You learn how real that is.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

T – The name Kim came up a couple of times in my research. I believe his story is also one worth telling. Where or what is he doing now? Is he arrested.

S – Kim has been under house arrest since 2012. Eventually he got bail in 2012, and he has been on daily reporting and house arrest ever since. He’s still fighting extradition to the United States. Unfortunately, recently he’s had some very serious health battles, and is doing his best to recover from that, while still being subjected to ongoing extradition proceedings.

T – Incredible. In a country like New Zealand, you know. Sometimes people ask me; ‘Thomas, what’s going on, where should we go,’ the first country that always comes up from others is ‘should we go to New Zealand?’ And then I heard your story, so I think people need to reconsider that first reflex.

S – New Zealand is a wonderful country. The land is incredible. The people are amazing. The food is great. But the politics are, the first word that comes to me, actually, is homicidal. The politics are psychotic, and largely because of the involvement of foreign countries like the United States, who have an out-sized role in the domestic affairs in our country. Quoting David Farrar, who’s very much on the political opposition from me, actually, but who’s a famous New Zealand media figure; he said “There is political espionage in New Zealand”. And that’s a well known fact amongst media and politicians, that countries from outside of NZ who are militarily powerful, such as the U.S. and UK, and others, do have an active and very physical presence in New Zealand, and they do engage in political repression of New Zealand citizens.

T – If I’m not mistaken, New Zealand is part of the Five Eyes.

S – Correct.

T – Together with Australia.

S – Correct.

T – That means intelligence sharing and these kinds of things, yeah. I heard you in an interview. The New Zealand Government is not only spying on its own people, but they’re also outsourcing the espionage. I think it was the FBI, you said. Or the NSA?

S – Well it would have been NSA in the context of GCSB. It would be the FBI in the context of NZSIS, which is the security intelligence services in New Zealand. The FBI has just openly opened its first field office in New Zealand in the last couple of months. So it now has physical offices on the land of our country. An intelligence agency of a foreign government.

“We learn about New Zealand, a sovereign independent entity. We’re told we have independent foreign policy. We’re told we have human rights. We’re taught that we have democratic freedoms and human rights, but when you start to scratch below the surface, you get a very different picture.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

T – But do they have any jurisdiction in New Zealand?

S – They certainly shouldn’t. However, through these post-9/11 intelligence sharing agreements; international cooperation agreements; etc., etc.; look they’re all just spokes of the same wheel. That’s what it comes down to. I’m sorry to sound so jaded or so extreme, but my sense of national identity has been very much rocked by my experiences because I understand now that we are taught that we have a national identity. We are taught that we’re a sovereign entity, but when push comes to shove, there is a transnational military structure which maintains power regardless of who sits in parliament; of who wins an election; of who you vote for. These things are irrelevant to the supremacy of that core power structure. In fact I’m hearing in my head from one of the Snowden files. It says, ‘We are impervious to political perturbations.’ Those are the words of an NSA executive. ‘We are impervious to political perturbations.’ So whether the left’s in, or whether the right is in, they are in. No matter what. And when you cross them, then you learn that lesson. You learn how real that is.

T – That explains also why the, let’s say the geo-strategic position of the U.S. didn’t shift since the Second World War. It doesn’t matter, Democrats or Republicans in the power. Before we continue, I would like to go through a couple of your, let’s say, achievements. Then I would really like to hear what happened in a kind of step by step by step fashion if we can. Now about major campaigning achievements. So co-created viral hashtag in opposition to the (TPP) Trans Pacific Partnership. Trended number one in NZ, and second worldwide. Then campaigned, first social media influencer from 2012 to 2014 against New Zealand’s mass surveillance agency. So you picked your enemies so carefully. Activist and promoter on major events. Moment Of Truth event, involved in major 2014 event featuring Kim Dotcom, Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange. What what that about, this Moment Of Truth event in 2014?

“Some fantastic people took some really big risks to try and educate, first and foremost, the people of New Zealand, about what is really going on, and what was happening to us. And then to try to do something about it, which is the most important point. It’s not enough just to study and to learn. It’s not enough to know. You have to do. You have to act. You have to build.” - Talk Liberation founder Suzie Dawson

S – It was fifty percent in connection with Snowden revelations, particularly information relevant to New Zealand and New Zealanders that was derived from files in the Snowden leaks which Glenn Greenwald was reporting on, and which also tangentially impacted the Kim Dotcom situation; affected New Zealanders as a whole. Everybody in our country is affected by the things that we learned in those files. For example, at that event Ed talked about how there was NSA facilities, physical buildings and infrastructure on New Zealand soil that are registered assets of the State Department in the United States, but they’re on, as we would say in Maori in New Zealand, on the whenua, on the New Zealand whenua; on our land. We are physically occupied by intelligence agencies of foreign countries. And again, this is not what we’re taught about ourselves when we go to school, when we’re growing up. We learn about the Land of the Long White Cloud. We learn about New Zealand, a sovereign independent entity. We’re told we have independent foreign policy. We’re told we have human rights. We’re taught that we have democratic freedoms and human rights, but when you start to scratch below the surface, you get a very different picture. The other fifty percent of what the Moment Of Truth event was about was the September 2014 General Election, which was the first election the Internet Party stood in under the leadership of the honourable Laila Harre, who’s an absolutely amazing warrior for truth and activism in New Zealand. A long-standing wahine toa. Again, I keep wanting to use New Zealand terminology. Wahine toa – a woman warrior. She is a woman who has been fighting for human rights and social justice for a very long time in New Zealand. She was the first party leader, and if there’s one thing I’m really proud about in terms of Internet Party, it’s that I got to work with her and was supported by her, and was able to support her in return. So some fantastic people took some really big risks to try and educate, first and foremost, the people of New Zealand, about what is really going on, and what was happening to us. And then to try to do something about it, which is the most important point. It’s not enough just to study and to learn. It’s not enough to know. You have to do. You have to act. You have to build.

“My goal has been to create a social media company that will serve people, and serve users, and will put an end to the types of abuses that are going on against users.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

T – Very true. One more chapter here, and that’s media and recognition. High reach journalism. Some of your articles apparently achieved more than 250,000 hits; not so bad. Wikileaks endorsement; you were consistently shared by Julian Assange between 2014 and 2019. I have a couple of media appearances from Sky News Australia, RT, NPR Australia, Radio New Zealand, and a number of publications in New Zealand Herald, Huffington Post, Consortium News, etc, etc. Now I do this very consciously. I really want to… I would like the viewers to understand who you really are. And lastly I fear, notable interviews conducted. It’s a funny one. Well, funny. NSA Whistleblower Bill Binney, then Ray McGovern and John Kiriakou, both of which I have interviewed; Daniel Ellsberg, Chris Hedges. Now I saw an interview that I think both Ray McGovern and John Kiriakou both endorsed Talk Liberation, right?

S – John Kiriakou is the Brand Ambassador for Talk Liberation [UPDATE: SEE FOOTNOTE AT BOTTOM OF TRANSCRIPT] and Ray McGovern is like my honorary Grandfather. I love him so much; he’s such a good person.

T – Amazing. Both of them, and very courageous. Now that was to give a little bit of context, and to introduce you to the viewers who have probably never heard about you. Same as me. A couple of months ago, about a year ago, I was not aware of you, which is a shame. Because of course you’re not in New Zealand. I guess in New Zealand the situation is different. But to the broader audience, probably your name, Suzie Dawson, but also Talk Liberation is relatively unknown. So if you feel comfortable, as far as you’re at liberty to tell, I would like you to talk us through what really happened to you in leading you to your, how shall I say, I no longer say self-imposed because you’re absolutely right it’s not self-imposed. Your exile. Where would you like to start?

“What you list as my achievements, to me are things that are almost incidental, that just happened to occur as a result of that motivation of just wanting to support people.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

S – The first thing I would do is I’d kind of re-frame this a little bit because it’s interesting for me to have this conversation about the things that I’ve done and been involved in being framed as achievements. Because to me they weren’t something that I aspired to, or that I set out as a goal. Talk Liberation is a little bit different. I consciously, my goal has been to create a social media company that will serve people, and serve users, and will put an end to the types of abuses that are going on against users. That’s a conscious decision on my part. Something that I decided to get involved in and apply my skill set to, with an ambition to be able to effect change. Activism, I did not aspire to. I did not plan on getting into. It was completely accidental. I saw the Occupy Movement, it was actually kind of the nascent Occupy Movement forming online even before the physical occupation was on the ground. And I got involved first in an online capacity, and then I went to Occupy Auckland, and I met some amazing people. Beautiful, incredible people. And they thought like me, and they believed the things that I believed. And it comes back to what I was saying before, doing something; building something. Not just having the knowledge or talking about stuff, but taking real concrete actions to build something. And we had a media tent there, and all the other people who had computer skills of any type congregated there, and so that became my natural home away from home. And it started with just the tiniest basic little things, like we needed some ethernet cables. OK, I’ve got ethernet cables. I’ll run home and get some ethernet cables and bring them down to the Occupy and help network some computers together. It’s really small little things like this that led me down the pathway. It wasn’t because I wanted to become someone, or speak on panels. I didn’t want to, this was never in my head. I just wanted to help to provide what I could to contribute to something that I could see was real and concrete, and actually effecting some positive change. In NZ; I’m just going to keep using NZ terminology, I’m sorry. In NZ we talk about the kaupapa. The kaupapa, and these are indigenous Maori words that I’m using. The kaupapa is the foundational understanding between people, or when you’re embarking on something, when you’re gonna work on something together, you have this foundational understanding. For me, the kaupapa of my activism was to help people. To contribute, in a very physical way, contribute and help. It wasn’t because I wanted a career change, or I had some personal aspirations. So I just wanted to let you know. What you list as my achievements, to me are things that are almost incidental, that just happened to occur as a result of that motivation of just wanting to support people, we would say tautoko. To tautoko the people around us. To show support and solidarity with the people around us. And when I got involved at Occupy, I did not have the first clue in the world that we would have malevolent attention from police agencies. I was completely oblivious to the concept of really even what an intelligence agency was. I didn’t really understand what an activist was. When people first started describing me as an activist, I thought they were a bit loopy. I was like, I’m literally just a single Mom from the suburbs. I’m literally, like, dropping my kid at sports practice, and coming down here to help you do your computer stuff, and you’re calling me an activist. Why are you calling me an activist? So it took a long time for me to accumulate the knowledge and the understanding of what was really going on. And it was through that combination of direct experience on the ground, and then my own research. As weird things started to happen in the course of the Occupy, and I started to understand there was more going on than what the eye could see, then I started to learn. I started to learn from older activists, who had been through this in the eighties; been through this in the nineties. All the topics we’re discussing pre-date myself by generations, if not tens of generations. These things have been going on since time immemorial. People with power and money have wanted to maintain and grow their power and money, and have been unlimited in the scope of their imagination of ways that they could do that, and immoral in their practices. And the more that I started to discover that there was this hidden control mechanism to which any of us can be subjected, in which all of our human rights go out the window; our democratic freedoms go out the window, the more indignant I became. If I could describe myself through that whole period of the last ten year period from like 2011 on, it would be righteous indignation because I just got more and more pissed off. I was like, what do you mean you’re targeting, having a foreign power target our citizens and spy on them? What do you mean that that’s supposed to be OK? No it’s not OK, and we’re gonna tell everybody about it, and then we’re gonna try and do something about it. And I guess I had the foolhardiness that I didn’t let the fact that these people had billions of dollars, and thousands, or tens of thousands of staff versus, you know, me and six people on my media team. I didn’t let that, kind of, dissuade me, and arguably I should have. I mean I’ve had people say to me, what did you expect, you know? You go up against these people. You’re telling the truth loudly about these people. What did you expect? And at a certain point I did become aware, like, oh my god this actually could result in some permanent harm; and not just to me actually, but to other people connected to me. But at the same time, I really felt like sitting down and shutting up or giving into them; it’s kind of like an abuser. It really, there’s a lot of abuse dynamics in the relationship between citizen and State. And I really felt like if I just gave in, that I would be actually empowering them to go and target the next person, and target the next person because ‘look - it worked with Suzie,’ and that didn’t sit right with me at all. I didn’t want to feel like I was tacitly participating by giving them the net result that they wanted, and ultimately, yeah, that cost me a lot, you know. And it cost my kids more. I mean, my kids lost their friends. I never, ever talk about my children, so this is gonna be quite rare for you to have this. But my children lost their friends; they lost their schools; they lost their peer group; they lost their access to my family. We didn’t see anyone in my family for nine years. Nine years. Last year was the first time that we saw my parents and my family because they came here and stayed with us, finally. And we weren’t estranged from my family; they’ve actually been relentlessly supportive of me throughout, but they’re older, and asking them to up and come to Russia was not the easiest thing in the world to do. And I know I’m chopping and changing in the time frame here, but I just want to make the point that; yeah I was abused by my State because I exercised my democratic freedoms and my human rights, and I tried to extend those to others. I tried to work for the preservation of those rights for other people. And I’m still doing that. That’s not something I can say I will definitely achieve within my lifetime, I probably won’t. But as Ray McGovern and people like that will tell you, it doesn’t actually matter, we have to try. We have got to, we’ve got to try. Capitulation and surrender is not an option because when you surrender to an abuser, they just get a free ride to do it ten times worse. So we have to push back against the coming dystopia, you know, as Julian talked about in his book, “Cypherpunks.” OK, do you want me to cut back and give you a proper explanation of how I got from the media tent at Occupy to exile? If so, I’m happy to do it.

“People with power and money have wanted to maintain and grow their power and money, and have been unlimited in the scope of their imagination of ways that they could do that, and immoral in their practices. And the more that I started to discover that there was this hidden control mechanism to which any of us can be subjected, in which all of our human rights go out the window; our democratic freedoms go out the window, the more indignant I became.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

T – It’s your show, Suzie. I’m happy with everything you give us. I think it’s very important for people to realize; I mean most people never leave their country; most people never leave their town even, yeah. So it’s really, really important to understand things that only someone who lives somewhere else, and not just for a year or two but permanently, experiences. Exactly like you said, old or young, you completely lose your personal network. And you only realize how important this personal and professional network is, is when you lose it. When you’re suddenly in a country, and you do not have access to your personal environment; to your friends; to your whole proximity. Not to talk about the culture change, the new start, etc., etc. And then you, as a single Mom, continue with your journey. Not only continue with your journey, but you also build on it. So maybe let’s go back to wherever entry point you want to reenter your story.

“I was abused by my State because I exercised my democratic freedoms and my human rights, and I tried to extend those to others. I tried to work for the preservation of those rights for other people. And I’m still doing that. That’s not something I can say I will definitely achieve within my lifetime, I probably won’t. But as Ray McGovern and people like that will tell you, it doesn’t actually matter, we have to try.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

S – OK. So in 2016 it was the first time I ever put myself on camera, and talked into a camera, when I made a documentary called ‘Diary Of A Person Of Interest” because I needed people to understand - I had applied for asylum here in Russia, and I needed people to understand what I’d been through, and what was happening to me, and why it was happening. So I recommend that if you really want a blow by blow of everything I was involved in, and everything I did that led to exile, that you go ahead and watch that. It’s not an easy watch. I tried to re-watch it again recently for the first time in many years, and it was difficult for me to watch. It talks about a lot of dark things, but it is the God’s honest truth of what happened to me. And when I say it was the first time I put myself on camera, that’s because in all of my journalism from 2011 until 2016 I interviewed many well known political figures; many well known media figures; and I covered many, many live events in New Zealand, but I never put myself on camera. I always had my camera facing away from me, focused on whoever I was interviewing. If you’re an intuitive person, and if you look really carefully at... actually, you’re a behavioral expert, you should be able to do it better than anybody else. If you look at me in ‘Diary Of A Person Of Interest,’ in that 2016 documentary, you can actually see the combination of, like, it’s not really terror, it’s more like... there’s like a steely grit and a determination to go ahead and talk about these things, but at the same time I’m just hating the fact that I’m having to do it. And actually someone extremely cool commented to me recently that in that video you can actually hear me, every time before I say something, I do a little sigh. It’s like (sigh), ugh. And then I start talking. And the sigh is, ‘I can’t believe I have to talk about this’, ‘I can’t believe this is happening to me.’

T – I saw it yesterday, actually

S – So you know what I’m talking about.

T – I saw it yesterday, and what I took away from is you spend a larger part in the second half of the documentary outlining exactly the means that the State used in order to, how should I call it…

S – Terrify me.

T – Harass you.

S – Horrify me; terrify me. Petrify, that’s the word. To petrify me.

“I was following and supporting Wikileaks and Chelsea Manning, and all sorts of related people. So I started micro blogging, and aggregating news about all of these topics and then publishing that on the blog as well. So this is the tiny little beginning seeds of my independent journalism. Well, what I didn’t realize is that all of that was being taken notice of by some pretty nasty, nefarious and well-resourced figures, and that was being noticed internationally as well as domestically. That started to manifest itself in my life in nasty ways.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

T- I will put the link to this documentary in the description. But for our viewers right now, give us a couple of things just to make the viewers understand, you know, it’s not a light decision that you take your kids; pack your kids and go first to Germany, then to Russia.

S – No. God no.

T – I’m not sure. Should we first follow the timeline, and then go there. Or shall we right away check into this?

S –We’re all over the place, but I kind of feel like that’s OK to be honest with you.

T – Fine with me.

S – So, in terms of the documentary. It very much takes a journalistic approach in the sense of, I really systematically lay out, like, here is all the techniques. Here is all the parties that are involved. Here is what they do and how they do it. And you’re right that you’ve noticed that there really is kind of two definitive halves. The first half is the story of me, and what I went though and what happened. The second half, I’m actually, in that second half, I’m not making it for a viewer, or for a member of the public. I’m actually making it for other targets of the State. I’m actually trying to help them to understand what’s happening to them, and how they can react to the targeting in ways that will be less harmful because it’s a very emotional thing. So we’re going back to the media tent at Occupy Auckland. Everything was fine. I was coming to General Assemblies. Everything seemed fine. The occupation was a good space. It was a healthy and positive space. We had a lot of homeless people. We looked after them. We cared for them. That was fine too. We had some criminals. We looked after them as well. Everybody got fed. Everyone got looked after. We had cool marches. We had cool protests. We had little teach ins and sit ins, and educational spaces. It was really, I felt, a very beautiful, transformational place. And in particular, I became very close with the other members of my media team. We had an independent media team. And one of the guys there, Redstar309Z, he was live streaming. It was the first time that I had ever heard of live streaming, and the first time I had ever seen anybody live stream. It was completely new. Nobody did it at all, but here’s this one guy. He’s live streaming. He and I got to be really good friends. He and others convinced me to get on Twitter. If you go back to my original Twitter account, which was @endarken, there’s actually a tool called, I think it’s called First Tweet or something. You can look it up online. And it shows you what’s the first ever tweet of a Twitter account. And if you put my handle into First Tweet, you’ll see that the very first tweet I ever sent on that Twitter account was a personal statement of solidarity in support of Occupy Oakland Port Shutdown, which was in the first week of November of 2012. I used Twitter for the sole reason of showing solidarity to other Occupies in the Occupy Movement. Hanging out with Redstar while he was live streaming, he got me to do what we called tweet jockeying. So I would be tweeting on Twitter what was happening on the ground that he was filming on his stream, and I would be sending his stream links out. We were literally the only people in NZ doing this. Literally, it was him and me, and no one else because at this time, I mean, it was cost prohibitive. We used to have to come up with a hundred and fifty dollars to buy data so that he could have enough data to even stream at all. From there we hooked up with Global Revolution Live, also known as @GlobalRevLive, and that was an independent media crew who were taking the live streams from all of the Occupations around the world, and putting them all into one dashboard where viewers could see on one webpage, you could watch Norway and Finland. You could watch Australia. You could watch New Zealand. You could watch Occupy Wall Street, New York City. You could watch Occupy Oakland. You could watch Occupy Denver. They’re all consolidated into one view. You could actually view and participate in all the Occupies in the world through a single website. So from that point we made a lot of friends with other independent media, people in media teams all around the world. Then they started saying, well Suzie can you blog something? Can you write something up? And so I learned to take my pictures and my tweets, and embed Redstar’s live streams, and write up a little synopsis of whatever had happened on any given day, and we created a website called Occupy Savvy Dot Com, which is now at OccupySavvy.wordpress.com. We started, each time we had an event, after the event we would publish all the materials from that event on this website. Then that got picked up and circulated all around the whole global Occupy Movement and became a very well known blog within the movement. So that’s the leap from, I’m just plugging in some ethernet cable, to, I’m now tweet jockeying for a live streamer, to I’m now in digital publishing and blogging. And of course at the same time, I was following and supporting Wikileaks and Chelsea Manning, and all sorts of related people. So I started micro blogging, and aggregating news about all of these topics and then publishing that on the blog as well. So this is the tiny little beginning seeds of my independent journalism. Well, what I didn’t realize is that all of that was being taken notice of by some pretty nasty, nefarious and well-resourced figures, and that was being noticed internationally as well as domestically. That started to manifest itself in my life in nasty ways. So in December… OK, so what’s the timeline. September, we’ve got the beginnings of Occupy Wall Street, and the beginning of the Occupy New Zealand group which I was a part of, and still probably am if I could ever access my Facebook account again. That was September 2011. October 15th – Occupy Auckland, first day of actually meeting other people and participating. November - port shutdown in Oakland. The first emergence of riot police and tear gas and that kind of stuff going on. December – my house got broken into for the first time. It unfortunately got broken into a lot of times after that, but that was the first time. And it was broken into in a very dodgy way. The glass had been smashed from the inside, not the outside. Things like this. And then I started getting followed everywhere. Followed by people in vehicles. Followed by people in the street. People photographing me everywhere I went. I’m just some chick from the suburbs. I’m not, I am not some award winning journalist. I’m nobody, and I’ve got these teams of people following me everywhere. And that’s when I started to go, hang on a second, something’s not right here. There’s something very dodgy about this, but I still was naive. I didn’t have a clue that it was intelligence agencies, or international agencies. None of that would ever occurred to me in a million years. Instead, I actually thought to myself, oh well, you know, maybe someone’s dealing drugs at the Occupy. I put it down to local cops. That was how I justified it to myself. I was like, yeah well maybe they’re just trying to catch someone who’s got a warrant for their arrest, or somehow I’ve gotten involved in something without realizing it. Until the following month, January of 2012, when all of a sudden there’s FBI helicopters flying into our country, and raiding Kim Dotcom’s mansion with his wife nine months pregnant with twins, and hauling him off to jail for a crime that isn’t actually a crime in New Zealand - copyright infringement. It’s a civil liability. It’s not a criminal liability. The 20th of January was when the raid happened. The 23rd of January, three days later, Occupy Auckland was raided by riot police. I was there on the day, as were all of my media team. I had to watch a whole bunch of people getting hauled off and arrested, including most of my friends. One of the guys on our media team was filming and taking photos, and he realized that the police had the same badge numbers on. They had Z557, the same badge numbers, and he’s like, what is this? For what possible reason would our police have fake badge numbers? We’ve come to believe now, which we didn’t realize on the day, that that’s because they weren’t our police. They were the same FBI team that had come in and raided Kim’s house; had stayed the weekend and then come and done the Occupy Auckland raid. And they had been given police uniforms and identical badges numbers. But we got that footage into the mainstream press in New Zealand. It became a whole national scandal. It was on the news. The fake Z557 badges, and they launched an official investigation, which took one year to do exactly nothing. Then at the end of the year said, ‘it was the actions of a few rogue police officers, and we’ve dealt with it as an internal matter.’ That’s the official explanation for the Z557 cops. At that point, something was really rotten in the State of Denmark. We had worked out that something really rotten was going on. And now, one thing I want to be really clear about because there’s been lots of smears and efforts to undermine me over the years. One big thing that they always ignore in their smears is the fact that I wasn’t the only one who was targeted. My entire media team was targeted. Every single person who was involved with me in promoting the Occupy movement was targeted. All of them. Targeted on the road. Same issues with the cars and vehicles. Some of them arrested. One of them thrown in a mental hospital and drugged. We’ve had horrific things across the board happen to us. Some of us beaten up by cops, repeatedly arrested for no reason. All manner of different methods of targeting were employed against my entire media team, three members of which have gone on public record and talked about their experiences with me, and at the Occupy, and the things that happened to them, as well as being aware of what happened to me. Other famous media figures, like Martyn Bradbury from the Daily Blog, have made public statements about knowing that I was being targeted when I was in New Zealand because Martin was working with me on the GCSB campaign. So it was never a secret. What was happening to me was not a secret. It was known in the public arena. New Zealand journalists knew about it. Political figures knew about it. They knew about it while I was still in New Zealand.

“There’s been lots of smears and efforts to undermine me over the years. One big thing that they always ignore in their smears is the fact that I wasn’t the only one who was targeted. My entire media team was targeted. Every single person who was involved with me in promoting the Occupy movement was targeted. All of them. Targeted on the road. Same issues with the cars and vehicles. Some of them arrested. One of them thrown in a mental hospital and drugged. We’ve had horrific things across the board happen to us. Some of us beaten up by cops, repeatedly arrested for no reason. All manner of different methods of targeting were employed against my entire media team, three members of which have gone on public record and talked about their experiences with me, and at the Occupy, and the things that happened to them, as well as being aware of what happened to me.” - Talk Liberation founder Suzie Dawson

The reason I’m hammering this in is because there’s this general impression that I just upped and left one day and then came up with this story. But if you go back and read my Twitter history, I was tweeting about it in real time from New Zealand. Literally, today this happened to me. Tomorrow, you know, the next thing happens to me. It’s all there, and not just on Twitter, on other platforms as well. I just wanted to explain that because I’m not like an island, at all. They like to reduce me to being an island because that’s how they can perpetuate the smears, but the reality is that I was just one part of a whole web of activists and independent media that this was happening to. This targeting was pervasive. Anybody, this is the other thing too, anyone that ever wants to say they don’t believe me. Do what I did. Do what I did. Campaign against a national intelligence agency, and see what happens to you. See what happens to you. You don’t actually have to believe me. You don’t have to decide whether or not to believe me. Just stand up in your chains and move around a bit, and then find out for yourself what happens. Assert your democratic rights. Assert your freedoms, and find out what happens to you. So the beginnings of 2012, the FBI show up in NZ and things start getting really really weird. That was 2012. I started to investigate a couple things. The first thing is, my blogging now became investigating the FBI presence in New Zealand. So now I’m not just aggregating news about the movement. Now I’m actually doing the, I mean, I look back on it now and I think, oh my God, I didn’t have very much skill, actually, at all. It was all heart and no skill. I started just putting all of the pieces of the puzzle together. Again, aggregating the official reporting plus the independent reporting, and then giving my own analysis and sharing the information that I was privy to because I was involved in the same circles that were all tied into this. Then later that year; I want to say it was August 2012, somewhere around there, the news broke about the NSA having, at the request of the GCSB, targeted eighty-eight NZ citizens. Now that’s a very misleading revelation because they don’t just target a person. They target everybody around that person that they communicate with in any capacity, and then everybody around them as well. So if you’re targeting eighty-eight people, you’re actually not. You’re probably targeting, OK let’s say eighty-eight people know fifty people, what’s that? Four thousand plus in the first concentric circle. What is it now in the second concentric circle? Now we’re talking about two hundred thousand people. And we’re talking about two hundred thousand people in a country of, at the time, four million, now five. I always get shit when I say that it’s three or four million people, but it was when I was growing up in the eighties. Two hundred thousand people are being spied on. Now that’s a significant percentage of the entire New Zealand population, is having their personal data and communications sucked into the NSA spy web, and it’s being delivered on a platter by our national spy agencies, who had no mandate whatsoever to spy on their own citizens, let alone hand over the data of our citizens to a foreign government. On what level is any of that OK? Where are the democratic freedoms and rights that we’re promised and taught that we have, and that that’s why we’re better than the other countries because these are the things we have that other countries don’t have? That’s why we should have this sense of superiority? No, it’s all hocus pocus nonsense. We don’t have those things. I’m just one example out of many to evidence that we don’t have those things. So somewhere around September of 2012 I had the brilliant idea, because now for the first time I had a bad guy, I had an understanding of who’s been doing this stuff to us. The bad guy was the GCSB, the Government Communications Security Bureau, New Zealand’s NSA. So me being me, I decided to start the hashtag #GCSB. Then I decided to tweet, all day every day, information about the crimes these people were committing against our citizenry. In the meantime, I leveraged every single personal relationship that I had to demand that we create a national campaign focused on this point. And Martyn Bradbury was one of the first who, I mentioned, he’s known as ‘Bomber,’ actually, ‘Citizen Bomber’ in New Zealand. A very, like, for decades, longstanding independent media political journalist, radio host, music/television host. Very, very, very, well known personality in NZ. And to his credit, he was like ‘fuck yeah, let’s get them. Let’s do it’. And I worked with him actually on the creation of The Daily Blog, which is something most people don’t know about, which was our vision to take the model that we had used for Occupy New Zealand, of bringing reps from all these different special interest groups together and creating a consolidated force that we could turn into a mass movement. That’s how The Daily Blog was started. Based on the same premise. And we started to get traction.

T – A little note. We were just interrupted, the connection. We re-started a little while later. As you can see the light situation, on my end at least, has completely changed. And the last thing that I still remember was you step into the footstep of giants. This is what still stuck in my memory, Suzie. So can you pick it up from there?

“Where are the democratic freedoms and rights that we’re promised and taught that we have, and that that’s why we’re better than the other countries because these are the things we have that other countries don’t have? That’s why we should have this sense of superiority? No, it’s all hocus pocus nonsense. We don’t have those things. I’m just one example out of many to evidence that we don’t have those things.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

S – Sure, sure. So I just wanted to make it really clear that we are all part of a bigger community. It’s not about just one of us. What I was saying is that these achievements as you frame them, or experiences as I would frame them, are not just because I’m some genius or a fool, but because I was walking in the footsteps of giants. I was studying the actions of people who I admired, who believed in the same causes that I did, and I was trying to take actions in support of those out of, really it comes down to solidarity. Solidarity is lifeblood. Solidarity is what keeps us all going, and alive, and able to cope with the things that we go through. It’s the solidarity of other people. Actually you mentioned before how difficult it is to have your community ripped away from you when you’re going to a new country, a new place. What I found out is that the people in my life who I expected to support me often didn’t, and the ones who I never thought would support me, did. So you learn about the people around you when you face some serious adversity in your life. And you learn to lean on and work with those who emerge that may be the ones you don’t expect, but at the end of the day are the right ones. I was very, very lucky that going through what I was going through in New Zealand, people who knew more than me and had more resources than me worked out what was... I’m talking about Edward Snowden here. I’m talking about Julian Assange. They took note of what was happening to me, and they took actions to support me. They took actions to shine a spotlight on me because that spotlight helped to keep me safe. It really did. Even though I preferred to work anonymously, and our media team did work anonymously in the first few years. Eventually, the targeting of me was so pervasive and becoming so dangerous that it required having a spotlight on me, and people knowing who I am in order to raise the risk calculus for those who are targeting me. The more public I was, and the more support I had from significant people, the more difficult it was for those who were hurting me to keep hurting me. So I’m very lucky. I consider myself to be a very lucky person because without that support and without that solidarity things could’ve gone a much worse path. I was told when I was in NZ by someone who has been through exactly what I’ve been through and worse, to leave. To go, specifically, I was told to go to Berlin, ‘that’s where our people are’. At first I thought that suggestion was nuts, crazy. Of course I can’t go to Berlin. What are you talking about? But I was having physical attacks. I was having very scary... I never know what the terminology is... vehicular interference. I was having my oil cap removed on my car, and my car bursting into flames when driving down the road. I was being chased by vehicles. I was being... I had vehicles try to push me off the road. I had a series of really terrifying, horrible experiences, and at the same time I was getting a lot of death threats. I was getting death threats on social media and by email. And the ruling government, who had been persecuting journalists and activists in New Zealand, won re-election in September of 2014. That meant I was staring down the barrel of another three years minimum of those same people in power being able to continue doing those things to me and to others. That’s why I finally made the decision. I was like, I can’t keep going through this. I can’t stay here. It’s non-viable to live in a constant state of terror and persecution. So yeah, I sold my house. Packed everything up and moved to Berlin. And I did it under the cover of going on a holiday. I literally went to a travel agent and booked a holiday, and bunny-hopped our way across Asia into Europe, staying with friends along the way, and then settled down in Berlin. And really really hoped, genuinely hoped, that in Berlin we were gonna have a normal life again. Where the kids could go to school, and I could get a job and that we could return to some type of normalcy. But unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed a moment’s peace, and they continued to target us. To be fair, they didn’t target us as maliciously in Berlin as they did in New Zealand. I didn’t feel in Berlin that I could be killed at any moment. I didn’t feel that, which I certainly did feel in New Zealand. But they made life as difficult for me as they possibly could. After I came to Russia for a short visit at the end of 2015, once I came back to Germany then they got pretty nasty. And at that point I realized OK if I stay...

“These achievements as you frame them, or experiences as I would frame them, are not just because I’m some genius or a fool, but because I was walking in the footsteps of giants. I was studying the actions of people who I admired, who believed in the same causes that I did, and I was trying to take actions in support of those out of, really, it comes down to solidarity. Solidarity is lifeblood. Solidarity is what keeps us all going, and alive, and able to cope with the things that we go through.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

T – If you say they, sorry. If you say they...

S - You want to know who the they is?

T – If you say, who are they?

S – So the very first day that I landed I

T – No, no, no, in Germany. I mean in Germany.

S – Yep, yep yep. The very first day I landed in Germany, I had what I assumed are police agencies or German intelligence agencies openly photographing me, following me, stalking me from day one. Literally from day one. In our hotel room. In our hotel lobby. In the vicinity of us always. I overheard they were on the phone actually talking about me, and things like this. It was very obvious. Now, I don’t know... I’ve never worked inside these agencies. I don’t know what their processes are. I don’t know what happens between New Zealand agencies and U.S. agencies that they go, OK, this woman’s going to Germany. Now we’re gonna... I don’t know what the handover process is, I guess is what I’m trying to say. But it’s clear that there is some kind of handover process, and it just became rather than being stalked by New Zealanders, now I’m being stalked by Germans. There was overt and covert targeting of me in Germany. Just like I had in New Zealand, I always had vans with blacked out windows parked outside my house. I had that also in Germany, literally twenty four hours a day outside my apartment that I rented there. I had that same type of physical surveillance, but I also had the photographers, literally me and my kids going to the markets, and photographers jumping out with big cameras taking photos right in my face. I still to this day, I can only speculate at what their rationale is because I don’t actually know. I don’t know if it’s that they want you to know that you’re under surveillance that they do that. I don’t know if it’s some kind of psychological warfare...

T – Intimidation.

S – Yeah, I don’t know what their motives are, but I can just tell you what it’s like to be on the receiving end of it, which is extremely unpleasant. Like I said, after we came to Russia for a short trip and we went back to Germany, they doubled down on all of it. They were obviously very unhappy that I’d gone to Russia. They did not like that. And in a very strange twist of events, when I decided to leave Germany and come back to Russia, they actually did stop me at the border when I was getting on the plane. It’s very odd because you would think that you would be questioned coming in. We got questioned leaving. All they wanted to know from me is, when are you coming back to the EU? I just showed them my return ticket and said, look, I have a return ticket. They’re like, when are you coming back to the EU? I’m like, I have a return ticket, it’s right here. When are you coming back to the EU? They just kept pushing me on the same question. When are you coming back? When are you coming back? When are you coming back? Because I think they were concerned. I think they were concerned that I would go to Russia and stay. And the more vehemently they pushed me on that point, the more I was thinking, oh my God, I don’t want anything to do with you people ever again. I don’t want to be near you or subjected to you ever again. I’m out. That’s it, finished. I’ve tried very hard to settle down and live a normal life. I haven’t been allowed to do it, and I’m not going to spend the rest of my life under your thumb. That’s it. So I came to Russia. And at the same time as coming to Russia, events in NZ were unfolding that led to a lot of revelations that put into context my experiences. For example, I had put in an OIA request to the office of the Prime Minister, trying to get to the bottom of some of what had been happening to me. Those OIA requests had been forwarded by the Prime Minister’s office to the GCSB. There was GCSB stamps on the documents when they came back. They refused to confirm or deny that I was a target. That’s the official status as it relates to me personally. They will not confirm or deny. They did admit having open source intelligence on me, but they won’t admit to anything that they obtained by other means. At the same time New Zealand was passing a series of extremely draconian security laws. In particular, laws which would allow them to revoke the passport of a New Zealand citizen arbitrarily, provided that that New Zealand citizen was deemed a threat to national security. At the same time as that, the #TPPANoWay movement, which I had been extremely involved in for many years, was deemed by New Zealand police to be a threat to national security, and they were raiding the homes of activists in New Zealand. So I was staring down, again, the barrel of the Prime Minister’s office referring my complaints to the GCSB, who would neither confirm nor deny, as they gave themselves the power to revoke New Zealand passports based on a definition that they themselves engineer and supply. They actually revoked the definition of the term “threat to national security,” and said that it was up to the Police Commissioner and Attorney General to determine whether or not somebody was a threat without any actual description of what constituted a threat. So as these things just piled up one on top of the other, I just got to the point where I realized it’s not safe for me to travel. I can’t just be hoping that I can get through the airport with my two kids. I just can’t do that. We need stability. We’re not criminals. We don’t commit crimes. I’ve been in Russia for ten years. I haven’t got a parking ticket. I haven’t got anything. I’m a law abiding person. But I could never know if I would still have a passport the next year. If I would be able to travel on the next flight that I took. That was why I applied for asylum in Russia. Yeah. That’s it in a nutshell. I mean I’ve skipped a half a dozen movements I was involved in there, but it doesn’t really matter. It was all the same thing, which is causes that we cared about that were impacting our country. The only way that we could fight back was to use our voices to circulate information, and to try and organize our fellow citizens to make a difference. Sometimes we got very close. Sometimes we really had impact, and sometimes we didn’t have impact. It’s a mixed bag. I would never say that it’s a success or a failure, but it’s really important... I still believe it’s extremely important to try. It’s extremely important to try.

“The #TPPANoWay movement, which I had been extremely involved in for many years, was deemed by New Zealand police to be a threat to national security, and they were raiding the homes of activists in New Zealand. So I was staring down, again, the barrel of the Prime Minister’s office referring my complaints to the GCSB, who would neither confirm nor deny, as they gave themselves the power to revoke New Zealand passports based on a definition that they themselves engineer and supply.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

T – How did you... to which extent are you able to rebuild your life in Russia? I understand you are still, you are in the process for requesting asylum. How did that work out?

S – Well when I came to Russia, it was almost unheard of to be a westerner in Russia applying for asylum. Nobody could believe that I was there with a New Zealand passport asking for asylum and saying that I’m in fear of my life. Aside from Ed’s case, and I think there’s one other case I’m aware of which pre-dates mine by about twenty years, there hadn’t been anyone else. So the immigration service was baffled. All of the officials that I dealt with were completely baffled. I was lucky that I got a great attorney. A great asylum attorney, who was extremely supportive and really went the extra mile for us. I also faced systematic interference. The head of the UN Refugee Agency in Moscow, it was a woman called Svetlana Gannushkina, who’s actually an extremely famous human rights activist in Russia. Unbeknownst to me, she had been exposed in Wikileaks documents, in Wikileaks publications for her activities with the U.S. Ambassador here in Moscow. Unfortunately, when I went to apply for asylum, at the top of the form it says, ‘Have you been recognized by the UN refugee agency as a refugee?” I hadn’t, so off I went to the UN Refugee Agency here in Moscow, and found myself delivered to the desk of Svetlana Gannushkina. She sat there and she took every single, photocopies of every page of my passport. My kids passports. I had about 200 pages of documentation. That’s another thing people don’t realize, is actually how much evidence I compiled of what was happening to me. From mechanic reports to photographs to just everything. Like I said, a lot of it unfolded in real time on social media, but I had a lot of supplementary evidence as well. So I took all of it with me. She photocopied every single page. Literally, personally. Didn’t have her secretary do it. She sat there right in front of me. Photocopied every single page. Then she looked at me and she said, it’s a direct quote, she said, “I don’t like Julian Assange.” And I was like, what? She says, “He published me in the Wikileaks.” And I thought, oh shit. Oh shit, here I am literally begging for my life to this woman, and of course all through my file is Wikileaks and Ed Snowden and everything else. She hates my guts because she hates Julian’s guts. Sure enough, I was denied refugee status. And because I was denied refugee status that means that I couldn’t tick the box on my asylum application. That means that I couldn’t go though the internationally accepted UN asylum process. That means that I instead was put under a Russian State law asylum process, which is a whole completely different kettle of fish to what Ed and Julian went through. In both Ed and Julian’s cases, they were recognized by the UN Refugee Agency as being refugees. They got refugee status. They went through the UN asylum process and were processed that way. Now all of a sudden I find myself in a process in which none of them, no one had gone through before, of which I’m completely blind as to the ramifications or implications of. I’m just really lucky that Russia didn’t toss me to the wolves. They didn’t turf me out, but nor did they give me special treatment or consideration. I have had to be like any other migrant and go, you know, sit in the queues and in the lines and what not, and go through the processes on and off. For about eight years, eight years of that... of findings and appeals and findings and appeals and findings and appeals. So yeah, it was a really really lengthy process, but simultaneously I was able to rent an apartment and, you know, start to build a community of people around me. Build relationships around me. Make friends. I wanna say learn the language (laughing). I did study the language for a year, and I can speak enough Russian to get by, but I would be too embarrassed to say that I speak Russian because it would be disrespectful to the Russian people to claim that I’m a Russian speaker. Yes, I can get through the supermarket, and taxi ride, and the restaurants, etc. It was very, for a long time, it was very isolating, absolutely. But I was very honest with everybody around me about exactly what my situation was. Why we were in that situation. Most importantly, I was free to continue my work without being subjected to daily persecution. That means an enormous amount. It took me a long time to be able to become accustomed to that freedom actually. I think it took about my first six months here before I could really breathe and know that I was OK.

T – In what kind of world live we where someone from New Zealand has to go to Russia in order to be able to breathe freely? I mean, the global situation is so twisted at this moment.

S – Yeah.

T – And of course the images that we are fed from Russia is equally twisted. So if you can elaborate, how is life in Russia for you?

“I was very honest with everybody around me about exactly what my situation was. Why we were in that situation. Most importantly, I was free to continue my work without being subjected to daily persecution. That means an enormous amount. It took me a long time to be able to become accustomed to that freedom actually. I think it took about my first six months here before I could really breathe and know that I was OK.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

S – When I first got here, I had a head full of the same propaganda that everybody else did. I expected it to be dangerous and dirty and scary, but I was just hoping that I wouldn’t be targeted in the same way I had been before. I got here and discovered this whole new world that I had never had any inkling of whatsoever. Where the streets are clean. Where as a woman, you could walk down the streets at anytime of day or night, and nobody will interfere with you. Nobody will catcall you. No one will approach you. No one will accost you. Coming from New Zealand, I couldn’t do that in Auckland. I couldn’t walk down Queen Street or K’Road in Auckland Central as a woman in the night time, and feel safe. But I can do that in Moscow. That was the first thing that I noticed. Well, the first thing I noticed was the cleanliness. Everything is spotless. You can eat off the streets. Where I come from there’s broken beer bottles and trash and, just, it’s dirty. It’s just a fact. The city is dirty. The countryside is beautiful, but the city is dirty. Moscow is not like that. Total opposite. Completely spotless. So clean and safe. And then the next thing I started to realize is that everybody loves Westerners, and they love Western culture. So all of a sudden I’m realizing, hang on, there’s hamburger joints and they’re playing Elvis Presley songs, and they’re sitting in Cadillacs. Their restaurant table is a Cadillac, and they’re sitting in the Cadillac eating their burger like it’s 1950’s USA. None of that.. I could never have imagined any of that.

And the food is just clean, organic food. No Monsanto chemicals. None of the stuff that we’re subjected to in the West. No GMO foods. No fake ingredients. No chemically lab produced meat or whatever. To be honest, my enduring impression was that it was like the New Zealand I grew up in the 1980’s because there was a New Zealand that was sovereign and independent. There was a New Zealand that was clean and green, and I grew up in that New Zealand. But that New Zealand got taken away from us in the 90’s through a series of political and trade deals. Then that got exacerbated through the first John Key national government in 2008. New Zealand in the 80’s actually left the Five Eyes alliance. The Five Eyes became The Four Eyes because the New Zealand people were fighting for a nuclear free New Zealand. They were refusing to allow U.S. nuclear warships into NZ waters. As well as they were fighting an extremely important anti-racist, anti-apartheid movement in support of Nelson Mandela and South Africa. That’s the heritage that we have, but that was lost. That’s part of the heritage that we’ve been fighting to try and get back. And in many ways, Russia now reminds me of that New Zealand. It has the local manufacturing that we used to have in New Zealand. It has the locally owned businesses. You go down to the dress shop down the road and it’s owned by, you know, the local dress maker. Things like this. That’s the New Zealand I grew up in, but it’s not the New Zealand that we ended up with. That’s probably my biggest fear for Russia, actually. And something I think Russian citizens don’t understand is how much they have to lose. They don’t tend to see so much what they have, because they’re always told that they’re less-than. So they think that they are less-than. But I look at them and I think oh my God, you still own your land. You still own your houses. You don’t have to fear that your kids will grow up renters for the rest of their life. Everybody here owns a house, and usually a house and an apartment. They still own their country. In all honesty, the thing Russians are always asking me, they say, why do they hate us? Why does the West hate us? The honest to God answer, based on the ten years living here and everything I‘ve come to know. My answer is because they don’t own you. That’s why they hate you. Because they don’t own you.

T – Spot on.

S – They don’t own your land. They don’t control your housing. They don’t own your medicine. They don’t own your science. They don’t own your intelligence agencies. They don’t own your police agencies. They don’t own your educational facilities. People here have Masters Degrees and no debt. You can’t have a Masters Degree and no debt in the West. Are you kidding me? People here go to the hospital because they’re sick, and then they walk out with no bill. You can’t do that in the West. In terms of the way that the society functions, and the services that it provides for the people, it is light years ahead. No, you know what, it’s not light years ahead of the West. What it is, is how the West used to be before the West cannibalized itself. That’s what Russia is. And that’s why it has to be protected. For exactly that reason.

“Something I think Russian citizens don’t understand is how much they have to lose. They don’t tend to see so much what they have, because they’re always told that they’re less-than. So they think that they are less-than. But I look at them and I think oh my God, you still own your land. You still own your houses. You don’t have to fear that your kids will grow up renters for the rest of their life. Everybody here owns a house, and usually a house and an apartment. They still own their country. In all honesty, the thing Russians are always asking me, they say, why do they hate us? Why does the West hate us? The honest to God answer, based on the ten years living here and everything I‘ve come to know. My answer is because they don’t own you. That’s why they hate you. Because they don’t own you.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

T – I remember seeing Tucker Carlson was in Moscow. Of course he did the interview, but they also filmed him walking through Moscow. I was smiling at his kind of, I don’t know, surprise when he found, hey, the supermarkets are not empty. Exactly as you said. The streets are clean. There’s security. I mean it reminds me very much about what’s going on in China right now. This mass propaganda against China. China is really light years ahead. But it’s the same rhetoric. It’s the in (inaudible). The dehumanization of the enemy because both Russia and China are officially the West’s enemy. But coming back to you. Maybe now it’s a good segway into Talk Liberation. So how did this emerge? Your private life. Your life in Moscow. I don’t know when you started Talk Liberation. Was that already when you were in Germany or in New Zealand? Or did it start in Russia? So how did Talk Liberation enter your life, and at which stage?

S – Talk Liberation was formed as the entity, the business entity to underpin the registration of Panquake the social network. I came up with the idea of Panquake towards the end of 2020. Then in 2021, I and a group of friends volunteered for the project because we had nothing. We just had ourselves, our ideas, and our willingness to work. We didn’t have millions of dollars or backers or anything like that. We came together and we launched a crowdfunder at the end of January in 2021, to try and raise enough funds to be able to begin the Panquake project. We were very successful in raising those funds, actually much more quickly than we expected because there was widespread public support for there to be an alternative to Big Tech platforms. Because everybody feels so abused by Big Tech platforms, in which they are exploited at every level by Big Tech. So we researched what jurisdictions we could register in that had the best hope of being able to maintain a stable foundation for a business to operate in the social media sphere. We came up with Cook Islands, and from a data perspective with Iceland. So we registered companies in both and called it Talk Liberation for obvious reasons. It’s all about freedom of expression. It’s about liberating our ability to talk and have conversations with each other, but also the opportunity to talk about methods of liberation. To be able to collaborate on campaigns. To be able to do something. Take action. Build something. The same points that I was making earlier. It’s about trying to provide ways for people to reinstitute human rights that we had been promised for ourselves. That leads me into the technology side because I knew that human rights could be embedded into the architecture of an application. You can literally code respect for human rights into software. You can make software that functions in a way which reinforces human rights, and yet I’ve never seen anyone try to do it except for, you know, technological developments relating to Wikileaks would be a good example. That is where a few technologists tried to use technology and software, with web based applications, to provide channels for the reinforcement of human rights. Well I wanted to do that on an industrial scale. On a scale that millions of people could benefit from. With, like I said, nothing but that dream and some good friends, we have been working extremely hard on that ever since. Just to give you a little bit of background, I didn’t become a technologist. I have always been one by default because of my generation. I’m forty-five now. Growing up, I started using a computer when I was probably six years old. An Apple IIE in Primary school. My cousin’s Amiga 500, and playing on an Atari and learning to administrate systems myself because in those days you had to administrate your system yourself. This is the days before Microsoft operating systems. This is the days of DOS-Shell. This is where in order to make your computer operate in a way to allow you to play your computer game, you had to be able to administrate your file system within DOS itself. So I got foundational technological knowledge as a matter of course. Then the earliest stages of the internet as we know it, meaning the news groups and the bulletin board services and things like that, and IRC, and what became mIRC, which is internet relay chat. For those people who don’t know, this is the earliest days of internet messaging as we know it. That was when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen. That’s what my geek friends were doing, and so I was doing it too. Then my geek friends one day a few years later realized that they could build an internet service provider and did so. Then began providing internet service to other people. We used to network our computers together by sharing our MAC addresses because that was the only way we could create a network. Things like this. I just came about at a specific time that led me to accumulate what I would describe as foundational computing knowledge. Which as I went on through my career, because, like I said, I became an activist by accident not by ambition, and by that point I was already thirty-one. My whole career had been in computing and technology. Database Administrator. Software Development Manager. Working with devs. Working with coders on commercial platforms. On vacuous, for-profit platforms that automated functions and put people out of jobs. That was literally what I was doing in my normie career before becoming an activist or a journalist. So for me it’s about taking, again, taking that experience. Taking those skills and then applying them in a way that advances the cause of human rights in a modern day context. In my activism, in journalism, just as I described to you, tweet jockeying for the first live streamer in New Zealand. I knew social media because I had used social media as a tool to communicate information. So then taking my technological skills and experience and applying that to create solutions to address the issues with Big Tech in the realm of social media. That’s what gave birth to Panquake. It was also the result of years and years and years of conversations with extremely well known whistleblowers and technologists. We commiserated endlessly amongst ourselves about all of the problems with Big Tech. Again for the second time I would reference ‘Cypherpunks’ by Julian Assange. If you read that book. Even if you read the foreword to that book, there was a very real call to action there. There was a warning and a call to action. So I am just one of the people in this world who’s read that book, headed the warning and accepted the call to action. I’m lucky enough that that’s resonated with other people, and that they’ve lent their support to the effort. And voila, we have the Panquake project.

“[We] called it Talk Liberation for obvious reasons. It’s all about freedom of expression. It’s about liberating our ability to talk and have conversations with each other, but also the opportunity to talk about methods of liberation. To be able to collaborate on campaigns. To be able to do something. Take action. Build something. The same points that I was making earlier. It’s about trying to provide ways for people to reinstitute human rights that we had been promised for ourselves. That leads me into the technology side because I knew that human rights could be embedded into the architecture of an application. You can literally code respect for human rights into software. You can make software that functions in a way which reinforces human rights.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

T – Now without going into too much technical detail. I have a list here. I don’t want to make it too technical for specific reasons. But we could on a future episode maybe dive more deeper into it. I have here a whole list of... I would like to step back here. First of all, I am absolutely convinced we need a decentralized Web3 based, blockchain based social media. So this is absolutely the future. Now there are attempts by different projects. On top of my list is BlueSky of course. It’s a bit fishy because it’s not really decentralized. Also, of course, the past of its founder. Then farcaster, then lens protocol, Mastodon, DeSo decentralized social. There’s more. Vtube Ether, Peep Path, Pixelfit, etc., etc. So in a nutshell. Try not to address a technical audience. In a nutshell, what’s the difference between, let’s say, Talk Liberation’s Panquake, I know you have multiple products, and that list of so called same decentralized social networks?

S – If you sent your mother or your grandmother or your neighbor, who doesn’t know anything about computers or technology, to the platforms on that list would they be able to use them? If you sent your mother to Mastodon, what’s the chances that she’s going to work out how to self host a Mastodon node and operate a decentralized social network?

T – Well what about BlueSky? It’s relatively similar to Twitter.

S – Is your mother on Twitter?

T – (laughing) My mother’s eighty something, no.

S – That’s exactly my point. My mother’s seventy five, and my mother does not use Twitter and can’t use Mastodon. Panquake was designed... Panquake has been designed for my mother; and for my daughter; and for my mother’s friends; and my daughter’s friends. In fact, both my mother, this is something no one knows, both my mother and my daughter work for Panquake. Both of them. In fact, they came up with the name Panquake together. My mother is a marketing manager. My daughter is a graphic designer. Together they came up with Panquake. See this is the problem. I saw a lot of this in Germany, actually because in Germany I spent a bit of time at the Chaos Communications Club. There are brilliant coders, open source technologists, and propriety, who build great functionality, and great tools and great solutions, but they have absolutely no ability to do proper interface design for a wide audience. So you get solutions like Pond is one I can think of off the top of my head. Highly technical, but really really critical. I mean Pond is an awesome thing, but no way could the average person use it. It’s almost like they create solutions in the image of themselves, right. They have a PhD or they’re like a super duper coder; super duper technologist. They create something that actually only they could use. They don’t make something that is widely accessible. This is a trend that you see across, particularly decentralized applications because decentralized applications tend to be independent projects. The incentive isn’t there for the big corporates to run decentralized networks in most cases. Not in all cases, but in the overwhelming majority of cases. Panquake is extremely intuitive. You don’t need to know how to use it. You don’t need to learn how to use it. It’s just all right there in front of you. Then the next thing you discover is that Panquake is a drag and drop interface. All of the elements that you look at on the screen can be moved, resized, opened in front of the others, closed. It becomes your application. You can actually make it look however you want. You can put the profile part wherever you want. You can put the timeline part wherever you want. It’s highly customizable. It becomes very personal to the user. In a way, they’re kind of creating their own social media application, but they’re just doing it by dragging boxes around on a page and making things bigger and smaller. It’s pretty cool. When you look at the graphical side of the user interface, it’s little cute anime characters and cute colors. It’s deliberately approachable to anyone of any age. You can feel at home straight away. There’s not hidden menus. You don’t have to click inside here and inside there and inside there. It’s just a super simplified version on the front end. But on the back end it’s protecting you every step of the way. That’s the real point of difference.

T – That was the front end, let’s say the user interface. But the technology behind it, that was what I was actually aiming for. So how is that different? Is it really decentralized? That’s my question.

S – There’s two major factors as relates to decentralization. One is that it’s a peer to peer network. You are connecting to other devices who are also active on the network. You are passing data to and through those devices, and then that data is shared within the network. You’re not connecting your device to a central server, which is the authority and the holder of the data in deciding who gets what data or doesn’t get what data. That’s the first aspect of decentralization. The second aspect of decentralization is as pertains to the blockchain. The users of the peer to peer network participate in the validation of the blocks that are published on the blockchain. They create what we call federations. In those federations they together agree upon the integrity of the data that then is published to the blockchain to create the shared public record of the activities of the users on the network.

“Panquake is extremely intuitive. You don’t need to know how to use it. You don’t need to learn how to use it. It’s just all right there in front of you. Then the next thing you discover is that Panquake is a drag and drop interface. All of the elements that you look at on the screen can be moved, resized, opened in front of the others, closed. It becomes your application. You can actually make it look however you want. You can put the profile part wherever you want. You can put the timeline part wherever you want. It’s highly customizable. It becomes very personal to the user.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

T – Two questions if you allow me. First of all, can any entity shut you down? And number two, is it secure against external state spying, whatever?

S – Can any entity shut us down? Well, they’ve been trying.

T – For example, if they shut down Talk Liberation for example...the company Talk Liberation…

S – They’ve been trying, they’ve been trying…

T – That’s why I’m asking.

S – Look, the old is never going to be happy about the new. That’s why many times I say I don’t want people to put all their hopes and dreams in Panquake. I don’t want them to sit as passive audience members waiting to see if Panquake saves the world. I want them to get off their backsides and build their own projects so that we have a whole stable of solutions that together become a tide of change that’s unstoppable. That’s what I want. I don’t want, oh Suzie Dawson’s gonna save us. Suzie Dawson’s probably not gonna to save you. Suzie Dawson’s trying to save you, but probably can’t so you better participate in this process if you actually want success. That’s the first thing. Can I say anything as an absolute? No. I’m not arrogant enough to say, oh they definitely can’t stop us; oh we’re unstoppable. That’s just silly. Again, the resource imbalance is so huge that I definitely can’t say that. What I can tell you is that we have done absolutely every possible conceivable thing that we can think of, to the nth degree actually, at every layer of the business to protect the business. To make it sustainable, and to make sure it will still be around in three, five, seven, ten years. We’re four years in and we’re still here. That’s what I can tell you. I can’t say what, you know, institutions which are a hundred years old and have hundreds of billions of dollars - I can’t tell you what they can or can’t do.

“Look, the old is never going to be happy about the new. That’s why many times I say I don’t want people to put all their hopes and dreams in Panquake. I don’t want them to sit as passive audience members waiting to see if Panquake saves the world. I want them to get off their backsides and build their own projects so that we have a whole stable of solutions that together become a tide of change that’s unstoppable. That’s what I want. I don’t want, oh Suzie Dawson’s gonna save us. Suzie Dawson’s probably not gonna to save you. Suzie Dawson’s trying to save you, but probably can’t so you better participate in this process if you actually want success.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

T – I’m asking because I’m aware of the banking freeze, which is one of the topics that I covered in my Substack articles. Tell us about your, how shall I say it, defense against this latest attack.

S – Well it just goes to show that even when you obey all the rules and you do everything right, the system which is supposed to respect that you have played the game and done the things you’re supposed to do, can arbitrarily decide that it actually doesn’t like you anyway and try to prevent you from having access to basic economic freedoms for example. We did everything right. We have had accountants and lawyers administrating everything. We ourselves, our executives, do not put our hands in the kitty. We do not access the bank accounts and make transactions ourselves. Everything is done properly by the books, and has been since day dot. We did everything right with the banks. We’ve done all of our compliance, documentation, etc, etc, etc. The bank still decided, once they realized that we were going to have incoming funds sufficient to complete our mission of building and integrating our blockchain. All of a sudden to, as we’d say put the kibosh on that, and to do so unceremoniously, and in an unforgiving fashion in the sense that we bent over backwards to try and work with them. We literally requested meetings. Offered up additional documentations and communications. We really tried to work things out directly with them and they just stonewalled. Just flat out stonewalled. We ended up having to go to drastic lengths to pay our existing bills ourselves without access to our funding. We should have been in a strong cash position, and we ended up in a negative cash position because of the actions of the bank. Our community suffered as a result of that, and that was unjust. Not only is it unjust for our business and our supporters and the people, our users, who stand to benefit the most from Panquake, it was actually unjust within the jurisdiction in which it was executed. Meaning for Iceland itself, we had documented hiring plans. That money was going to be spent to employ people in Iceland. To give them jobs doing fantastic stuff. That money was going to be pumped straight into the Icelandic economy. When the bank froze it that actually deprived Iceland, the Icelandic labor force, and the Icelandic economy of the benefit of that, as well as depriving us and our community. We fought a very very long battle before we eventually got the funds back, but by then they had caused all kinds of damage to us. We never once stopped working. That’s something people should know. We never once stopped working. We never stopped building. Actually Roger Ver told me, I think 2022, Roger Ver said to me, they can’t stop you building. That’s a direct quote. They can’t stop you building. They can stop you doing many things, but they can’t stop you building. That really stuck with me. That’s been a mantra for me that no matter what we face. No matter what opposition is thrown our way. We can, by shared determination and commitment, continue to build, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.

T – Suzie Dawson. I overstate my welcome. It was a pleasure talking to you. There would be quite some things still, I mean I have not even scratched on the surface on my list of topics here. I would be interested to pick this up. The Panquake, Talk Liberation, potentially in the future in another episode if you have time. For today, I really thank you for your time. I think it’s one of the more incredible stories that I’ve heard. I mean I have now, I don’t know, a hundred and fifty interviews. All with incredible people, some of which you know. I believe especially for a single mom in a different country being harassed to say it politely, picking up her life in Russia and making something out of it. I mean I can only say, congratulations. Many people in a much better situation would have utterly failed. So keep your head high. You absolutely deserve it.

“We never once stopped working. That’s something people should know. We never once stopped working. We never stopped building. Actually Roger Ver told me, I think 2022, Roger Ver said to me, they can’t stop you building. That’s a direct quote. They can’t stop you building. They can stop you doing many things, but they can’t stop you building. That really stuck with me. That’s been a mantra for me that no matter what we face. No matter what opposition is thrown our way. We can, by shared determination and commitment, continue to build, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.” - Talk Liberation founder, Suzie Dawson

S – Thank you. I’m not huge on compliments to be honest. As you said those things to me, all I was seeing in my head is all the people who are around me. All the people in my life who support me. Who participate in what I’m doing. Who I feel are the reason why I’m able to achieve anything at all. I’m grateful. I’m grateful to all the people who have had my back. Who have given me a firm foundation where there wasn’t one previously. So thank you to them. Thank you to everyone who helped to make this happen. I don’t think I’ve ever done a part two before, but if we get the chance sure I’m happy to give it a go. In the meantime, for all of my interesting life. The reality is I hang out at home with my kids and my dogs. I’m kind of boring. I actually really am kind of boring. That’s how I like it. That’s exactly how I like it. Thank you so much.

T – Thank you. All the best.

[TRANSCRIPT ENDS]

Supplementary materials: some examples of Suzie’s fellow Kiwi media team members talking about their eye-witness experiences of the targeting of Suzie in New Zealand and/or their being targeted themselves:
1. VIDEO: “Suzie Was Driven Out Of The Country” Eye-Witness Blows The Whistle
2. VIDEO: “I Saw It With My Own Eyes” Another Eye-Witness Steps Forward
3. Kiwi Activist Lyn Ny: “It Is Deadly Dangerous To Speak Against The Government”
4. Interview Transcript: Occupy Asylum on Voices Network
5. Tweets by famous NZ media figure Martyn Bradbury

Editor’s note: On October 13th, 2025 Talk Liberation informed former CIA agent John Kiriakou that his commercial services as Brand Ambassador were no longer required and that the position would not continue to be funded. Talk Liberation did not receive any heads up from Kiriakou regarding his subsequent public statements and despite them having lacked context and in our opinion veracity, we respectfully and sincerely wish him all the best in his future endeavours.

Use our Panquake Me link shortening service for free at this link!
Businesses can apply to become a Lnqk Me Pilot Customer at this link.
If you haven’t already, you can apply to join the Panquake BETA at this link.

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© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

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Talk Liberation is committed to providing equal access for individuals with disabilities. To view an accessible version of this article, click here.

RELEASED: The Lnqk.Me Beta was released today. Scan the QR code below to check out the new Lnqk.Me product website and find out more!

In this article:

• World-first innovation and technology with a humble price tag - how Lnqk.Me levels the playing field for all

• What else does Lnqk.Me mean for communities and for businesses?

• How Lnqk.Me will help regain user trust in the digital marketing industry

• The regulatory environment is shifting - big fines, big penalties. Lnqk.Me helps businesses get ahead and stay ahead of compliance trends.

• How to become one of the first people in the world to benefit from Lnqk.Me

Apply Now to become a Lnqk.Me Beta pilot customer today.

Everything at your fingertips

“People ask me all the time, what makes our products different? My answer is as simple as our design is: this is software your mother could use. Your grandmother. Your kids. A lot of apps have great functionality hidden away in sub-menus and drop-downs. In our software, everything is right there in one screen, in one customisable dashboard. No training is required - it’s all at your fingertips.”
- Talk Liberation founder and Lnqk Me Product Designer Suzie Dawson

Released today, Lnqk.Me is available in both mobile and desktop. The application’s functionalities and features include:

• Create, edit, delete and schedule projects

• Multi-user collaboration: Create teams of users and assign them to projects

• Easy and fast Short link and QR Code creation and management

• Link and QR Code metrics, analytics and performance tracking

• Flexible metrics filters for drilling down into your campaign data

• Custom web domain integrations and social sharing functions

• Image gallery, including image capture, file upload and curation

• Short Link and QR Code Library

• One-click business report downloads (in .PDF and editable .pptx formats)

A rising tide

You’ve heard about the million dollar lawsuits and the billion dollar fines - the tech giants have increasingly been paying hefty prices for failing to adequately protect user data.

That is because these days, expectations around user privacy and data handling are changing fast and compliance with data privacy regulation is paramount to brand integrity and sustainability.

Lnqk.Me makes compliance with data regulation laws easy. Why? We don’t have to justify why we collect what we collect - because we simply don’t collect it.

Where ‘collect it all’ and ‘sell it all’ because ‘data is the new oil’ was the mantra of the past, the institution of digital privacy laws such as the GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA and many more have changed expectations both for consumers and regulators alike.

Lnqk.Me makes compliance with data regulation laws easy. Why? We don’t have to justify why we collect what we collect - because we simply don’t collect it.

What does that mean? It means that Short Links, QR Codes and reports created in Lnqk.Me contain:

• No tracking cookies

• No UTM codes

• No capture of PII (Personally Identifiable Information) and therefore no storing, or selling of it

Anonymised metrics and analytics that do not identify or profile any specific user.

How private are we? So private that the Mobile Security Framework OpenSecurity testing framework report gave Lnqk.Me’s Android and iOS mobile applications an A rating and ranked them at the lowest possible privacy risk factor: 0.

Apply Now to become a Lnqk.Me Beta pilot customer today.

Putting you in control

Lnqk.Me is a next-generation digital marketing dashboard designed to grow your business through efficiency and security. We’ve built it consciously as a direct challenge to the old, legacy systems that hold businesses - and their data - hostage.

If you’ve ever run a digital marketing campaign, you know the drill. You’re juggling a dozen tools, watching your budget evaporate into mysterious “per-click” charges, and all the while, you have a nagging feeling that the very platforms you’re using are turning your customers into data points to be on-sold to anyone who will pay.

If you’ve ever used short-links and QR Codes for work, your brand, or social media, you quickly realise there’s little ability to customize anything without hiring expensive designers and/or technical staff, or attending expensive trainings. And when it’s time to try and get actual customer support? Good luck getting an AI chatbot to give you the info you need.

Lnqk.Me is AI-free. None of parent company Talk Liberation’s products or support services utilised AI in any way, shape or form. So when you need help - whether its to file a bug report or get hands-on assistance - you’re getting it from a real human, always.

What does Lnqk.Me mean For You?

Clarity, Not Clutter: Lnqk.Me is fully customisable, with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that you can rearrange to your liking, giving you maximum project visibility. You can plan, schedule, execute, and track campaigns seamlessly from your mobile or desktop.

Brand Power, Not Bland Links: Use short links and branded QR Codes that enhance your campaign effectiveness and grow brand recognition with every click. No more ugly black and white basic QR’s - you get colourful, fun, branded QR Codes even at the cheapest subscription tier.

Trust, Not Tracking: These are safe, trusted links that encourage improved click-through rates. We believe you don’t need to surveil your customers to earn their business.

“This is a game-changer for digital marketing. Ease of use coupled with privacy, the ability to brand Short Links and QR Codes in seconds but more importantly, to feel good about what you’re producing for your audience as well as how you’re delivering it. Showing your community that you prioritise their wellbeing will absolutely lead to commercial rewards, whether you’re a business large or small.” - Talk Liberation Chief Commercial Officer, Rene de Wit.

Real-Time Insight: Our comprehensive analytics highlight what you should do more of (or less!), allowing you to optimise campaigns on the fly. Our bespoke business reports are beautifully presented and contain various tips for increasing engagement.

A Fair Price, Not a Bottomless Pit: This is a core part of our “challenge to the old order,” that swarms the industry. A fixed monthly subscription delivers enterprise-grade features at entry-level prices. No more watching an otherwise effective campaign ruined by unpredictable per-click charges.

Apply Now to become a Lnqk.Me Beta pilot customer today.

The old order is crumbling. We’re here to help build the new one. With your engagement and support, together we can improve significant aspects of the internet that we all interact with every day.

If you love what we do, please follow, share, subscribe and support us.

We will continue to keep you updated!

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© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

Talk Liberation is committed to providing equal access for individuals with disabilities. To view an accessible version of this article, click here.

Key updates:

• Independent software development house Talk Liberation annual productivity metrics published: Exponential gains evidenced across the board in year on year metrics released today

• Flagship social media project Panquake metrics show a parabolic growth curve: Test Net phase already completed; now in Panquake Lite with real users posting real content and fast approaching release of the Panquake Beta application

• Mobile development division in operation: Talk Liberation confirms it has successfully designed, developed and deployed custom native iOS as well as Android mobile applications, created in-house

• Increasing technical sophistication as well as organisational growth on full display: lots of dazzling nerdy data shows the depth and maturity of Talk Liberation’s continually-improving development processes

• Next phase: Talk Liberation invites strategic partnerships as it heads to market. It’s time! Come be a part of something historic and unique.

Please read and share our press release about these metrics here: “Panquake Goes Parabolic: Parent Company Talk Liberation Publishes Impressive Annual Performance Metrics”

It was a big ask from the outset: solve all of the ills of social media in a way that would restore and reinforce the human and digital rights of internet users worldwide.

The conceptual solution - Panquake - presented in early 2021, quickly went viral. Its ideals and ideas adopted by millions of users worldwide.

At its core, Panquake is all about values and mission: which we are publishing here for the first time today.

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Statement of Our Core Vision, Values and Mission

Company Vision

Talk Liberation will positively impact the collective digital future of internet users by baking respect for their inalienable human rights into our simple, sleek, transparent and fair globally-minded technological innovations.

Values

• Privacy is a human right that technology should respect and can reinforce

• Platform transparency (accountable to users)

• Fair play (level playing field)

• International focus (globally accessible)

• Interoperability (industry-enhancing not anti-competitive)

• Leadership (bringing new ideas to an evolving society)

Mission

To become a world leading privacy-focused, user-centric, open source software development house delivering unique, innovative, next generation solutions to public and business internet users worldwide.

Stepping stones

There is no doubt that the idea of Panquake was revolutionary, or that the principles were sound. We all know we want and need this. But getting from concept to prototype to market with an application this disruptive is no small ask.

To pull it off, we had to first establish a solid and sustainable business foundation, in the increasingly hostile environment of global finance, particularly as relates to the internet.

Having achieved that, it was then time to hire, hire, hire. Accomplished, brave, committed individuals with a variety of technical proficiencies willing to not only bootstrap the organisation from the ground up but to do so without using any of the standard Big Tech, AI-embedded corporate tools, platforms or frameworks commonly utilised by every other software development house.

Starting with only one developer in mid-2021, progress started out slow. But by taking step by step and never giving up no matter what, the Talk Liberation team grew and grew.

From 2024 to 2025, the Talk Liberation team nearly tripled in size, stratifying into distributed product teams designing, architecting, building, testing, deploying and implementing new software solutions across a range of industries. Foremost amongst its publicly-known projects: Panquake, and digital marketing dashboard Lnqk Me.

Talk Liberation and Panquake founder Suzie Dawson said:

“Talk Liberation is all about going back to the future. We are creating cutting edge and modern software applications using foundational development tools, practices and methods from the dawn of the internet. The time before the normalisation of pervasive commercial surveillance. The time when privacy still existed. In order to resurrect that for future generations to experience and enjoy, we have to ensure that at every layer of our application, there exists nothing that could spy on you, exploit you or exfiltrate your data. It is no small challenge - but it is one we are provably realising.”
- Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation and Panquake founder

In a presentation at a tech conference at the end of 2024, Talk Liberation released their 2024 performance metrics, setting a high standard for independent projects developing commercial-grade solutions.

But those metrics have now been completely blown to smithereens by the progress that has been achieved in the year since.

The big one

“How many lines of code?” has been the shrill refrain of the dubiously qualified since time immemorial. Too many factors are involved in code production to make total lines of code much use as a standalone metric, except in situations where an organisation is persistently raising the bar on code quality. What it takes to pass into production in year 4 or 5 is a far cry from what would have made it through in year 1. And that’s entirely normal for any startup that successfully makes the transition to Early Stage Company and beyond.

Purely from the “how many lines” standpoint, here it is.

In 2025, Talk Liberation more than tripled the (net) amount of code produced in the year prior.

All the sleepless nights pay off: 2025 Metrics show exponential growth

Privacy isn’t just needed in social media - it’s needed across the digital space. Lnqk Me, Talk Liberation’s digital marketing dashboard takes the ethics of Panquake and applies them to link and QR code creation, branding and promotion at an enterprise level. Thanks to Lnqk Me, online businesses will be able to create collaborative campaigns, teams and digital assets for promotion online and track their effectiveness through Lnqk Me’s flexible and attractive analytics dashboard - without spying on their customers and communities.

The existence of Lnqk Me was first announced in November of 2024 and only one year later, has completed its Test Net phase and is now heading into Beta with public delivery expected imminently. Furthermore, we are able to reveal for the first time that Lnqk Me is already available in both desktop and in mobile.

“In 2025, Talk Liberation established a mobile application development team and has successfully built, tested and deployed both native iOS (.app) and Android (.apk) apps for Lnqk Me. The apps contain industry-first functionality, superior usability and intuitiveness as well as a super slick look-and-feel. This achievement heralds a bright and more mobile future for our users as we continue on to create mobile apps for Panquake and our other products to come!”

- Talk Liberation and Panquake founder Suzie Dawson

The below chart tracks Lnqk Me Productivity since the inception of the project. In particular, the ratios of tasks completed to tasks backlogged between October 2024 and the present day tells a huge story.

The life span of Panquake

Perhaps the most fascinating chart is the Panquake Productivity Chart, which stretches across most of the lifetime of the project.

The data really tells the full story - not only the distinct differences between the periods of stewardship of different technical managers but also the impact of the organisation at times being slow-walked or facing various external interference.

Getting our nerd on

Warning: Things are going to get even geekier from here. We could wax lyrical about the deep technicals but will save that for the white papers, the releases and the developer documentation. In the meantime, we’re happy to announce that our lead time for Lnqk Me is down ~60% in 2025. The lead time for Panquake is down ~30%. These figures reflect the dramatic improvements in effectiveness of our team processes.

On the network, server and systems side, the late 2024 hires of extremely capable and experienced DevOps, blockchain and cybersecurity staffers has been completely transformational for the business. They have been deep-diving, diagnosing and reconditioning every aspect of our internals while providing guidance to our dozens of developers. While there is still enormous remediation and automation projects ongoing in support of producing scaleable product databases, infrastructure and fallbacks that will service millions of users, their contributions have been seminal. This, along with the retention and training of a Delivery Manager has positively impacted the metrics that follow.

To understand how in the dark ages we were as a young, underfunded and under attack organisation, the following table reformats the raw data in the above pie chart to show exactly how stark the picture really was pre-2025.

Infrastructure acquisition is also consistently increasing, although as we move into the future, this is likely to dramatically escalate well beyond what is depicted below.

The Panquake blockchain

Engineering, performance testing and integrating your own custom Layer One network protocol is no mean feat. But that’s precisely what we are doing and in keeping with the original vision and principles of the purpose of the Panquake blockchain: not to facilitate monetary transactions, but to transparently record and cryptographically evidence the network activity of Panquake users. This provides network metrics that users can trust as the stats will be unable to be manipulated - even by us, the network provider.

In 2025 an enormous amount of work by some absolutely incredible people went into progressing the Panquake blockchain build. The below is a slide from our 2025 annual technical report.

The section at the bottom of the above slide says it all. Here we are in 2025 - four years on - and we still have no AI, no Big Tech, no cookies or trackers and we still do not capture, exploit or sell anyone’s personal information.

THE NEXT PHASE: establishing new strategic partnerships and going to market

Talk Liberation is open for business. As mentioned earlier and is obvious from the statistics provided, the announcement of the Lnqk Me Beta applications (Desktop and mobile) as well as the onboarding of our Pilot Customers is imminent.

Given the scale of the opposition, we like to keep news about Panquake more under wraps however given that Panquake Lite is fully operational already it’s not much of a secret how well we are progressing towards release of the Panquake Beta.

It’s time for us to open ourselves up to new opportunities with new people and organisations equally committed to genuine, authentic privacy offerings for their audiences, users and communities.

Brave, forward-thinking people who want to be a part of the unique and exciting future we are heralding are welcome to reach out to us at contact@talkliberation.com

As always - we will end this post with an acknowledgement of all of the regular people around the world who backed our crowdfunding campaign that kicked this all off.

In honour of you, we never forget our promises to you. The products we build enshrine the ethics that attracted you to us from the beginning.

Thank you so much for all of your love, kindness and support. We can’t wait to put our products into your hands and have you enjoy the results of your belief in us.

Please help to break the silence imposed by censorship and political repression: follow, share, subscribe and support us.

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You can donate here to Talk Liberation’s Panquake campaign to support our fight against Big Tech social media censorship and user exploitation!

We will continue to keep you updated.

© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

Talk Liberation is committed to providing equal access for individuals with disabilities. To view an accessible version of this article, click here.

Key updates:

• Panquake - the best social network ever developed - has completed its Test Net phase and is now onboarding its first real users

• Dubbed ‘Panquake Lite’, the new application version is the final step before the long-awaited Panquake Beta release

• The first ‘quake’ message has been posted and Panquake Lite users circulate real content and have real interactions

• Content and interactions are queued for later publishing on the Panquake public blockchain

Please read and share our press release about it here: “Social media newcomer Panquake crosses the rubicon: ‘Real users, real accounts, real content’”

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It is so rare these days to achieve a genuine triumph of the people but this is precisely what is occurring.

It is an exciting and hugely satisfying moment as well as a poignant one.

It was announced in May of this year, 2025, that people-powered project Panquake was on an Alpha Test Net. This week, it graduated to ‘Panquake Lite’ - onboarding real accounts and real users in a process that will ultimately lead to public release.

The application has been purged of test data and test accounts and the first persistent, real accounts have been created. The users are real people, they are having real interactions and they are posting real content that is being piped into the Panquake blockchain queueing service for publishing upon Beta release.

Who was Eynelys Garcia?

Eynelys (pronounced Annelise) Garcia was Panquake’s Relationship Manager and an integral part of the early Panquake team. An online podcaster, political organiser and dynamite Operations Manager by trade, Eynelys was one of Panquake’s fiercest advocates and most loyal supporters. Tragically, she was killed in October of 2021. Eynelys was supporting and providing for her disabled sister and mother.

On 16 October 2021, Panquake founder Suzie Dawson posted the last voice memo and online chat message she had received from Eynelys, just hours before her passing. It captures her infectious laughter, kind-natured and giving spirit and generosity.

Speaking about Panquake Lite this week, Suzie Dawson said: “I am so proud of our team for having achieved this milestone, and I am so excited for our community. Against all odds and in spite of every trial and tribulation we have faced, we have continually progressed this project in good faith, working tirelessly to deliver on our commitments to all those who believe in and support us. We have never forgotten who we are, why we do what we do, or who was a part of making it happen. The first ‘quake’ message ever to be published on our network being a tribute to Eynelys Garcia brings us full circle. At her memorial service I promised that Panquake would find a way to honor Eynelys in a lasting way. Memorialising Eynelys in the Panquake blockchain is a fulfillment of that promise and I know she would be absolutely thrilled to be remembered this way.”

“We have never forgotten who we are, why we do what we do, or who was a part of making it happen. The first ‘quake’ message ever to be published on our network being a tribute to Eynelys Garcia brings us full circle. At her memorial service I promised that Panquake would find a way to honor Eynelys in a lasting way. Memorialising Eynelys in the Panquake blockchain is a fulfillment of that promise and I know she would be absolutely thrilled to be remembered this way.” - Panquake founder Suzie Dawson

Walking through the fire

Many of our supporters warned us from the beginning how difficult it would be to pull off a project like Panquake. They knew the full weight of the establishment would be thrown against us and they were absolutely correct.

From our Twitter accounts being eradicated, to our Paypal donations being frozen, to our seed funding being withheld from us by Bad Banki, to 24/7 smear campaigns, persistent cyberattacks on our hosting and infrastructure - you name it, we’ve been through it.

But while they may have slowed us down at times, we never stopped. Our commitment and determination to help to transform the trajectory of social platforms, the online conversational space and more broadly, the internet writ large, has carried us through from milestone to milestone regardless.

Your support has been the foundation upon which we continue to build this transformative platform. We are so grateful to you.

So what’s next?

With the Test Net phase behind us, Panquake is now beginning to undergo the real crash test: facilitating conversations and interactions between real users. We will collect and incorporate their daily feedback and use it to substantively improve the application going forward.

Together we are methodically progressing towards the integration of the blockchain, onboarding our Beta users, and bringing our shared dream to a reality.

We are proud to confirm that we will, as promised, be publishing Panquake’s code open source. This will validate in a transparent way that we have kept every promise we made about how the application would process network data and how it would function.

In an age of seemingly never-ending restrictions on free speech, freedom of political thought, of association, of expression and the automation of privacy violations at a global scale, Panquake is needed more than ever.

Please help to break the silence imposed by censorship and political repression: follow, share, subscribe and support us.

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Follow our campaign against our 2022 de-banking at BadBanki.com. We are suing the bank who damaged our community and you can donate here to Talk Liberation’s Panquake campaign to support the fight back.

We will continue to keep you updated!

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© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

Talk Liberation is committed to providing equal access for individuals with disabilities. To view an accessible version of this article, click here.

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On Tuesday 2nd September our team, together with Wikileaks’ Icelandic lawyers, reconvened at the Reykjavik courthouse with expectations of seeing justice unfold. Earlier this year, Islandsbanki refused to testify until compelled to do so by the judge. This time, the bank produced their witness - a young bank lawyer - and the focus of the hearing was on their testimony. Unfortunately, more often the not the witness answered questions with “I don’t know” or “I can’t remember.”

John Kiriakou, former CIA whistleblower & Panquake Brand Ambassador, joined our Media Director Fiorella Isabel in Reykjavik, Iceland.

“I think it could not have gone better for Talk Liberation. There was only one witness today. He was an internal attorney for the bank and he was unable to even answer some of the most basic questions” - John Kiriakou, Talk Liberation Brand Ambassador

The bank’s representative appeared unprepared for many specific lines of inquiry, at least eight times responding with "I don't know" or "I don't remember,"

These non-answers came in regards to: the bank's efforts (or lack thereof) to engage with Talk Liberation during the process of freezing our accounts and debanking us; their compliance (or lack thereof) with broader Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations; his (lack of) knowledge of EU banking laws; and whether standard steps for seeking clarification were followed before taking the severe action of freezing our account.

“The Talk Liberation attorney asked him during questioning if he was acquainted with EU banking laws and he simply said no, he wasn’t. The fact of the matter is, even as an outsider I could see it - I’m not an attorney - I could see that Talk Liberation had the truth behind it, had documents behind it, had sworn testimony behind it. And the bank’s position was - well, trust us, that we did our best to follow the laws of Iceland.” - John Kiriakou, Talk Liberation Brand Ambassador

Here we list just several of the bank witness’s responses:

1. Question from the Judge: “Did the bank advise Talk Liberation what was happening?”

   Bank witness answer: “I don’t remember”

2. Question from Talk Liberation’s attorney: “Did the bank look into the AML database?”

   Bank witness answer: “I don’t know”

3. Question from Talk Liberation’s attorney: “Does the law require that a report go into the AML database?” [when an account is frozen]

   Bank witness answer: “I don’t know”

4. Question from Talk Liberation’s attorney: “Did the bank consider whether Talk Liberation broke the law?”

   Bank witness answer: “The bank has never accused Talk Liberation of a crime. The bank was doing due diligence. There are many reasons why a bank would decline business.”

5. Question from Talk Liberation’s attorney: “Are you familiar with EU banking laws?”

   Bank witness answer: “No”

6. Question from Talk Liberation’s attorney: “Did the bank call the police?”

   Bank witness answer: “I don’t know”

7. Question from Talk Liberation’s attorney: “Couldn’t you have just asked for answers to your questions?”

   Bank witness answer: “We thought we had the answers we needed.”

Well, at least he showed up - but clearly, these are not the answers of someone that is well informed, whether intentionally or by circumstance. So then, what did the witness say that was of any relevance at all?

KYC & Beneficial Ownership

The bank's witness stated that an “unusually high sum” (our $1 million USD seed funding that was frozen) had triggered a mandatory Know Your Customer (KYC) review to confirm our beneficial ownership.

It is worth noting that in June, Talk Liberation founder Suzie Dawson testified that the bank itself didn’t even realise the funds had cleared in until Talk Liberation informed the bank that the money had been deposited into the account. The bank appeared to be none the wiser. In fact, Talk Liberation had twice informed the bank in writing that the transaction had occurred and that the money was sitting in our bank account, before the bank froze the funds with no notice.

With regards to the belated KYC procedure, the Islandsbanki witness stated that they encountered “discrepancies” regarding who ultimately controlled our company. Talk Liberation supplied the bank with a current Certificate of Incumbency (the correct document to provide in such a situation) that showed the shareholdings yet the bank refused to acknowledge the validity of the document.

Talk Liberation responded by voluntarily providing internal email communications to the bank to prove the provenance of the documentation; that it had been legitimately obtained and was not manipulated in any way, but the bank ignored this.

Talk Liberation repeatedly requested meetings with the bank and offered to facilitate connecting the bank with the regulatory authorities in their place of domecile, in order to confirm the authenticity of the documentation. The bank failed to accept Talk Liberation’s efforts to achieve resolution and instead closed Talk Liberation’s bank accounts permanently.

“Money not withheld”

In court, Islandsbanki painted a vastly different picture. They incredulously claimed to have never received the emails from Talk Liberation notifying them about the funds, claiming that the emails were sent to a “general” customer services inbox which was somehow not specific enough, although no other address or directive around communications had been provided to Talk Liberation.

Because their interpretation of the documentation was that it was somehow flawed, according to them, that legally obligated Islandsbanki to lock the accounts and then to cease the business relationship with Talk Liberation and have our services terminated. Meanwhile, the bank’s counsel was adamant that Talk Liberation’s funds were not withheld as “we could transfer them to another bank.”

Funnily enough, after our funds were frozen and we were debanked by Islandsbanki, no other bank in Iceland would provide services to us. Which leads us right back to the questions of what Islandsbanki wrote in the AML system, that the bank lawyer claims not to know anything about.

In the meantime, our Icelandic corporate attorneys tried to accept the offer from the bank to return our funds, providing their own lawyer’s trust account for the funds to be transferred into. But Islandsbanki refused to process the transaction, because the lawyers also banked with Islandsbanki. Creating a Catch-22 where they could claim willingness to return the funds while themselves obstructing the return of them.

Talk Liberation’s Icelandic attorney Sveinn Sveinsson later commented that the way the bank operated in court lacked transparency:

“That was not in their favor, they are not informing about the possible registration or suspicious activity registration on the Anti-Money Laundering database and they are saying that “we are not allowed to inform”, but they are of course allowed to inform if there is no such letter or no such registration or no such information in this database.

But this all comes to, as I was trying to emphasize, this system where the bank themselves are the rulers and they follow the rules, they implement the rules and there’s no such thing as transparency or the possibility of the client to protest or anything.

This is not a government body that is making decision, these are privately owned banks that make decisions and they rely on databases that are owned by privately owned companies” — Talk Liberation’s Icelandic attorney Sveinn Sveinsson

Unfortunately, the hearing left us with more questions than answers, following the witness’s testimony:

1. Did Islandsbanki have a valid suspicion around our company ownership, when it had in fact been provided with valid proof of ownership?

2. Was there an AML report submitted to the global AML database?

3. If so, are there unfounded accusations or suspicions ascribed to Talk Liberation in it, which caused other banks to shy away from doing business with us?

4. Who will keep the bank accountable, when it is answerable to no one but its internal procedures, which it refuses to produce or reveal - even in a court of law?

Under Icelandic law, only a judge can look into the AML records held by the banks — without which we will not know which information was recorded and therefore never really know the full story of what happened to us.

The judge is now expected to take four to six weeks to deliver a decision.

We will keep you informed of the outcome.

Want to support us? You can donate to Talk Liberation’s Panquake campaign.

Look out for more of our court case updates across our social media and at BadBanki.com.

You can also write to us, reach out on social media or contact our Media Director for interviews and commentary.

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© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

Talk Liberation is committed to providing equal access for individuals with disabilities. To view an accessible version of this article, click here.

Let’s review the story so far: In June, an Icelandic judge sided with Talk Liberation’s request to compel testimony from Islandsbanki staff. The major Icelandic bank debanked us in 2022 and froze our seed funding — before backtracking and returning our funds to us nine months later, but still leaving us without an apology, compensation or the ability to operate our accounts. Worse - we’ve struggled to find new banking services in Iceland, likely because Islandsbanki’s actions against us are recorded in the international AML (Anti Money Laundering) system which are accessed by all banks.

So we sued, and after nearly three years of battling to get to this point, Islandsbanki is now being forced to show some of their cards. The bank had claimed to be immune from giving testimony in the case, but that didn’t hold up in court and they are now required to testify in their defence today - Tuesday, 2nd September 2025.

Our team is back on the ground and will be reporting from the courtroom in Reykjavik, Iceland as we hear the bank’s testimony and hopefully, see justice unfold.

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As we continue to shed light on the systemic hurdles that we face in trying to bring ethical technology to the masses, people the world over are sharing in our plight. We’ve featured on shows like Redacted with Clayton Morris, the UK Column, New Zealand publication The Daily Blog and more. We’ve also been documenting our progress as well as tracking and aggregating global news about the tidal wave of debanking cases caused by banks and their practices — check out BadBanki.com!

A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved

Recently, our story broke in mainstream Icelandic media, where publications such as Morgunbladid and Útvarp Saga took a supportive view of our ordeal.

While banks have a mandate to de-platform criminal activity, weaponized debanking is an abuse of human rights in order to achieve total surveillance and economic control. It is the fight of our era as economic freedoms underpin all facets of modern life.

Together with media and your voices, we will succeed at bringing ethics back to the internet.

“Software company Talk Liberation, which operates the social media platform Panquake, has filed a lawsuit against Íslandsbanki and is seeking recognition of the bank’s liability for compensation due to the freezing of the company’s funds.

Panquake is a decentralized social media platform founded by supporters of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Sveinn Andri Sveinsson, former Wikileaks attorney, is representing Talk Liberation in the case, where he says the bank has caused the company considerable damage.

The company was established in Iceland because Iceland was considered exemplary when it comes to data privacy and the protection of journalists and information, and Sveinn Andri has previously represented Wikileaks in a case against Valitor” - Icelandic mainstream publication Morgunbladid [emphasis added].

Islandsbanki (Iceland Bank) arbitrarily and without any warning, froze our accounts and seized nearly $1 million USD in investor funds that the accounts held. The bank invoked money laundering and anti-terrorism financing laws before backtracking, which effectively exonerated us from any wrongdoing. But it was too late - the damage had already been done.

To date, the bank has not adequately explained their decision-making nor provided ample evidence to back up their suspicions. For three years, Talk Liberation have been waiting for answers.

‘Extent of damage unclear’

The bank’s actions threw all of our development and hiring plans into disarray and brought our Icelandic operations to an abrupt halt. Even though the funds were eventually returned, Islandsbanki has never compensated us nor our loyal community for the damages that they caused.

‘The funds have now been returned, but of course, they could not be utilized in the meantime. This caused significant damage to the company, as the funds were intended to be paid to programmers and other Icelandic staff for handling the setup and management of this website’” — Sveinsson told Morgunbladid.

The true ‘extent of the damage’ goes beyond the inability to cement contracts and proceed with business plans and commercial arrangements, to the more intangible - reputational damage, brand damage, and most importantly, damage to the goodwill of our large, international community of supporters. We are very cognisant of the dismay, doubt and despair that they were caused to experience by Islandsbanki throwing a spanner into the works of Panquake.

We continue to fight for justice for every person that volunteered their time, resources and belief in bringing our project to fruition, at a time when it was needed most.

Before it was unscrupulously interrupted.

‘Completely unacceptable’

International AML (Anti Money Laundering) systems that banks feed information about their customers into, are supposed to operate according to underpinning legislation. In Iceland, this is the provisions of the 'Act on Measures Against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing No.140/2018'. Sveinsson points to a lack of transparency in the internal rules and protocols that the bank applied while assessing our transactions and difficulty gaining access to assess whether they complied with the legislation.

‘The problem is that the enforcement of the Act is left to the banks, which are private entities. Their systems and rules lack transparency, and they refuse to provide information about their internal procedures. The government is not involved — only vague internal rules of the banks, which are based on databases that no one knows the contents of’ — Sveinsson told Morgunbladid.

“Sveinn Andri says that such supervision should certainly be in the hands of public authorities.

‘That would be entirely more appropriate. This supervision is based on information that often cannot be corrected or amended, and it may include all kinds of notes entered into the database by bank employees — notes that are treated as absolute truth. This is completely unacceptable’” — Sveinsson told Morgunbladid.

According to the Icelandic AML legislation, only the judge has the power to order disclosure of the AML records that pertain to Talk Liberation and Islandsbanki. A key objective of Talk Liberation is to obtain access to those records in order to be able to accurately assess the veracity of the information contained in them.

Political implications

Talk Liberation founder Suzie Dawson makes no secret of her career in activism and citizen journalism prior to founding our ethical tech start up in 2021. Naturally, and after exhausting all avenues to clear our name with the bank — factors of a personal nature became our primary lead in this investigation.

Icelandic radio station Útvarp Saga 99.4 has delved into the possible political implications of our case, which, if provable, could amount to a form of political discrimination.

“[Suzie] Dawson has worked as a journalist [who] publicly supported Wikileaks. Her lawyer, Sveinn Sveinsson, is the same lawyer who won a case for Wikileaks against Valitor in 2017. Dawson believes that the bank's actions towards the company is part of a larger pattern in which [the unpleasant voices are wrong all the way down through the financial system] — writes Útvarp Saga [internet translation].

Our case is not just about Talk Liberation – it represents the future of economic freedoms in the digital world. Over the past few months, we’ve documented hundreds of cases of ordinary people being debanked and who are suffering in silence. We are here to amplify their voices, just as you help to amplify ours — by reading, learning and sharing.

Look out for more of our court case updates across our social media and at BadBanki.com.

You can also write to us, reach out on social media or contact our Media Director for interviews and commentary.

Subscribe now

© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

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Talk Liberation is committed to providing equal access for individuals with disabilities. To view an accessible version of this article, click here.

For four years technologist Suzie Dawson has toiled quietly and relentlessly, building and growing startup social project Panquake into Talk Liberation - a fully-fledged international software development house capable of delivering the digital tools of the future to millions of internet users worldwide who are rightly desperate for fundamental change. The vision her team is working to bring to fruition is much-needed: more ethical, more people-centric and heralding a sea change: a far less dystopian dynamic than that presented to us by all other present confronting realities in media, culture and society today.

Talk Liberation is proof that technology doesn’t need to architecturally constrain or control human rights in order to serve users but can instead reinforce them - and in doing so, empower, inform, inspire and engage a customer base instead of just exploiting them for data.

“We believe in human rights, and we believe that human rights should be embedded in the platforms that we access and that we use. Right now, the status quo situation is that you have to give up your human rights when you use a platform, and it should not be that way. The platform itself should have the integrity, structural integrity, from an architectural perspective, but also in the commercialisation model, to reinforce your human rights. And that’s exactly what Panquake does as a social network, but more broadly, is what Talk Liberation does as a software development company.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

Working with talented and heart-driven team members in more than a dozen countries around the world, Talk Liberation is maturing into a modern technological force to be contended with. The dinosaurs of industry have already taken notice: Banks in Iceland and New Zealand have tried throwing spanners in the works of Talk Liberation but the scrappy tech business is fighting back, filing suit to hold them to account and launching public awareness campaigns like ‘Bad Banki’ to educate audiences about how traditional financial utilities are employing questionable tactics like ‘debanking’ that violate foundational economic freedoms in order to restrict innovation and keep newcomers down.

The old has always railed against the new - but the need for fundamental change in the tech industry is so obvious and profound, that progress will not be halted and nor will the emergence of viable alternatives, even if the powers that be slow walk them. One way or another, solutions are coming.

Recently, founder Suzie Dawson sat down with TruthWire hosts Craig ‘Pasta’ Jardula and Talk Liberation Media Director Fiorella Isabel to dig into the what, why and when of the new social world Talk Liberation is building for users worldwide.

What’s discussed:

• The Evolution: how a group of volunteers created Talk Liberation - and grew it into an international software development house

• The Tech: how keeping Big Tech, cloud computing and AI out of Talk Liberation’s technology frees users and and keeps Talk Liberation platforms truly independent

• The Ethos: how human rights are embedded and reinforced through innovation

• The Challenges: the opposition Talk Liberation has faced and is facing and how others worldwide must step up and be part of improving the internet for everyone

There is a real human-generated (not AI!) audio transcript provided below. Please share this post if these messages resonate with you!

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[Transcript begins]

FIORELLA – Alright. So we’re going to bring in our guest. One of the reasons I wanted to further talk about this is because there is a gigantic global trend on the issue of de-banking, and the issue of financial persecution, fam. We very well know that when it comes to, for example, independent journalists and independent media, and anybody that’s a dissident - if you are financially throttled, and if you are financially squeezed, you become incapable of doing what you need to do. Whether it’s your journalism or whatever other projects you may have. And we’ve been affected by the censorship. We’ve been affected by the de-throttling. And we also saw what happened during Covid. And how many people, of course in the infamous trucker movement that stood against the mandates, were also completely and totally throttled, and their bank accounts were frozen. And we have seen this trend grow in the UK. We have seen this grow, and be a concern even in the United States. And we also, really linking that, we have the issue of censorship/surveillance, and the internet data mining people to a degree that it’s becoming impossible for us to have a fair play at the system, meaning X has an algorithm that promotes a certain type of narrative. And we’ve seen it, we’ve talk about it just pretty much every time on this show. I get spammed a lot on X. I get crypto-boxed. And then, when it comes to Meta, Facebook has become just a complete nightmare. They completely are just deleting profiles everywhere. And so, as we’ve talked before with John Kiriakou, who came on the show and talked about what Panquake is, and what Talk Liberation is, and the products they have out. And I’ve been talking about it as well. I did an article in UK Column talking about everything that’s been going on. So I wanted to bring in a guest today that we haven’t had on. And, you know, she has been doing a lot of work behind the scenes, and really hasn’t been on too many independent media shows in a while. And she is somebody that I’ve known now for a while, and whose work ethic I’ve seen develop really well. So let’s go ahead and bring our guest in. She is the Founder and CPO of Panquake. She’s also an activist, a journalist, and a software developer, and a political dissident I would say. This is Suzie Dawson. Let’s welcome Suzie, fam.

CRAIG – Welcome Suzie. I guess, is what my part is to do. Suzie, you heard a lot of what Fiorella was saying, and welcome to the show by the way. I’d just like to add on all the things she had mentioned, and things she had mentioned in her article about the hurdles and what we’re dealing with. For me, it’s all about recreating or finding a place that will be the new public square, right. And that’s what I’ve always wanted, envisioned Panquake to be, or any other type of, you know, a platform that would come along, where it’s a free and fair public square. Where the, you know, the tech bros or the tech technocrats can’t manipulate because I’ve always said that, to me it would be a miracle if Panquake was to get off the ground because I don’t believe the ruling class would ever allow a public square that’s free and fair.

SUZIE - Hi guys.

FIORELLA – Exactly. Welcome Suzie, And before you go, I just want to, you know, – everything that Pasta said is so accurate. I want to let you respond to it, but I also just want to ask you in case people don’t know what, you know, the article that I have in UK Column that we’ll share in the chat right now, but in case people don’t know, what exactly have been some of the hurdles so far that you have experienced, and the company, Talk Liberation, as a whole in Iceland and also in New Zealand as well now?

“It’s all about that level playing field; about bringing actual genuine grassroots democracy to a social media platform, and giving everybody a fair go at being seen, and being heard, and being able to communicate.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

SUZIE – OK, it’s a big topic and a long story, but I will do my best to tell it. So first of all, thanks for having me guys. It’s really great to be here with you. Fi is right, I’ve known and loved her for a long time already, and I’ve seen a lot of Pasta’s work online, and it’s really special to get to be here with him as well. So I appreciate the opportunity

CRAIG – Flattery will get you everywhere, Suzie.

SUZIE – That’s genuine. That’s definitely genuine. OK. So Talk Liberation, our company, was founded in 2021 because of the support of thousands and thousands of regular people online. Because of their support, we’ve been able to build a multi-national corporate structure. A business that is robust and is vast, and is operating now in countries around the world. Our flagship project is Panquake, as you mentioned, which is a social network that solves, once and for all, our problems that we’re all having with Big Tech social media platforms. That means timelines that you control, that you decide what is in front of your eyeballs on your timeline. It’s not determined by some content algorithm by advertisers, by AI, or by the platform operators – us. We don’t decide. You decide. You pick who you want to follow. You get to see their content on your timeline, and you see nothing else. So it’s really an old school approach in terms of software development. We’re not relying on robots, we’re not relying on AI, we’re not relying on algorithms. Everything’s very, very organic, not just in the way the product functions for the user, but in the way we’ve built the product because we’ve built the product using independent open source tools and projects. No cloud hosting services, no AI services, no Big Tech. We’re not using Microsoft stuff. We’re not using Amazon, Google, any of that junk. We’ve stripped everything out, except organic open source independent tech. And thanks to an amazing team of what started out as volunteers in 2021, we have built this amazing application, Panquake. And Fi, I know, has actually got to already use Panquake. She’s one of the lucky people, one of the first in the world to get use it because Panquake is up on a test network right now. But obviously it’s been a long run from 2021 as a volunteer project with no funding, to 2025 as a multi-national corporation operating companies around the world. We are approaching our 50 staff milestone working for Talk Liberation now, which is absolutely huge, and we’ve been able to successfully obtain funding because what we’ve built is so rock solid, and so great, and so obviously valuable to consumers around the world. Panquake is a subscription based application. It’s five dollars a month for anybody, any subscriber. We do not allow paid advertising on the platform. Corporations have – it’s like a level playing field. Corporations who want to use Panquake for advertising have to get a regular account, pay the five bucks like everyone else, attract followers to actually follow them in order to be able to see their content. They can’t use money to get ahead on our platform. Joe Bloggs down the road has got the same ability to build a following, and obtain reach for his content as, you know, some oil company or god-knows-what government does. So it’s all about that level playing field; about bringing actual genuine grassroots democracy to a social media platform, and giving everybody a fair go at being seen, and being heard, and being able to communicate. And obviously this is inspired from my background as a human rights activist. We believe in human rights, and we believe that human rights should be embedded in the platforms that we access and that we use. Right now, the status quo situation is that you have to give up your human rights when you use a platform, and it should not be that way. The platform itself should have the integrity, structural integrity, from an architectural perspective, but also in the commercialisation model, to reinforce your human rights. And that’s exactly what Panquake does as a social network, but more broadly, is what Talk Liberation does as a software development company. So we have solutions that we’ve already released to the public for free, such as Panquake Me – P.N.Q.K. dot Me – our short link service, which people are using every single day to protect themselves and their audiences when they’re sharing content online because it strips out all the nasty Google cookies, and everything else that gets put into links to track users, and gives you clean short links that you can use to share with your friends and family without participating in spying on them or capturing their data. And we have, alongside Panquake, a whole suite of other products in development, and also in design as well. We actually have five products. We’ve only talked about three publicly, and I’m not going to talk about the other two right now, but we actually have five products in our stable already. And our organization has been built every step of the way with a very long term view in mind, of being able to develop products for normal, average every day consumers, but also for businesses as well, that take the same ethics and moral compass of Panquake into different areas of life. So we want to make the internet a better place, more broadly, and a safer place for people. One that doesn’t spy on them, and doesn’t track them, and doesn’t monetize their data and sell it off to people. But we also want to change the ability of people to do business with each other, and participate in commercial activities, also without capturing user data or participating in the nasty side of Big Tech. So we’re kinda trying to make an ethical Microsoft to be honest with you; or an ethical Oracle. We want to be able to develop, one day, browsers and operating systems, and other types of software even beyond just the social media realm, and have them be able to protect the users who engage with the products, rather than exploiting them.

“Our organization has been built every step of the way with a very long term view in mind, of being able to develop products for normal, average every day consumers, but also for businesses as well, that take the same ethics and moral compass of Panquake into different areas of life. So we want to make the internet a better place, more broadly, and a safer place for people. One that doesn’t spy on them, and doesn’t track them, and doesn’t monetize their data and sell it off to people.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

CRAIG – Nice. And by the way ladies and gentlemen, that is Big Tech out there, not Bit Tick. She’s talking about Big Tech out there. Just so you know, you know what I’m saying.

SUZIE – (Laughing) We need the American ‘e’ in there rather than the New Zealand ‘e’.

CRAIG – Yeah. Fam, do you want to go ahead, or do you want me to ask some questions.

FIORELLA – No, go ahead, go ahead.

CRAIG – Well, ok. So, I mean everything you say we’re jiving with, and there’s a lot of people out there who’ve heard a lot of this stuff for quite some time. Now, the first avenue of questions I want to ask you is going over the hurdles because I don’t think that anybody out there, I think most of the people who’ve heard your spiel, your pitch out there before; what you see Panquake becoming; what it is; what it can be; they’re cool with that, but a lot of people are a little bit frustrated that the product itself hasn’t come out, right. Like no matter, I’ve said regardless of what you’ve heard, we can talk about Suzie, we can talk about the product, we can talk about, whatever, why it’s taking so long. At the end of the day, you know, if it comes out, and it is what she says it’s going to be, all is forgiven. Nobody cares anymore. But at this point, there’s a lot of people who have made statements like, “no it’s scamquake, it’s never going to come out.” I know a lot of these people, they aren’t trying to do what you’re trying to do. That’s why I’m not so critical because I’m not trying to do and start a whole start up of a public square that can be something special, and something we desperately need. But I am one who is a little bit frustrated, and a little impatient at this point, like, come on Suzie, is this going to happen. Stop teasing me. When is this going to happen? When can we expect it to come out? How can you address your critics that are saying it’s never going to come out, this is just a whole nothing ball?

SUZIE – Well, the first thing I’d do is actually kick it to Fiorella because she’s logged into Panquake, made a Panquake profile, posted on a Panquake timeline, interacted with other people on Panquake, and has seen for herself that, not only does it exist and it’s real, but it’s pretty freaking cool.

CRAIG – Yeah.

SUZIE – That’d be the first thing. So yes, we did build the product. Yes, the product is everything that we promised it would be. It looks like we said it would look. It functions how we said it would function. In terms of delivery, we have a track record of delivery. We’ve delivered open source code bases, two of them so far. You can go and see, you can go and examine our code. You can go and see what a Panquake release looks like, what a Talk Liberation release looks like. So this is the real deal. Panquake will be published with all of its code. It will be examined by security researchers around the world, just as our previous two releases have been. So, again, that becomes self-evident. As to why it’s taking so long, unsurprisingly, we have had every conceivable thing thrown at us in the last four years. There’s been people, if they are in fact people, online twenty four seven posting two hundred tweets a day claiming that we’ve never written a line of code, which is obviously ridiculous. We have had the smear campaigns. Every single person I ever know, or talked to, or have interacted with, has been bombarded with ridiculous, insane smears about me and my organization. That’s kind of par for the course I guess these days, but then we had Twitter themselves wipe out all of the Panquake Twitter accounts, including our entire initial following from our initial campaign. Suspend them all, then un-suspend them, and then permanently ban them all for no stated reason, so that was a real pain in the butt in terms of being able to effectively communicate with our audience. On top of that, we had Paypal freeze thousands of dollars of donations, and never give them to us. And as we have revealed recently, the biggest hit that we took was in September of 2022, which was right after we had done our interface reveal of the application front end to our audience, which was really well received. And that was when we had obtained our initial seed funding to fund the blockchain build. And that funding, we did everything right. We had lawyers and accountants handling everything. We provided all documentation, everything, we were very proactive. We notified the banks in advance. We did everything right. And literally, at 4pm on a Friday afternoon, the bank froze our entire seed funding with no notice, and then ultimately took nine or ten months to actually give it back to us. So all of our plans for hiring, and operational plans, and infrastructure spend, and all the things we needed to do overnight just got burned to the ground. And because of that, we are suing. And we are really lucky to be represented by Wikileaks’ Icelandic legal team, who successfully won a ten million dollar suit against a payment processor acting on behalf of Visa and Mastercard in Iceland. We are headed to court next month in June. It’s been three years coming that we’ve been preparing this case, and this suit, and we’ve gone through various pre-trial hearings and stuff before this. And we are suing them for the damage that they did to our organization because that absolutely crippled us when that happened in 2022. In terms of the Panquake blockchain build, it crippled us. But we didn’t quit, and we didn’t give up. And we didn’t say, oh that’s too hard,” or “Oh well, you know, the opposition is too stiff.”

“The product is everything that we promised it would be. It looks like we said it would look. It functions how we said it would function. In terms of delivery, we have a track record of delivery. We’ve delivered open source code bases, two of them so far. You can go and see, you can go and examine our code. You can go and see what a Panquake release looks like, what a Talk Liberation release looks like. So this is the real deal.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

CRAIG – Suzie, can I ask one quick question. I don’t mean to interrupt, but I think it’s important to understand why is that the blockchain build is very important and necessary to the product, right? Can you explain really briefly in your description - I didn’t mean to cut you off – but I think people out there are thinking why is that blockchain build out so important that it needs to happen for Panquake to happen? Please.

SUZIE – Panquake is designed to be the first platform that is truly transparent to its customer base in the way that it operates and the way that it moderates content, as well as the way that users connect to each other and participate in the publishing of the data on the network. So in Twitter, when you send a tweet, you’re actually not sending it to who you think you’re sending it to. You’re sending it to Twitter, and it’s going into a little box controlled by Twitter, and then Twitter is deciding what it wants to do with it, and then maybe doing something with it according to their agenda. And you’ll never know what that agenda truly is. And you’ll never know how that data is actually handled and processed. And if they decide to moderate or, you know, suspend your account, for example, like they did to us, you’ll never know who did that; who made that decision; why they did it; when they did it; where they did it. But Panquake is the complete opposite. On Panquake, every action that is taken by any user, whether it’s creating content and publishing content, whether it’s interacting with other users; clicking the like button; sharing something, or whether it is us at Panquake suspending, or banning, or editing, or deleting. All of that is published on a public blockchain, openly. So if we suspend an account, the whole world can see Panquake suspended this account, on this day, at this time, for this reason, and this is who did it. And that is completely revolutionary. Imagine if you could actually see Facebook’s moderation practices. If you could audit them. If you could verify them. Imagine if there was a...

CRAIG – I think they should have to do it. I think it should be legal to protect you from...230, a NDNA, if you have protection, you need to show your homework. You need to show why you’re suspending these people out there. I don’t mean to interrupt, but I think that is very, very important. And that is something revolutionary when you start talking about this, Suzie, that it really, you know, it’s like, wow, one of those things. So I’m sorry for interrupting, but I thought it was just important. So, please go.

“Panquake is designed to be the first platform that is truly transparent to its customer base in the way that it operates and the way that it moderates content, as well as the way that users connect to each other and participate in the publishing of the data on the network.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

SUZIE – I agree with you. This is all about fundamentally rebalancing the power dynamic between the platform owners and the users of the platform because right now the platform owners have all the power, and no transparency, and no accountability. And we’re not OK with that. And so we want our userbase to be able to audit and check up on us, and what we’re doing, and the blockchain provides that level of transparency, but it also provides integrity for platform metrics. Meaning, on Facebook, there’s a thousand likes on a post. Did a thousand people actually click like on that post? Do you know that a thousand people did? Do you know that maybe it was like 50, and they changed it to a thousand? Or maybe it was a hundred thousand, and they went no, no, no, and put that back to a thousand. Same thing on Twitter. How the hell do you know that Elon Musk’s video got ten zillion views? You have no way to verify that ten zillion people actually saw his video. And it’s designed that way. It’s a closed system. It’s a black box system. And the owners are able to manipulate all of the data in that system, and they’re able to get away with it completely. But on Panquake, not just our platform moderation actions, but your actions, your public actions and interactions as users, are validated in transactions on the blockchain. So if a thousand people click like on a Quake on Panquake, there is one thousand traceable, auditable, publicly available transactions proving that one thousand real users clicked on that button. Not nine hundred and ninety nine, not one thousand and one. So the platform itself has a fundamental structural integrity that is lacking in every other social media application, and that’s why the blockchain is so important. There’s just one more point I’ll make on that, which is it’s also a peer to peer network, and every user who’s connected in the network, kind of like a meshnet, transmits data back and forth to each other, and shares copies of that data, which means that it’s not coming to us. So I just said to you before, when you connect on Twitter and you send a Tweet, you’re actually sending it to Twitter. Well when you send a quake on Panquake, you’re not sending it to Panquake. You’re sending it the other users of Panquake, who then participate in a process that validates that data, and then they all retain copies of that data so that they can verify they have the same data without there being that central black box repository that the data lives in. So that’s why the blockchain is so important. But, blockchain developers are not cheap. Blockchain architects and blockchain (inaudible) are not cheap. And losing all of our seed funding like (snap) that put a big hole in our plans. Now over time, we were able to recover, and like I said, the most important thing is we didn’t quit. We kept working. We kept working day and night, many times unpaid. Many times, if I’m being honest, I took my entire bank account and emptied it into the business to keep us going. I’ve had to do that several times, and I did it happily and gladly because that’s the role and responsibility of a leader in a business, to do that. But we had to beg, borrow, steal, pray on our knees, and work twenty hour days to keep the company alive, and keep the company delivering, and that’s exactly what we did. And that’s why we pivoted to doing the short URL service, and doing other projects that we knew we could complete and deliver, based off a combination of the work we’d already done building Panquake to that point, and the work that was continuing in the development of Panquake. we started designing and releasing other products in the interim, while we got established enough, and got on our feet enough to be able to pursue the completion of the Panquake blockchain.

“This is all about fundamentally rebalancing the power dynamic between the platform owners and the users of the platform because right now the platform owners have all the power, and no transparency, and no accountability. And we’re not OK with that. And so we want our userbase to be able to audit and check up on us, and what we’re doing, and the blockchain provides that level of transparency.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

FIORELLA – So Suzie, I just want to highlight the revolutionary aspect of what that means because if you can create a blockchain based platform, with no data going to Google; no data going to Meta; no data going to Elon Musk. That is, in this world, in this day and age, actually what Pasta said, revolutionary. And it is a threat, right, to the status quo. It is a threat to what controls this because Pasta and I, every day on this show, we talk about how literally people as journalists and also as geopolitical analysts, we sometimes struggle in a world where the narrative is managed. The narrative is captured. Everything is controlled, and I don’t think people pay enough attention to how we are basically being programmed to listen to certain voices. To listen to certain narratives that the majority of people have pushed on Twitter, we don’t know if they are organically pushed. Obviously, in my opinion, we do know because we’ve seen Elon Musk sort of choose these users that get seen and get, you know, heard, whereas everybody else gets spammed or gets completely shadow banned. So this would then in essence be a complete and total, I guess, a weapon for a lot of political people, for a lot of journalists, for a lot of causes that don’t really have a fair shake at the system; that don’t really have a fair way to get their ideas across. What then is, I guess, the possibility as Pasta eluded to earlier, that they would even allow something like this to happen because, as we’ve seen, you mentioned the issue in Iceland. The lawsuit in Iceland that is obviously, it’s time consuming. It’s distracting. It really created a delay in a lot of things, and now there’s an issue in New Zealand. What is the likelihood of them continuing to just endlessly throw this or that on you, and what excuses are you getting at this point, for the reasons for persecution because the way I see it, if I’m them, I would be very scared that something like this could come out.

CRAIG – Who are you pissing off back in your hometown, Suzie? What’s going on? What did you do?

SUZIE – That’s a great question. What did I do? In 2011, the Occupy movement happened, and for the first time I saw a solution to problems that had been plaguing the planet and my personal thoughts for years. Much as with Julian Assange and Wikileaks, who provided solutions to major problems, Panquake and Talk Liberation are about providing solutions to major problems. We all know what the problems are. I don’t think I need to go into that, but in moments where there is a solution, it’s really important to get behind it to give it the best chance that it has of making impact. And I don’t think that Talk Liberation and Panquake is the only solution. And I don’t want to build an everything app. I don’t want you to plug your bank account into Panquake. I don’t want to sell you a grocery shopping list, or a pair of shoes. I want to see other projects spawned around the world in a decentralized fashion that take the same ethics, the same ethos, and morals; fiber and commitment to human rights of Panquake, and bake that into their architecture, and to build communities around it because if our hopes for the social media space are pinned on Suzie Dawson, I don’t like the odds of that. I would much prefer, frankly, that Suzie Dawson could maybe inspire two or three or four or five other people with software development skills around the world to start their own projects that are interoperable. That use Open Source protocols. That maybe, one day, they can integrate their service with Panquake, and we can partner or do something together. It’s about building decentralized communities. It’s about having as many solutions as possible. It’s about dedicating your life and your time to being a part of those solutions in order to increase the likelihood that all of us are somehow going to make it out of this shit show of a planet that has been engineered for us. That’s really what it’s all about at the core. And in New Zealand, I chose to stand up and be active and try and throw my support behind movements so that we could effect change. And sometimes we were kind of successful, and sometimes we weren’t successful at all. And sometimes we did some things that were actually really significant to the culture and to the political history of my country. It’s very much a mixed bag of tricks when you’re up against an international global military industrial complex with its tentacles in every layer of society and culture. I’m hearing Ray McGovern in my head saying, “We don’t fight because we’ll win, we fight because it’s the right thing to do.” That’s what we need to do. We can’t choose the sit on our ass and do nothing option. We can’t choose the give in, or even worse, participate in the tyranny option. We have to fight because it’s the right thing to do. And I still very much believe that. And everything about my life, and where I live, and what I do, and who I do it with, and everything else is all based around the fact that I made that decision to take whatever mental resources I had, and relationships I had, and be a part of the change. Be a part of the change in the right direction. So to more directly answer your question, I’m fully aware of what these people will do to try and shutdown Panquake. I’ve been subjected to it for four years. I knew it would happen before we even started the project. And yeah, it’s gonna be ugly, and it’s probably gonna get worse. And yes, in New Zealand, the establishment do not like me because I was a truth teller. They didn’t like my journalism. They didn’t like my activism. I exposed abuses of intelligence agencies, both international intelligence agencies and national intelligence agencies in New Zealand. They punished me greatly for that. Ultimately, I had to leave my country because of it. In later years, I was pretty thoroughly vindicated when the truth came out that, sure enough, exactly what I was saying all along had been happening. And who I was saying was doing it, had in fact been doing it. Nice to have that vindication, but not nice that those people are still in positions of power to this day, and still abusing their power, and still hurting people. And fundamentally, I want my life to be about creating systems that protect people, and not that hurt people. And that’s exactly what Panquake is. It is a system that protects people, instead of hurting them, in an industry where harm is inflicted upon people every day unnecessarily.

“I don’t think that Talk Liberation and Panquake is the only solution. And I don’t want to build an everything app. I don’t want you to plug your bank account into Panquake. I don’t want to sell you a grocery shopping list, or a pair of shoes. I want to see other projects spawned around the world in a decentralized fashion that take the same ethics, the same ethos, and morals; fiber and commitment to human rights of Panquake, and bake that into their architecture, and to build communities around it.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

CRAIG – So we know now what you’ve experienced with your personal critics, right. We know people in the same circles. We’ve been close to you. Some people who still believe in you. Some people who don’t believe in you. You’ve gone through the banking issue right now, where they’re de-platforming you. Obviously, they’re doing it through a different method of, you know, seizing your funds to the tune of nine, ten months. You can’t ignore that stuff. That stuff exists, right. So I think that lends credence to what you’re trying to do because if the banking industry is trying to stop you, you must be a threat to them. You understand that the ruling class, right, I mean, your history with Wikileaks and Julian Assange and stuff. I mean, he was creating a system that was very much liberating. Where people can tell, you know, what the government is doing without, you know, knowing the person they’re talking to at times. Creating this system where it’s just all about the liberation of the way politics and what the ruling class is doing. The real meaning of the fourth Estate, as Fiorella would say, is to hold the government accountable, right. The fourth estate. That’s what real journalism’s about. That’s what it’s meant to be a journalist. You seen all this happen now in front of you. What is the immediate plan now to get this over the finish line? Because, you know, I’ve said to Fiorella, regardless of anything that happens to Suzie, whatever, yada yada yada, I don’t see the ruling class ever allowing a platform that’s gonna be open sourced, and have transparency where they can’t control the narrative. They’ll never let Suzie’s Panquake take place because they will not allow it. Simply no way, right. But we’ve seen situations, from people’s points, Pavel Durov, and, you know, Telegram, you know they snatched him up because he was also saying that he wanted to produce something with transparency. It seems like now, he’s probably given in to the ruling class. He’s gonna give them what they want, their back doors, and everything they need to get. But what do you need right now, what’s the plan for the immediate future to get this over the finish line?

SUZIE – I’m smiling because I think that Fi knows that in our organization, there’s no shortage of plans. We’re pretty thorough.

CRAIG – What would you tell the people out there the immediate plan is? They don’t get the purple and orange and the yellow out there as much as they should, right. They used to be really excited for it. They thought that Panquake would be…

SUZIE – Look. I think that a big part of that is me because to be honest with you, I didn’t even bother going back to Twitter for the last several years. I haven’t seen a single tweet. I haven’t really posted videos. I haven’t really done any interviews because I’ve been working with my development team 24/7. So that’s how I spend about twenty hours a day if I’m being honest. About twenty hours a day of my life is spent bridging three shifts, across three different time zones around the world working with UI/UX designers. Working with software engineers. Working with dev ops. Working with analysts. Working with architects. This is what I do day to day. I’m not a content creator. I respect what content creators do because I know how time consuming it is, and how much thought and effort and energy goes into it. And how tied you are to continuing that journey of being a content creator. But for me, personally, that’s not something I ever wanted to do. I didn’t even want to be a public figure. I mean, if you actually know anything about me, I did everything I could to not get on stages, to not speak at events, to not do interviews. I have avoided the public eye by every possible means, except that on occasion I’ve needed information or truth to get out to the public, and I’ve had to step up and be that person who did it. That’s why I made my documentary “Diary Of A Person Of Interest,” because I needed people to have access to that information. It’s why I did all of my journalism. I never wrote an article because, you know, I was just reporting news or whatever. I wrote articles where there was an absolute dire necessity for people to have access to information, and to know and act on information. And so, I became the conduit for passing on that information. Not out of a personal aspiration to become a journalist, but out of a fundamental need for that process to happen. And that’s how, I’m pretty sure that’s why Julian starting picking up and promoting my work way back in 2014. He saw the scraps I was having on the ground in New Zealand. He knew I was being targeted. Many people who are actually smart and actually read people’s work and consume their work were able to see what was going on there. The writing was on the wall way before I ever left New Zealand, as to what was happening. If you study my work. If you read the articles I wrote. If you watch the videos I made. If you read the architectural documentation I’ve released, and the other thing, the published work of Panquake, which is a significant body. I mean, we’ve got something like sixty updates, I think, over the last four years. If you actually consume that content, you will come to your own understanding, and your own truth about this journey, and what’s going on, and where we’re going, and the kind of level of effort and drive that we’ve given it, without me having to sell it to you. You, yourself, will discover. You’ll make the discoveries, and you’ll be able to see the writing on the wall of what’s going on and what we’re up against, and how far we’ve come despite all of that shit that’s been thrown at us, and that will continue to be thrown at us. Super smart people will do their own research. They won’t believe what some dude DM’d them on Twitter saying ‘Don’t like Suzie’. They’ll actually go, “Mmmm, I just read ‘Understanding World War III’ in 2016, where Suzie just predicted kinetic action between Russia and NATO. Oh wow, she actually was an investigative journalist with a hundred source materials in a single article, and that’s why Julian Assange was sharing her work.” They’ll work these things out for themselves. They won’t need to, you know, look at a popularity contest online to decide whether or not I have credibility. The credibility is in the work product.

CRAIG – Absolutely.

SUZIE – That’s undeniable.

“We’ve got something like sixty updates, I think, over the last four years. If you actually consume that content, you will come to your own understanding, and your own truth about this journey, and what’s going on, and where we’re going, and the kind of level of effort and drive that we’ve given it, without me having to sell it to you. You, yourself, will discover. You’ll make the discoveries, and you’ll be able to see the writing on the wall of what’s going on and what we’re up against.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

CRAIG – So the final part of that is, right now it’s we’re gonna be on hold until we take care of all these banking situations...

SUZIE - When’s Panquake coming out? Well I think there are people who oppose us that really really want to know the answer to that question. What I can tell you is that we’re getting closer and closer by the minute, which is why we just announced, like a week ago, two weeks ago, that Panquake is on a test net. So we now, for the first time, have people not just inside our organization on our team, like Fi, but people outside of our organization, now actively using Panquake daily. I can’t, unfortunately, give you a precise date as to when it will be out, but I can tell you that if you go to Panquake.com and follow the news page, you will be one of the first in the world to know. Or if you go to TalkLiberation.substack.com and follow our Substack, you will be one of the first in the world to know because you probably won’t hear about it first on Twitter.

FIORELLA – How can people try it out because you said it’s on a test net? So what is the process for certain people like journalists? Especially people who doubt, you know, you or the organization as a whole, how could somebody be like, ‘alright let’s see what you got. Let me try it out.’ Is that possible right now?

SUZIE – Actually, we have all along allowed journalists, and this is part of why even though you see smears about Panquake on social media, there’s no actual articles saying that Panquake’s a scam. And the reason for that is because journalists have always been able to contact us. They have to sign an NDA because it is commercially privileged material, but they’ve always been able, they’ve always been invited, and on many occasions we’ve done this with journalists. We’ve invited them in. We’ve shown them all our architectural documentation. We’ve shown them our code base. We’ve shown them the application, in whatever stage of development it was at at that time. We’re very happy for them to do that. So if they go to our press page on Panquake.com, click on ‘Press.’ There’s a media request form. You can reach out to us - media@talkliberation.com - and we’re happy to actually show you under the hood. We don’t mind showing good people a closer look at at what’s going on, but obviously we’re not giving it to the competition.

CRAIG – I believe what’s under the hood is great, you know what I’m saying. It’s just when is it going to be up and running, I think. And I get it, you can’t give us the exact date, but you keep moving forward, and I think that’s a great thing. And here’s the thing, Suzie, regardless of what anybody says about you or Panquake, once it’s out all bets are off. It doesn’t make a difference. Now it’s here, it’s in front of us. I can just imagine what it would be like to use an open source transparent system. I mean it would just be like - because people don’t realize what’s going on. It’s amazing. You probably haven’t been in the states in a while, and you don’t understand maybe completely because you haven’t been looking at Twitter, how much more controlled it is now today. You know what I’m saying. Now the whole Trump regime has come in – the MAGA media – and they have now kind of capitulated to the lowest informed voter out there. You know, it’s just cheerleaders, and it’s so controlled. But a lot of people aren’t talking about transparency enough because they pulled off this whole Kabuki theater act, where they made it look like just the conservatives were getting demonetized, and shadow banned, and censored. When it was always been anti-establishment has been censored. So what we’re seeing right now is so disgusting. I mean, Twitter is just awful. But there’s nothing else to use. What are you gonna do, go back to Facebook? Instagram and TikTok - it’s terrible. So I think once this gets across the finish line, and it gets out there, forget about it - it would be amazing, it would be revolutionary. So I really do hope it gets across the finish line because I know that if the banking’s fucking with you, that means it’s people behind the banking system that don’t want you up because you’re a threat to them.

FIORELLA – Yeah, and that’s kind of what I wanted to go on, Suzie. I mean, agree with what Pasta said. You know, one of the things that concerns me is, you know, you mentioned AI, and how this is kind of like a back to the future approach. It’s definitely old school in terms of how to not use AI because that’s where the world is going. I mean, we’re going into a world where we see robots on the streets now in every major country, right. In every major country you have robots on the streets. You have AI everywhere. How can we keep up by opting out of AI. That’s one of the, I think, things that I value about Talk Liberation, but at the same time makes it very susceptible to, “Oh well, they don’t have AI. They don’t have this, so they’re not going to be able to keep up.” What is the alternative if we’re already headed into a world controlled by multiple AI’s. We got the Deep Seek. We got Chatbot AI. What’s the other one Pasta? I forget. There’s the AI from X...

CRAIG – ChatGPT...

FIORELLA – ChatGPT – yeah that one...Google...all these...

“At the moment, they’ve got businesses spending enormous amounts of money on subscriptions to AI that, in the warranty, says this is an experiment. A research experiment under development, and therefore, we take no liability for the actual real world impacts of what this does to your business, your staff, your workflows, your sales, your customers. I think it’s a matter of seconds, if it’s not happening already, where AI integrated into businesses actually starts to systematically sink those businesses, and put them under.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

CRAIG – Grok. Is Grok one too? I think we sense, Fiorella. We’re like three movies before the original Matrix comes out, where the humans are using the AI for bad before it starts to turn on them, rather than using the AI for good. They’re using it as a security weapon, a spying weapon. The data collection. It’s not just about getting your data so they can us it and sell it, but it’s also about flagging those out there they know are gonna be bad, Suzie. You’re one of them.

SUZIE – I think AI is a giant experiment on users, and I don’t think that they actually know what they’re going to get out of the AI in many cases. And I don’t think that AI in software is producing a better user experience. And it’s not producing better business outcomes. At the moment, they’ve got businesses spending enormous amounts of money on subscriptions to AI that, in the warranty, says this is an experiment. A research experiment under development, and therefore, we take no liability for the actual real world impacts of what this does to your business, your staff, your workflows, your sales, your customers. I think it’s a matter of seconds, if it’s not happening already, where AI integrated into businesses actually starts to systematically sink those businesses, and put them under. And I think that we are headed towards a moment similar to the first dot com bubble, where this AI investment of companies all around the world, because when we are talking about AI investment, we think about the top level of it. Of hundreds of billions getting invested in these big companies. But we don’t think about the people who are paying a thousand dollars a month for their little AI agent that’s been marketed to them as the future of their business, and therefore, they should do it. Or ten thousand a month, or a hundred thousand a month that they’re paying for it. I think that it’s going to sink a lot of businesses. I think that a few leaders will emerge out of that, such as happened with the dot com bubble, but there will be widespread economic disruption in the commercial sense because of it. And I think that businesses who are biding their time, and waiting before integrating AI into their systems, are going to come out of this way better than ones that are diving straight in and trying to replace their work force because the AI is not up to the job of replacing the work force. There are some things that it may be useful for, but it can also produce really unpredictable outcomes. And in some cases, really damaging outcomes, as we’ve been doing a lot of reporting on in our Talk Liberation Substack about actually. In terms of AI in social media, I don’t see any benefit other than as a cost cutting exercise for content moderation practices, and we don’t want our business to automate our decision making around moderation. We actually want to have humans providing customer service, not AI agents. We want to have humans performing content moderation, not AI agents. And we think that we’ll get better outcomes from that. We think we’ll have better relationships with our subscribers because of it. And we think we’ll have a better reputation and integrity from having more old school systems in place. I can’t think of any, actually, person that I’ve ever talked to about AI who said that they would use one social network over another because that social network has AI. It’s not about the users, and it should be about the users. It should be about the user outcomes. That’s my personal opinion.

FIORELLA – Yeah. Well, you know, the younger generations are so ingrained in it that they’ve actually just sort of just given themselves to it. You know, I’m a big – I don’t know if you know this, Suzie about me, but I’m a huge Sci-fi nerd. I watch as much post apocalyptic, dystopian, Sci-fi, read it...

CRAIG – That’s not the only nerd she is...

“In terms of AI in social media, I don’t see any benefit other than as a cost cutting exercise for content moderation practices, and we don’t want our business to automate our decision making around moderation. We actually want to have humans providing customer service, not AI agents. We want to have humans performing content moderation, not AI agents. And we think that we’ll get better outcomes from that. We think we’ll have better relationships with our subscribers because of it.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

FIORELLA – The more I can get my hands on it...everything from Star Wars... everything... West World actually was really good. It basically became about the robots taking over through and creating an alternative world where they basically data mined people who thought they were just getting a free vacation, but they were actually data mining everybody and using that information to create more robots, and to control people essentially. To put all that data in a giant computer and control people. And the reason I love that kind of stuff is because I feel like a lot of the arts kind of represent where we’re going. A lot of that reflects where we are and where we’re going. And I see it in a very very scary way. I see a lot of things that are on, like, Black Mirror. That are on a lot of these Sci-fi shows essentially becoming a reality. And I don’t think enough people are paying attention to what the surveillance state is and what it’s doing. We’ve seen it, for example, with Israel having, working with Microsoft to target Palestinians in Gaza. We have seen how we’re watching the drone attacks, the telephones being hacked. All of this happening. This is the reality that we’re facing, and if there is some sort of solace, it’s like the alternative is to opt out. Now it’s no secret that you live in Russia. And living in Russia, for anybody that’s any sort of dissident, or anybody that has a different political opinion, labels you some sort of, you know, Putin bot. Some sort of Russian Kremlin agent that receives, you know, millions and millions and billions of Rubles because the Russians tell you what to say and do. And as someone that is in Moscow as well, I’ve been thrown all sorts of things about what I think, and what I believe, even though I had very similar political beliefs years before I was even here. And that doesn’t matter. You get labeled some sort of Putin bot. What led you to choose Russia, and are you in any way what so ever getting money from the Russian government. I have to ask that because this is a usual thing.

CRAIG – Does Putin pay you in vodka, Suzie? Let us know. (joking)

SUZIE – I love that you ask that question. I love that you ask that question. No, I’ve never met Putin. I don’t live in one of his palaces. I’ve been here...believe it or not...

CRAIG – (inaudible) Lavrov...(inaudible) Lavrov...don’t lie! (joking)

SUZIE – I thought I’d just clarify. Two weeks ago, I was asked in a compliance meeting with an international business supplier, if I had a Russian oligarch husband. (laughing)

CRAIG – A-ha!

FIORELLA – Do you Suzie, do you?

SUZIE – The funny part...I’ll tell you what, the funny part about that after I said, “what!?” The funny part about that was I thought to myself, “Oh my god that sounds time consuming.” Imagine how time consuming it would be to have an oligarch husband. That would be like hours and hours and hours a day. I’m going, how do I fit that in my schedule? Like seriously! How do I service...

CRAIG – You didn’t think, wow, that would be nice and relaxing. A Russian oligarch husband. I could just kick back and, you know...

SUZIE – How do I service an oligarch husband on my schedule? I can not do it. It’s not doable. So no, I’ve never even dated a single Russian, let alone married one.

CRAIG - Who wants to date a Russian?

SUZIE – I’m getting there... I’ve been here for ten years, and I have never earned a single ruble. Or charged or billed a single ruble. Or received a single ruble at all. In fact, when I applied for asylum here, there’s literally a box on the form that says, ‘would you like to receive 8,000 rubles’ - I think it was at the time - a month of state assistance that’s provided to asylum seekers. And I literally ticked the box that said no, and I didn’t even accept that. So I’ve never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever taken any money from anybody in Russia the whole time I’ve lived here. A hundred percent of my income is earned outside of Russia. And actually, I declare my tax, and pay my tax in New Zealand. And I pay substantial amounts of tax in New Zealand, where I am a business owner, and a New Zealand tax resident, and a New Zealand citizen. And I have been banking with the New Zealand state bank for twenty five years. And in March of this year, they sent me a letter and said we’re closing all of your accounts. Your personal and your business accounts. And I said, “why are you doing that?” And they said, “we can’t tell you. We’re not going to be telling you that.” I just think after twenty five years...my accounts are in credit. I don’t owe them anything. I have no debt. I have no credit card. No overdraft. No mortgage, no whatever. They just shut all of my accounts. And I’ve actually been going through a process now, because to be honest with you I’m going to sue the shit out of them too. I’ve decided that I’m not taking any prisoners. If you want to take law abiding citizens, you want to violate their rights across the board, we’re going to court. And we’re doing that in Iceland, and we’re going to end up doing that in New Zealand as well, quite frankly, because it’s just completely not OK what’s going on. And so I’ve actually got some disclosure documents from the bank through the banking Ombudsman’s office in New Zealand, which is how you can achieve some level - some level I will reiterate - of recourse when you are having issues with the banks. And in those disclosure documents, lo and behold, it actually says: ‘Do not tell Suzie why her bank accounts are being shut down.” It was literally pre-meditated that they wouldn’t give me a reason. And now, it seems that the reason is, or the reason that they are claiming, is that it was a change in bank policy, their general policy which has led to me being de-banked in New Zealand. But there is no grounds for it. There’s no grounds whatsoever. I don’t violate sanctions. I haven’t committed a crime. I have no criminal record or history, or anything like that. So it’s not OK. I will just answer why I chose Russia. I didn’t really choose Russia. I just chose not to be persecuted in my daily life. And in New Zealand, that was a daily reality. And I tried, actually, first to go to Germany, not to go to Russia at all. But in Germany, I was experiencing the same types of targeted harassment, stalking, interference in everything that I did. I was not able to live peacefully at all. My children, as well, were being impacted by it. And we visited Russia. And for the first time in four or five years at that point, all of a sudden, I was not being targeted. I was not being harassed. I was not being stalked. I was actually to be able to just live a normal life peacefully. And I’ve been to other non-NATO countries, and it’s pretty much the same deal. But in NATO countries, I’m on the shit list, and that’s rather unpleasant, unfortunately.

CRAIG – We know it’s not a New Zealand oligarch that you’re married to as well, because they wouldn’t have taken down your bank because he would’ve been able to protect you. So that kind of eliminated my other question. Fam, should we just wrap this up, and ask one final question to Suzie about how we can support, or take a look, or what she wants people to do. What actions she wants to take, or?

“I’m firmly of the belief that once people are using Panquake… once they have the experience of using Panquake, we’re not going to need a sales and marketing team. People are going to connect to each other by word of mouth. And they’re going to spiral it. And they’re going to use it. And they’re going to adopt it.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

FIORELLA – Yeah, so Suzie just to, you know, wrap it up, I mean, I think there’s a lot at stake here, not just for you, but for a lot of people, and I think you know that. A lot of people would benefit from Panquake being released as soon as possible. Also, a lot of people have a lot of stock interested in that not happening. I have tested it, and I have seen what it is. And one of the words I used when I first saw it was this is revolutionary. And it would benefit a lot of dissident journalists. It would benefit a lot of people. But my next question is because of everything going on. You know, you’re not the type of person to give up, but there’s so much being thrown at you. A lot of these accusations, not just from people in the establishment, but people in the anti establishment. A lot just coming from every which way. And I know as somebody that likes nuance in discussions. Sometimes I get accused of things by opposing team, so you end up pretty much, you know, fighting, I guess, a war on multiple fronts, right. I think it’s important to address where Panquake, where Talk Liberation in general, right, the company itself, is going. And anything that you would like people to know. Both supporters, and perhaps, those that don’t support you.

SUZIE – That’s an interesting question for me, because I don’t spend very much time thinking about it to be honest with you. We have the luxury now of being at the point where we have a marketing team whose job it is, they’re responsible for actually marketing the product. And marketing is not something that I ever really wanted to do. And sales isn’t even something that I wanted to do. And I know this is a super unorthodox answer because I know I’m supposed to get on and sell, sell, sell and market, market, market, but actually I don’t really feel like that’s my job. My job is actually just to work with the devs and deliver the product. And that’s what’s going to happen, regardless of whether people like us or don’t like us. And I’m firmly of the belief that once people are using Panquake, as Pasta said, actually, once they have the experience of using Panquake, we’re not going to need a sales and marketing team. People are going to connect to each other by word of mouth. And they’re going to spiral it. And they’re going to use it. And they’re going to adopt it, whether or not people like Suzie Dawson. I mean, who cares who likes Suzie Dawson or not. You know me well, Fi. I’ve got a really small circle in my life. My life is completely centered around my kids and my team. I don’t live the life of a socialite. I don’t try and rub shoulders with, you know, powerful people. I don’t try and...to me, it’s a very immature, kind of high school thing - the whole popularity contest and what not. I don’t care how many followers I have on Twitter. I don’t aspire to being an Elon Musk. I look at someone like Elon Musk, or, you know other, I won’t name other platform owners, but I look at them, and I don’t want to live my life like they live their life. I don’t want to have the things they have. I don’t want to run my business the way they run their business. I don’t want to be them.

CRAIG – Yeah.

SUZIE – I know for a fact, one hundred percent for a fact, the true reasons that Elon bought Twitter. I knew them before he bought Twitter. And they had absolutely nothing to do with free speech at all.

CRAIG – Yeah.

“I don’t care how many followers I have on Twitter. I don’t aspire to being an Elon Musk. I look at someone like Elon Musk, or, you know other, I won’t name other platform owners, but I look at them, and I don’t want to live my life like they live their life. I don’t want to have the things they have. I don’t want to run my business the way they run their business. I don’t want to be them.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

SUZIE – He had very specific, very personal reasons, that suited him personally why he wanted to buy Twitter. I won’t go further than that. Those are not the motivations that I have for Panquake. I don’t care if I ever have a million followers on Panquake, or ten million. I don’t care if I don’t even have a Panquake account. But I do care that I deliver Panquake. And I do care that people get to use Panquake. And so, for me, it’s all about motivations, right. If I could live happily and peacefully with my kids, I will be over the frigging moon. If I could live with my dogs and work with my team, that’s awesome. It doesn’t need to be more than that. And so, I hear people saying there’s criticism, but it kind of just runs off my back, because I don’t need for people to love me. I don’t need to be cool. I’m never going to have a Wikipedia page that says I’m a great person. I’ve know that all along. You can’t do what I do and have a good Wikipedia page.

FIORELLA – I don’t think any of us will.

SUZIE – People will not give me software development awards, no matter how amazing the software is that I build. I saw that in New Zealand. In New Zealand I created hashtags for movements that outperformed the commercial hashtags in New Zealand a hundred to one. And then there would be the social media awards in New Zealand, and they would trot out someone as being the most effective campaign of the year, and they had one percent of our metrics. The whole system is rigged. I’m not in it for the superficial stuff.

CRAIG – Well Suzie, let me say this much, you may not be in it for the superficial stuff, and you don’t want to live like other tech programmers do, but I would like to live like Pavel Durov. Dating supermodels, and flying all around the world and eating fun stuff.

SUZIE – Maybe we should make you CEO.

“Build solutions. Don’t just watch the problems. Build solutions.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

CRAIG – I’ll take it, right Yeah, I’ll be your face, there you go. I have something that, I don’t know, you know what I’m saying, you ladies both of you are very forward, very candid, right, you know what I’m saying, like that. Fiorella always gets on me for my fluff, for my schmoozing abilities. But, you know, that’s what the majority of the world wants. They want to be schmoozed. They want to go to a nice restaurant and be treated well. Not Suzie Dawson, boys and girls, by the way.

SUZIE – You definitely are super congenial.

CRAIG – Well, thank you, I appreciate it. And I appreciate that Suzie Dawson is not only taking on Big Tech, she’s taking on Big Tick. She loves dogs. We’re gonna get this guys. Thank you so much for joining us today, Suzie. And Fi, I look forward to reading a lot more of your articles. The ones we were looking about, talking about this. Regardless of any relationships, there’s still a lot of, I think, a movement where people are having conversations about data mining, AI. Where we’re going. They’re just being censored and suppressed, so just like what you’re trying to bring to the table, I think we still should continue to highlight those voices who are talking in those areas. So thank you again for coming on today, Suzie. And good luck with everything, by the way.

SUZIE – My last two words: build solutions. Don’t just watch the problems. Build solutions.

FIORELLA – We need that pragmatic, practical approach too, because we all know the problems. Yeah – there’s a lot of them. So we need something to help us. All of us here on that side. So that’s it everybody. Thanks so much for tuning it today. Make sure to follow and like and share, in case you haven’t. And Pasta, are you going to say your line that you always say that I hate?

CRAIG – No. I’m not gonna say truth out.

FIORELLA – Bye everybody.

[End of transcript]

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© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

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After months of delays, the Talk Liberation team finally had our long-awaited day in court in Reykjavik, Iceland against major Icelandic bank Islandsbanki, to demand accountability for the de-banking and wrongful freezing of our USD$1 million dollar seed funding in 2022. Brand Ambassador John Kiriakou and Talk Liberation Media Director Fiorella Isabel, attended the hearing in person in Iceland, transcribed what happened and got the inside scoop on what will occur next going forward.

Our winning WikiLeaks legal team stormed into court with a clear mission: force Islandsbanki to prove its case. We flipped their script, with our legal team putting the burden of proof on the bank and demanding they produce witnesses—just as Talk Liberation had done. The judge agreed and now Islandsbanki must put bank staff on the stand at the next hearing scheduled for September 2, 2025. The bank’s relentless obstruction—dragging its feet at every turn—revealed its fear of scrutiny. But this win has exposed their underbelly and showed that even financial titans are not above the law.

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Justice Is Possible Even When It May Seem Improbable

After the hearing, Wikileaks’ Sveinn Andri Sveinsson, the Icelandic Supreme Court lawyer, chatted with Fiorella and John, cutting right to the heart of the matter: “We don't know exactly why they took these measures of freezing the account and closing the business relationship, but it's on the other hand quite clear that after they did that, they lodged some kind of file or report, a Suspicious Activity Report on the AML [global financial system]. And it's obvious that after that was done, it was impossible for Talk Liberation to get any banking services in Iceland."

Meanwhile Talk Liberation founder Suzie Dawson gave blistering testimony, dismantling the bank’s narrative with cold, hard facts. She proved with documentation that Talk Liberation had fulfilled all due diligence requirements, evidencing that the company was not partaking in money laundering or terrorism financing. Which is clearly why Islandsbanki had no choice but to eventually return the funds. But when the bank shamelessly shifted blame in court, asking why Talk Liberation didn’t just “find another bank,” Suzie fired back with a resounding statement, marking the crux of the entire case:

“This is a very clear example of victim blaming. It is like cutting someone's legs off and then asking them why they can’t walk. We have a bank that’s frozen our funds and has wrongfully accused us of falsifying documentation, they falsely accused our trustee company of not even existing and then they are writing this into a system which any other bank will look into before making a decision about working with us. If Islandsbanki wants to understand why we can’t do business with other banks, then Islandsbanki has to come clean about what they wrote in the AML system that other banks are judging us on. We will never understand the true costs or true damages until we discover the answers to the question as to what Islandsbanki wrote and how it’s impacting us to this day.”

Talk Liberation wasn’t just a startup—it was a multi-million-dollar tech investment poised to benefit Iceland’s economy and provide an unparalleled and highly anticipated service. Islandsbanki's unjust actions ruined Talk Liberation's plans to operate out of Iceland, depriving the Icelandic economy and labour force of millions of dollars in tech investment across the ensuing period. Suzie further emphasised this in her testimony, stating, “It's not just us that has been damaged by Islandsbanki, it is Iceland as well."

The record illustrates the undeniable reality: that the bank's baseless accusations and detrimental reports fed into international financial systems greatly impacted Talk Liberation’s ability to continue to access banking services globally and directly impeded and obstructed its Icelandic business development as well as effectively sabotaging its ability to fulfil its own community and partnership obligations.

A key outside witness corroborated Suzie’s testimony entirely, confirming the bank’s deliberate obstruction as well as Talk Liberation’s commitment to expanding their operations in Iceland - which was undermined by the bank’s actions.

Distraction Tactics & New Zealand’s Parallel Attack

Desperate to deflect, Islandsbanki tried to shift attention from its role in Talk Liberation’s banking issues, to Suzie’s recent de-banking in New Zealand—where state-owned Kiwibank abruptly closed her account after nearly 25 years of her being a customer, with no explanation nor justification provided for the termination of her account.

But a formal complaint with the New Zealand Banking Ombudsman unearthed hundreds of damning internal documents, revealing major discrepancies and exposing Kiwibank’s problematic record-keeping, mishandled complaints, and suspicious inconsistencies in how Suzie’s accounts and personal information were managed by the bank. This wasn’t an isolated incident, but part of a global pattern of financial suppression.

Immediate Post-Hearing Thoughts: Key Concessions Achieved!.

John along with Fiorella also gave some immediate thoughts to the day’s hearing, agreeing that Talk Liberation won a key concession in court. Here’s a wrap up of what went down and check out our press release to learn more about our case and what’s to come. The David vs Goliath story continues on September 2, 2025!

Thoughts from Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

I have to be honest: my experience in court so far - and I stress so far - actually went a ways towards restoring my faith in democracy as well as in the rule of law. Iceland by all appearances actually has an independent judiciary. The fact that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, the most-smeared publisher and journalist arguably in history, were able to achieve justice in Iceland even at the height of the systemic and political attacks upon them, was in and of itself a great sign. So far so good, in terms of Talk Liberation being able to achieve the same. On a smaller scale than Julian, I’ve had a taste of what it means to be targeted and smeared for work performed in the public interest. From cyberstalkers to pseudonymous blogger smear merchants to private investigators to state-level targeting, no good turn by me has gone unpunished these last 15 years since I accidentally fell into activism and journalism by merit of just trying to help and support people. Having returned, since 2020, to my information technology roots, only to be targeted, smeared and sabotaged by banks, however, is an all new frontier for me - and it is also where I draw the line. My commitment to my staff, community and our supporters is absolute. All of them have been harmed by what was done to us by Islandsbanki. In fact, the Icelandic economy and therefore the Icelandic people, have been hurt too. It is our obligation to stand up and push back, on behalf of everyone who cannot. And that is what brought us to Court in Iceland. It’s not just about me. It’s about all of us.

“Iceland by all appearances actually has an independent judiciary. The fact that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, the most-smeared publisher and journalist arguably in history, were able to achieve justice in Iceland even at the height of the systemic and political attacks upon them, was in and of itself a great sign. So far so good, in terms of Talk Liberation being able to achieve the same.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation founder

I pointed that out in my testimony, speaking directly from my heart, and felt it resonate. My general impression was that the judge seemed interested and engaged throughout.

The bank tried to victim-blame us for suffering the inevitable results of their own decisions and actions and it spectacularly backfired on them in court. Kiwis are famously blunt, frank and pragmatic and the bank’s lawyer got a full dose of it from me. I just don’t have time for coyness, game-playing or manipulation: I’m going to call the spade a spade and that’s precisely what I did.

We bent over backwards trying to work this all out directly with the bank in 2022, but they wouldn’t play ball. We disclosed, disclosed and disclosed and made very reasonable requests: yet they stonewalled us, refused to engage, and disclosed nothing. Even when they unfroze our funds, they couldn’t muster so much as an apology let alone compensation. They thought they could discriminate against and harm us with impunity. They’re likely thinking twice now.

“It's not just us that has been damaged by Islandsbanki, it is Iceland as well."
- Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation founder

The hearing itself was to determine whether damages were incurred to us by Islandsbanki, yet puzzlingly the bank didn’t even seem to deny that, just instead tried to make arguments to limit the amount of the damage, which from where I’m sitting is as good as an admission of guilt on their part. And my counterargument was simple: open the AML records, show us what you wrote about us into the global financial system, then we can assess the size of the damages. Then we can understand the full extent of what has been done to us. And until they do that, it’s impossible to quantify the full extent of the damages.

Each time I raised the prospect of the AML records being opened to judicial review and scrutinised by the Court, the bank’s lawyer said “No further questions” and sat down. It’s a topic that is apparently kryptonite to them. Or perhaps it’s just another admission of guilt. After all, they know full well what they’ve done to us - and their game is to try to prevent us from finding out. But I think the Court is onto them and I’m very hopeful that there will be transparency and accountability.

I’m very open-minded about the potential outcomes from this point, both in this court and in any later appeals from either side. I’m convinced that eventually the bank, having run out of other arguments, is going to resort to personal attacks by association. Our lawyers, however, say that the second the bank tries to make this political, our chances of winning skyrocket.

“Even when they unfroze our funds, they couldn’t muster so much as an apology let alone compensation. They thought they could discriminate against and harm us with impunity. They’re likely thinking twice now.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation founder

So I remain hopeful that justice will triumph and that the ability to seek redress through the courts will be validated. In which case, I think many more people than just myself will find cause to believe in democracy and the rule of law once again, thanks to Iceland leading the way.

Thoughts from John Kiriakou, Talk Liberation Brand Ambassador

Talk Liberation’s quest for justice in the Icelandic judicial system continues, and we have some good news, even if only incrementally moving the case in the right direction.

In 2022, in a crippling, unjustified, and possibly illegal move, Talk Liberation’s bank, Islandsbanki (Iceland Bank) arbitrarily and without any warning, froze the company’s accounts and seized nearly $1 million in investor funds that the accounts held. The bank absurdly invoked money laundering and anti-terrorism financing laws as a justification before changing its mind and ultimately releasing the money nine months later. They did, however, ban Talk Liberation from doing business with the bank, making a series of outrageous allegations, disproven by voluntary disclosures made by Talk Liberation. Other Icelandic banking institutions subsequently also refused to do business with Talk Liberation, apparently having heard of the Islandsbanki seizure through the global Anti Money Laundering system.

The bottom line, at least as far as Talk Liberation is concerned, is that the company had done nothing wrong, while Islandsbanki by its actions effectively admitted that it was wrong for freezing the account, but offered no explanation, no apology, and no compensation for the costs and damages inflicted upon the company. Indeed, the release of new products and services were substantially delayed while the matter was resolved.

The bank’s strategy so far has been simple: Just stonewall and adopt the old CIA strategy of, “Admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations.” Bank officials held to that until June 19, 2025, when the judge ordered them to start producing witnesses. The next hearing, with witnesses, will be on September 2.

“It was a procedural victory. But it was a victory nonetheless. And it upheld the tenet of equal justice. The little guy won a battle against a Goliath today in what is likely to be a long war.” - John Kiriakou, Talk Liberation Brand Ambassador

The story is bigger than just a small tech company being manhandled by a big bank and then suing them. You see, in just the past month, Talk Liberation founder Suzie Dawson, a New Zealand national, has also been forcibly de-banked in New Zealand with no explanation or recourse. Suzie is a well-known figure in the international activist community. Is that why she has been de-banked? Is that why her company’s accounts were frozen? Is it because she was close to Julian Assange and Wikileaks? Doesn’t she deserve an explanation? Doesn’t everybody deserve due process?

Well, one major challenge is that Icelandic law does not have the concept of discovery. The bank is thus not compelled to turn over evidence of its wrongdoing to Talk Liberation. Instead, Talk Liberation has to tell the judge something along the lines of, “We know that the bank has ABC document, which says XYZ, and we want a copy of it.” That’s insane. Why not just say, “I had a psychic vision that the bank has ABC document that says XYZ and we want a copy of it?” You would have an equal chance of getting that document.

As I said, the judge was having none of that. Suzie testified in the most recent hearing, as did an Icelandic former attorney who worked to register the company in Iceland and to open the bank account. They testified independently of one another, haven’t had contact with each other in several years, and yet each said exactly the same thing under oath.

The judge appeared to be convinced. She could have thrown the case out. She could have upheld the bank’s request to deny Talk Liberation access to bank employees testifying under oath. But she didn’t. She told the bank to produce the employees and to come back to court on September 2 to explain why they did what they did. It was a procedural victory. But it was a victory nonetheless. And it upheld the tenet of equal justice. The little guy won a battle against a Goliath today in what is likely to be a long war.

Thoughts from Fiorella Isabel, Talk Liberation Media Director

The morning of the trial we could see that our legal team had come with a clear mind as to how to proceed. They needed to get the bank to show some cards. In a revealing courtroom exchange, Talk Liberation’s Icelandic attorney, Sveinn Andri Sveinsson, methodically dismantled Islandsbanki's justifications for freezing Talk Liberation's $1 million seed funding and exposed the bank’s attempts to avoid accountability.

The push revealed a pattern of obfuscation and outright stonewalling by the Icelandic banking giant. The judge agreed that while Talk Liberation had brought witnesses, Islandsbanki, who had made many false accusations against Talk Liberation, did not.

Some Key Revelations:

1. Talk Liberation’s Structure Was Normal

   1. The witness, an Icelandic solicitor who assisted Talk Liberation in 2022-2023, confirmed under oath that the company’s corporate setup—including its Icelandic subsidiary and Cook Islands parent entity—was fully compliant and transparent.

   2. When pressed by Sveinn, the same witness stated unequivocally: "No, I saw nothing unnatural in the structure."

2. Due Diligence Done, Yet Accounts Frozen Anyway

   1. Despite Talk Liberation submitting all requested documentation every step of the way, Islandsbanki abruptly froze its funds under vague invocations of “money laundering and terrorist financing” legislation.

   2. The witness testified: "We gave them everything they asked for... but they never provided clear reasons for the freeze."

3. The Missing "Suspicious Activity Report"

   1. Sveinn grilled the witness on whether Islandsbanki had filed an AML Suspicious Transaction report—a move that could cause Talk Liberation to be effectively blacklisted in Iceland, and even globally.

   2. Response: "I asked directly if they’d reported the company. They refused to confirm or deny."

4. Omissions or Bad-Faith Negotiations

   1. Islandsbanki suggested funds be moved to a trust account—then blocked the transfer anyway, taking nine months before eventually releasing the funds.

   2. When Talk Liberation tried opening new accounts? "They were closed without explanation."

In 2022 Islandsbanki acted as accuser and judge, jury and executioner, freezing funds without supporting evidence and potentially making it impossible for Talk Liberation to open new accounts—effectively financially sanctioning them. This action deeply affected the pace of business development despite the fact that Talk Liberation continued persisting in offering quality products and following through with their goals. If the law upholds justice, an injustice was done to Talk Liberation and the bank should be held accountable for that as well as the way they conducted their affairs.

If this happens, this could set a precedent for others facing financial persecution. As said during the court by Suzie, this is about much more than simply Talk Liberation. De-banking as a practice is damaging to state economies and is a global trend that is dangerous to anyone who is a dissident or even merely viewed as one. If such power over the lives of people resides in banks or shadow officials, then this is something much more frightening than we’ve all anticipated—and we should all be worried.

The Peak Is Far But the View Is Promising

In March 2025, Talk Liberation launched the #BadBanki online campaign, a daring initiative aimed at exposing the alarming trend of de-banking as a tool of political repression. We’re compiling meticulously irrefutable evidence in documented cases and harrowing firsthand accounts that reveal the chilling reality that financial exclusion via banks has become a weapon. And we’re rallying the world to fight back.

“We’ve forced the system to blink and we’ve shown that even the most powerful banks can be made to answer. Now, the pressure is on them to reveal their hand.”
- Fiorella Isabel, Talk Liberation Media Director

Hosted at BadBanki.com, Talk Liberation exposes that de-banking is being weaponised internationally. Through meticulous research, Talk Liberation continues to highlight this disturbing global phenomenon, urging the public to take action against systemic financial discrimination. The campaign provides a global megaphone divulging how banks silence dissent, crush activists, and strangle opposition by cutting off their financial lifelines— amplifying the fight for financial justice and accountability.

Talk Liberation demands transparency, justice, and reform. This case isn’t over and the final verdict is still to come. But make no mistake—we’ve already taken pivotal steps forward towards achieving redress for what was done to the team. We’ve forced the system to blink and we’ve shown that even the most powerful banks can be made to answer. Now, the pressure is on them to reveal their hand.

How Can People Help in This Fight Against Unfair Banking Practices?

Follow this ongoing David vs Goliath struggle for justice against a powerful banking institution at BadBanki.com.

Write to us or reach out on social media

Contact our Media Director for interviews and commentary

Have you seen the NEW official Talk Liberation website?

“This is about people not machines.” So begins the About Page description of the brand spanking new official Talk Liberation website. We’d love you to check it out and let us know what you think!

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© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

Talk Liberation is committed to providing equal access for individuals with disabilities. To view an accessible version of this article, click here.

Talk Liberation, the creators behind the Panquake social media project, are once again on the ground in Reykjavik, Iceland, suing the major Icelandic bank Islandsbanki for its 2022 de-banking of the tech startup, an action which Talk Liberation contends was baseless and procedurally flawed.

Sveinn Andri Sveinsson, the Icelandic Supreme Court lawyer representing Talk Liberation ehf., said he was relatively optimistic about the results of the case against Islandsbanki. "The fact is that the bank terminated the banking service without any reason. The reasons the bank have provided the court with for the termination are not only minor and lame, but fake." Sveinn said he hoped justice would be served in the court. "The truth must prevail."

In a crippling and unjustified move in 2022, Islandsbanki froze USD$1 million dollars of Talk Liberation's seed funding without notice and then terminated their banking services. The bank invoked money laundering and anti-terrorism financing laws to do so, before making a stunning reversal on their position, unfreezing and returning the funds - but taking nine months to do so.

By their actions, Islandsbanki effectively conceded that Talk Liberation did nothing wrong however offered no explanation, apology or compensation for the costs and damages inflicted upon Talk Liberation by Islandsbanki. Talk Liberation was forced to pivot operations to bring alternative solutions to market while awaiting resolution on these matters and in March 2023, instructed lawyers to prepare suit to hold Islandsbanki to account.

In what may prove to be a seminal case of ‘the little people’ taking on a major financial institution - Talk Liberation is looking to set a precedent that banks do not have carte blanche to act with impunity against legitimate commercial operations engaged in lawful business activity.

"The fact is that the bank terminated the banking service without any reason. The reasons the bank have provided the court with for the termination are not only minor and lame, but fake. The truth must prevail." - Sveinn Andri Sveinsson, Icelandic Supreme Court Attorney

Talk Liberation founder Suzie Dawson said "There has been a worldwide trend of banks making decisions with disregard for proportionality and economic freedoms and exhibiting a lack of proper consideration of the potential negative economic impacts of their actions. That tide is starting to turn - legislatures are reassessing the propriety of de-banking as a practice and are acting to curb it. Economic freedom is a core principle underpinning democracy and our hope is that Iceland will embrace this opportunity to lead on the issue of consumer rights, rather than to lag behind other developed nations who are rightly assessing de-banking to be an unfair and disproportionate practice and updating their regulations accordingly."

Talk Liberation Brand Ambassador, New York Times best-selling author John Kiriakou and Panquake’s Media Director Fiorella Isabel will be reporting live from Reykjavik on Thursday 19 June, the day of the District Court hearing. Since April, the hearing has been deferred twice by the Icelandic legal system but Talk Liberation remains determined to see our day in court.

In March 2025, Talk Liberation launched the #BadBanki online campaign to amplify this battle for justice and give others in the same predicament a voice. Research published at the BadBanki.com campaign website demonstrates unequivocally that ‘de-banking’ is being utilised internationally as a tool of political persecution and we continue to highlight examples of this global trend.

Talk Liberation remains committed to driving positive change in the current paradigm of social media platforms and technology, protecting users and their data from exploitation and abuse.

“There has been a worldwide trend of banks making decisions with disregard for proportionality and economic freedoms and exhibiting a lack of proper consideration of the potential negative economic impacts of their actions. That tide is starting to turn - legislatures are reassessing the propriety of de-banking as a practice and are acting to curb it. Economic freedom is a core principle underpinning democracy and our hope is that Iceland will embrace this opportunity to lead on the issue of consumer rights, rather than to lag behind other developed nations who are rightly assessing de-banking to be an unfair and disproportionate practice and updating their regulations accordingly.” - Suzie Dawson, Talk Liberation Founder

Post-Script - an Interesting Coincidence?

Recently, without explanation, Talk Liberation founder Suzie Dawson was also de-banked from her New Zealand (NZ) state bank, KiwiBank, after banking with them for nearly 25 years. The Talk Liberation founder lodged a complaint with the New Zealand Banking Ombudsman's Office who have formally accepted to investigate the case and assisted in unearthing hundreds of internal Kiwibank records and documents relating to the case.

The documents contain myriad discrepancies as yet unexplained, which point to manipulation of account registration records as well as customer complaints procedure records by Kiwibank, which calls into question the integrity of Kiwibank's internal resolution and reporting mechanisms at scale.

The investigation continues and further legal action is anticipated.

The outcome of Thursday’s court hearing will be announced on all Talk Liberation channels and platforms, including this blog.

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How Can People Help in This Fight Against Unfair Banking Practices?

Follow this ongoing David vs Goliath struggle for justice against a powerful banking institution at BadBanki.com.

Write to us or reach out on social media

Contact our Media Director for interviews and commentary

Announcement: the NEW official Talk Liberation website

“This is about people not machines.” So begins the About Page description of the brand spanking new official Talk Liberation website.

“You should never have to surrender your human rights to gain access to commercial technology.”

It’s obvious out of the gate, how different Talk Liberation is. Unafraid to take a different line than the status quo, placing users first and walking that talk.

Talk Liberation’s products are similarly unique and principled. The company’s ethics are reinforced in every architectural design decision.

So who is Talk Liberation?

Talk Liberation is a next generation software development house driven by the ethos that we all have a right to retain our privacy and control over our own data while participating in online communities, and that as individuals, our personal details are not for sale or to be extorted in return for the ‘privilege’ of using software platforms.

Talk Liberation now has scores of talented team members working in more than a dozen countries, but just a few short years ago we started out as a group of volunteers and IT nerds frustrated at how Big Tech was abusing our data and using social media to turn us from customers into commodities.

With thirst for products like those in Talk Liberation’s stable at an all-time high, the team is consistently growing. Those who share the values of Talk Liberation and have technical skills to offer can apply to become part of the Talk Liberation team at the Jobs page of the new website.

There is a comprehensive Press Centre for media, a public Contacts page and an excellent Brand page, showcasing the sophisticated and professional design chops of the Talk Liberation team.

BACKGROUND:

In 2021, social media project Panquake was born out of the vision to rebalance the distribution of power between social media users and platforms, to create a space where users could communicate without being profiled and exploited by AI, advertisers and Big Data.

Since parent company Talk Liberation's inception, it has grown into a multi-national organisation with nearly 50 staff spanning more than a dozen countries. Talk Liberation remains committed to fostering a safer internet environment that is free from censorship, mass surveillance and advertising, while empowering users globally.

As well as developing Panquake, Talk Liberation is the team behind WLDragnet.com, FREE link shortening and archiving service pnqk.me and upcoming digital marketing dashboard Lnqk Me.

Relevance of Iceland:

There is a long and storied history of banking abuses and protests in Iceland.

A few resources:

• Read about the Icelandic financial crisis here

• Wikipedia article on the massive Icelandic protests against the banks

• Iceland jailed bankers

• 98% of Icelanders voted against bailing out the banks

Use our Panquake Me link shortening service for free at this link!
Businesses can apply to become a Lnqk Me Pilot Customer at this link.
If you haven’t already, you can apply to join the Panquake BETA at this link.

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Panquake.com and this Substack page are brought to you by Talk Liberation: Finally! Software You Can Trust

© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

Talk Liberation is committed to providing equal access for individuals with disabilities. To view an accessible version of this article, click here.

Key updates:

• Panquake - the best social network ever developed - is now in external testing!!

• Lnqk Me is also in external testing and the launch of the Pilot is right around the corner

• Icelandic Bad Banki lawsuit: We have received the rescheduled hearing date - it will be held in Iceland on June 19

• Double debanking: New Zealand state bank Kiwibank has joined the wrong side of history

• How to take action: support a better internet for us all - and better banking too!

Let’s dive in with an update on Panquake - the BEST social network ever developed!

For the first time ever, select external users outside of the Talk Liberation team now have access to the Panquake Test Net and are trying out the Panquake application for themselves. This is a landmark milestone!

These new users are creating profiles, posting 'quakes' (messages) on their timelines, following and interacting with each other and even scheduling 'Thunderquakes' - a powerful type of message with enhanced boosting capabilities.

What is a Thunderquake? A Lovequake? A Cupquake? What, for that matter, is a Panquake? How are these cute but silly sounding names going to change the way you communicate online for the better? To catch up on the original vision of Panquake which we have stayed very much true to, check out this 30-minute explainer video from Founder Suzie Dawson in the earliest days of the project. Or if you want to see how innovative what she designed is and learn all about Panquake’s powerful custom functionality, the Panquake interface reveal is a vibrant watch.

We are collecting our test user’s impressions, thoughts and suggestions and incorporating them in preparation for future Panquake releases. This is a really big deal for our project and you, our community, and a great sign of things to come. Here is a portion of one page of the feedback form our external test users fill out and send us once they’ve had a chance to play with Panquake:

Many of you directly helped us to get this far and we are so excited to take these awesome steps forward for you.

Lnqk Me - we're putting the theory into action

Lnqk Me, our upcoming collaborative digital marketing dashboard and metrics tool will be available for use by Pilot Customers soon.

A number of businesses of different types have already signed up to our Pilot program and you can too! If you are interested in protecting your audience, your community and yourself, while creating more effective digital marketing campaigns with better outcomes, this product is for you.

Who will love Lnqk Me? Influencers, community projects, small, medium-sized or corporate businesses - Lnqk Me has been created to propel your digital marketing efforts forward, no matter the size of your team or the scale of your customer base.

Branded links, QR codes, highly flexible metrics and business reporting - Lnqk Me does it all, and from within our intuitive, modern, customisable, drag and drop interface. Apply now to join those who will be the first in the world to use this awesome new marketing solution by visiting this page.

Date announced for the Bad Banki lawsuit

Meanwhile, our debanking saga takes on a life of its own. It all started with the Bad Banki campaign, the antagonist of which is our Icelandic bank, Islandsbanki.

The Judge postponed our hearing in Reykjavik on April 3rd but we WILL see our day in court this coming June 11th and will advise you of the outcome.

However, what happened next may blow your socks off.

The chicken and the egg

On 2nd May, Panquake Founder Suzie Dawson was debanked by Kiwibank. This is a New Zealand state bank that Suzie banked with for almost a quarter of a century. She has not committed any crime or even been accused of any crime. So how can this occur you ask? We also want to know!

Suzie's epic 5,000 word opinion piece exposed Kiwibank's malpractices for all to see. Kiwibank and Islandsbanki - which was the chicken, and which was the egg? Why does it seem like there is a hidden flow of information and behind-the-scenes decision making that we are not privy to, between banks in different jurisdictions?

Suzie's investigations raise serious concerns about the integrity and objectivity of financial organisations. You can read the follow-up expose at this link and be blown away by the incestuous nature of the players involved in the banking industry as well as their apparent conflicts of interest.

Kiwibank refused to state a reason for debanking Suzie - who is a New Zealand citizen, a New Zealand tax resident, a business owner and a longtime NZ bank customer.

Never one to be bullied though, Suzie sought the help of Kiwibank's regulator - the Banking Ombudsman, and after exposing Kiwibank's obstruction and stonewalling of her complaints has received hundreds of documents containing startling revelations.

The complaint against Kiwibank continues and we suspect Suzie is by far not alone in this predicament. Subsequently, just as we did with #BadBanki, we are soon to launch an awareness campaign in New Zealand to test just how widespread these abusive bank practices are, and to provide an outlet for remedy to those without a voice.

Have you or someone you know been debanked? Tell us your story anonymously

Last year banks filed a massive 4.6 million Suspicious Activity Reports in the UK alone, with almost complete immunity from liability. It is unlikely that all of these people being reported on are money launderers or terrorists, yet the consequence for customers being flagged can be disproportionately severe.

We have been tracking global news stories and collating the latest headlines to hit the media at this page as the debanking crisis takes the world by storm. If you also have been subjected to bad treatment by a bank, you can share your story with us and we will publish it anonymously.

In an increasingly cashless society, banks must not abuse their power against 'the little people'. By sharing our experiences and encouraging others to as well, we at Talk Liberation are hoping to accelerate reform of the banking industry together with you.

If you haven't yet, please stay in the loop on the Bad Banki case and on Talk Liberation developments by following us on social media as well as subscribing to this Substack.

If you haven’t already, you can apply to join the Panquake BETA at this link.
Businesses can apply to become a Lnqk Me Pilot Customer at this link.
Use our Panquake Me link shortening service for free at this link!

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© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

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Talk Liberation is committed to providing equal access for individuals with disabilities. To view an accessible version of this article, click here.

The world is urgently in need of ethical software alternatives - that respect users and make them the customer, not the product.

In 2021 we presented Panquake - our vision of a way to rebalance the distribution of power between social media users and platforms, creating a space where users can communicate without being profiled and exploited by AI, advertisers and Big Data.

Our ideas were enthusiastically adopted by thousands of grassroots supporters who gave their time, donations and energy.

This birthed Talk Liberation - our independent software development house which exists to make the internet a safer and more transparent place for everyone in the age of censorship and mass surveillance.

As recently revealed, Talk Liberation are working with the same winning Icelandic legal team that represented WikiLeaks and famously secured a USD$10 million settlement in Iceland against a payment processor acting for Visa & Mastercard.

Why?

• In 2022, our Icelandic banking partner Islandsbanki, which we playfully call ‘Bad Banki' (Banki is the Icelandic word for 'bank') froze Panquake’s seed funding without any notice — invoking money laundering and anti-terrorism legislation to do so

• The bank ignored Talk Liberation's financial good standing and disregarded our proactive and extensive compliance efforts. Bad Banki discontinued their banking services to us, closing our accounts and withheld our funding for nine months.

• Even though Islandsbanki eventually unfroze and returned our funds (effectively exonerating us from any stigma of wrongdoing) they have never compensated us or our community for the extensive damage caused by their actions.

• In March of 2023, Talk Liberation instructed lawyers to prepare suit to hold Islandsbanki to account. Over the last two years we have progressed the case through a series of preliminary hearings, culminating in an upcoming April 3rd case hearing which will result in the first judgement in what may be a longer fight. [UPDATE: Since publishing this article, our court date came and went but unfortunately was postponed by the court due to the judge apparently being ill. We are still waiting to find out our new hearing date and will let you know as soon as we do! Read our latest press release about this here]

• Despite all of this, Talk Liberation quickly pivoted and released other derivative products - ‘pieces of the Panquake pie’ — and while Panquake is very much alive & thriving, the damage caused by Islandsbanki’s actions unnecessarily punished our loyal donors and community.

The bank's motives remain unknown, but Talk Liberation is determined to get to the bottom of the matter. Regardless of motive, the process employed by the bank was fundamentally unjust and flawed. For this we will hold Bad Banki to account. If their actions also prove to be politically motivated, as in the WikiLeaks case, this could have significant repercussions for the outcome of the lawsuit as well as for the bank.

Now what do we do?

As we mentioned, this may be a long fight - the upcoming April judgement could be appealed through several rounds of higher Courts - but we are prepared for it. Here’s what our lawyers are saying:

“This case is yet another example of how the banking system is used to oppress free speech and journalism. Talk Liberation notified the bank of the existence of the funds, everything was done by the book… but it seems to me, they looked into the main shareholder Suzie Dawson and realised she was, in a sense, persona non grata in her home country of New Zealand as a vocal fighter for freedom of speech. For example, with WikiLeaks, this method has been used before, when the bankers gave the order through the international banking system to close down payments sent to WikiLeaks. My opinion is that Islandsbanki is obeying orders that are coming from the international banking system.” — Sveinn Andrew Sveinsson, Icelandic Supreme Court Attorney, at a preliminary hearing on 5 March 2025.

Talk Liberation and Panquake Founder Suzie Dawson is an internationally known former activist, organiser and journalist involved with various large scale social campaigns and journalism projects, including studying Snowden files live online and founding the Unity4J movement to free WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. She worked to educate and organise ordinary people around the topics of state surveillance and privacy abuses, as well as human rights and socioeconomic issues. For years, her work was repeatedly shared by WikiLeaks and other noteworthy accounts.

"We aim to achieve justice for everyone who supports the Panquake campaign. Islandsbanki made a number of easily disprovable claims in an attempt to justify its withholding of our funds and closing of our accounts. It would be disappointing to discover that these were merely a cover masking a hidden motive of political persecution, whether it was aimed at us collectively or myself personally. One way or the other, we intend to get to the bottom of this for everyone's benefit and that is precisely what this lawsuit is about” — Suzie Dawson

Although Islandsbanki eventually released the funding - exonerating Talk Liberation of any accusation, implied or otherwise, related to money laundering or terrorist financing - the funds were released without any explanation, apology or compensation.

Talk Liberation suffered reputational and financial damages, and the flow-on effects of Bad Banki’s actions caused some members of our loyal community to suffer fear, uncertainty and doubt about the progress and future of the project.

The WikiLeaks case exposed abuse of power in the financial industry and raised deep questions around the hidden political bias within the banking system.

The Bad Banki case heralds a disturbing trend where similarly, a people-powered innovation that is seen as disruptive is stifled by financial institutions.

If we don't push back - innovation can be sabotaged or stopped in its tracks by those with both power and a potential agenda.

"This battle extends beyond one organization, it represents principles that affect every individual who believes in digital rights, and equitable treatment by financial institutions” — Suzie Dawson

Now is the time to play your part in standing up against bad banking.

Have you been treated unfairly by a financial entity?

We will publish your story anonymously. In under 250 words, please include:

• What happened

• Which country, you don’t have to name the bank

• Was the situation fairly resolved?

You’ll find contact information to submit your story here.

Are you in Iceland?

Support our team and the right to fair treatment of people everywhere, by raising awareness about our hearing in Reykjavik, Iceland on 3 April 2025.

The hearing is open to the public so come and witness a historic case of the ‘little people’ taking on a financial institution.

Check out BadBanki.com for more info on how YOU can help make a difference!

Case Updates

Our team will be heading to the hearing and preparing reports on the hearing and outcomes. We will keep you updated about the progress in this important case.

If you haven’t already, you can apply to join the Panquake BETA at this link.
Businesses can apply to become a Lnqk Me Pilot Customer at this link.
Use our Panquake Me link shortening service for free at this link!

Share

Panquake.com and this Substack page are brought to you by Talk Liberation: We Don’t Hope, We Build! 

© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

Talk Liberation Founder Suzie Dawson wrapped up 2024 by speaking via video conference at Monerotopia, the world’s largest privacy-focused crypto conference, based in Mexico City. In her presentation, Dawson updated the Panquake Community on everything that has been going on and what is coming next.

“Without the actions of ‘Bad Banki’, you would already have Panquake in your hands. But because we didn’t give up and we innovated, and we never lost sight of our ethics or our commitment, Bad Banki will be held to account, and you will get Panquake!” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

Talk Liberation is committed to providing equal access for individuals with disabilities. To view an accessible version of this article, click here.

Key reveals:

• Panquake is very much alive and thriving: Dawson announces that Panquake has been deployed on a test network, and for the first time reveals the impressive size, scale and value of Talk Liberation, the independent development house that she founded and which is bringing Panquake to life

• The inside story on what really delayed Panquake: How an Icelandic bank unjustly froze Talk Liberation’s seed funding in 2022 - but that still didn’t stop Panquake, who never gave up and are now suing the bank who they call (tongue in cheek) ‘Bad Banki’

• The WikiLeaks influence: The Icelandic legal team behind WikiLeaks’ successful USD$10 million settlement of their suit against Visa and Mastercard are now representing Talk Liberation in their quest for compensation

• The open source deliveries: How Panquake Me (Pnqk.me) and Lnqk Me (Lnqk.me) are empowering internet users to protect themselves and each other when sharing and marketing digital content online

• How Talk Liberation is rebalancing the power dynamic between internet services and internet users: Why are links so important, anyway? Suzie explains

• What’s coming next?

Below is an audio recording of Dawson’s full 2024 speech at Monerotopia, Monero blockchain’s annual conference, held in the heart of Mexico City in November.

There is also an audio transcript provided below. Please share this post if these messages resonate with you!

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[TRANSCRIPT BEGINS]

Hi guys. Hi everyone.

My name is Suzie Dawson, I am the founder of Talk Liberation, a new type of software development house that is completely privacy focused, and developing a number of products, including our flagship product, Panquake, which some of you may know about. I was here a year ago to talk about it, and I want to give you some updates today, and some more information.

I want to just shout out quickly to our team who’s on the ground there with you; Hi, you guys, and to our team who are online as well. And I also just want to say there’s been one big change in the world since I was here a year ago, and that is that Julian Assange is free! That is something that I personally am absolutely thrilled about. This world is a better place with Julian out of Belmarsh. So hi J, how are you doing?

Okay, I’m going to go ahead and present.

Like I said, I’m from Talk Liberation. Talk Liberation is a company that we founded in 2021 with donations that we raised to create Panquake, as I mentioned our flagship product, which is a blockchain based social media network, that in all regards puts user privacy first.

So I thought I would start by recapping on my speech here at Monerotopia last year. Last year we talked about the inspiration behind Talk Liberation and Panquake. I talked about my history with Julian, with WikiLeaks, and the inspiration that the Cypherpunks movement has brought to many of our devs on our team, who are kind of like the next generation of Cypherpunks, and some of the old original crew as well.

“Panquake is not just a blockchain based social media network, it’s actually a Layer One blockchain.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

I also talked about my history with activism and journalism in New Zealand, citizen journalism, and my experiences of political persecution in my home country of New Zealand. I now live in Moscow, Russia. I’ve been here since 2016, so nine years nearly now. And I’m in pretty good company I must say, both historically in terms of Ed, and also many others who have been joining us here in recent years.

We talked about the first open source release of Talk Liberation, which was a project called WL Dragnet, you can find that at WLDragnet.com. That was an extremely important project. It was the first time our team released a FOSS product. It is a search tool that searches documents that we obtained, which are from a variety of U.S. defence contractors who have been surveilling social media users, and as we say “dragnetting” them based on their political affiliations, and in particular their support for WikiLeaks. I won’t get into the whole thing again, as we talked about it last year, but definitely check it out if you’re interested. We created a tool that allowed Twitter users to input their handles and see if they had been pulled into the dragnet. If they were in the database, then our tool allowed them to, on the fly, compile a PDF of all of the instances of their handles having been pulled into these reports that were compiled by these intelligence agencies.

So I also talked a lot last year about Artificial Intelligence. I talked about the ways that it’s being used in social media to profile users as well. And I talked about the connections between Artificial Intelligence predictive targeting models, and how that’s tying social media surveillance to the war machine, and to the targeting of individuals physically on the ground, particularly by U.S. Cyber Command and U.S. Air Force. So yeah, last year’s topics were pretty weighty and important. And I do hope that you’ll go back and watch that speech again if you didn’t hear it.

I also talked about the innovations that my team has been working on in blockchain tech. Our product, Panquake, is not just a blockchain based social media network, it’s actually a Layer One blockchain, and we have some very unique innovations that I’ve certainly never seen in any other chain before. We’re creating a non-financialised chain, where we’re recording user actions, network actions and interactions, and also content moderation actions as transactions on block, rather than just financial transactions. So again, you can go and check out my speech from last year if you want to hear a bit more about that.

I also talked a lot about how important it is, in my opinion, to not be monopolistic in our business practices and in our projects. To not see other people as competition, but actually to be as interoperable as we possibly can be; as communicative and as collaborative as we can be because we really are stronger together, and we really do need each other. And I told a bit of the story of Panquake, our flagship project, and I’m going to pick up where I left off with that story, today.

So this year I want to keep things pretty simple because we have a pretty large community of supporters in Panquake. Our crowd funding campaign went viral in 2021. We raised the funds that we were wanting much faster than we ever dreamed that we could. We had millions of users come to our website and support our campaign. And our campaign was not funded by venture capital. It was not funded by corporations or governments. We had a marketing spend of zero dollars. We had a PR spend of zero dollars, and despite that we were able to make a really big splash. And with those funds, we were able to establish a multinational corporation: Talk Liberation Limited. And we’re now operating in half a dozen countries, and we are employing dozens and dozens of people all around the world.

So I think the key questions that I’m going to cover off today are: what is Talk Liberation; what makes us different? What happened to Panquake? Because there is a story to be told there, and what is all this stuff about links?

“We were able to establish a multinational corporation: Talk Liberation Limited. And we’re now operating in half a dozen countries, and we are employing dozens and dozens of people all around the world.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

So as I mentioned we released WL Dragnet, our first open source codebase. Last year we released a project called Panquake Me - Pnqk.me – which is a short link cleaning and archiving service that we released for free. And I’ll talk a bit more about that soon. And we just this week announced our third open source project which is called Lnqk Me (pronounced Link Me) – Lnqk.me. And one of the questions I’m hearing on the internet right now is: ‘Why does Suzie care about links? Why does Panquake care about links?’ And so we’re going to get into that today. Also: where is Talk Liberation at right now? What’s going on with us, and what’s coming?

Okay, so moving along. Talk Liberation is software you can trust. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t actually trust any software. I can’t think of any software, and certainly not any software development house, that I would put any type of credence or trust in. And at Talk Liberation, what we are trying to do is solve the problems of the internet one piece at a time, through developing and releasing free and open source software. It’s super important to us that there be a software development house that is purely about protecting users, and enforcing user privacy at an architectural level, as well as in the functionality and the workflows too, and even in the links, which we are going to get into very shortly.

“Talk Liberation is software you can trust.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

So we have this suite of products, you can see a few of them, they’re up on the screen, but there are actually more, which we haven’t released yet. And we like to make really slick, sexy, customisable, attractive, drag-and-drop style dashboards that are intuitive and easy for people to use, which have cutting edge functionality, and which are interoperable with the Fediverse and other projects, and which are free and open source.

So just as it says here on my slide, serving users and not Big Data is what we’re all about. We engineer our products to respect user privacy first and foremost. We do not track our users. We do not sell their data. In fact, we go to extreme lengths to avoid capturing user data. And we’ve made multiple innovations that enable us to not store user data, even in situations where it would be expected that a piece of software would.

“We like to make really slick, sexy, customisable, attractive, drag-and-drop style dashboards that are intuitive and easy for people to use, which have cutting edge functionality, and which are interoperable with the Fediverse and other projects, and which are free and open source.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

We don’t use algorithms to manipulate users. We don’t capture attention. We don’t insert ourselves or our content into a user’s timeline. It’s truly freedom software. It’s about giving users total power and control over the software that they’re operating. And we also don’t believe that AI, and certainly not in its current forms, is an ethical solution. We believe that AI is being used to experiment on users, to turn them into guinea pigs.

Not only is all of our software AI-free, but we also, in the course of building software, do not use any AI tools at all. In fact, we don’t use any Big Tech tools at all. We do things very old school. It’s a very back-to-the future approach. But we think we get better results out of it too.

Okay. So we also have a Substack, Talk Liberation does, which you can find at TalkLiberation.com, where we really try and keep, not just our users and our community, but also ourselves, really up to date on all issues relating to internet, user privacy, law, biometrics, surveillance; all that kind of stuff. You can follow our Substack for free, or if you want, you can donate five bucks a month and help support the team, totally up to you. But that Substack is absolutely chock full of really relevant information about what’s going on around the world, and particularly as it pertains to privacy.

“Serving users and not Big Data is what we’re all about. We engineer our products to respect user privacy first and foremost. We do not track our users. We do not sell their data. In fact, we go to extreme lengths to avoid capturing user data.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

Okay, so the Panquake story. This is from Panquake.com/press, the page that you’re looking at right now. It’s a slightly updated version of what you saw last year, and this is the story up through the point that I made the speech last year at Monerotopia. And you can see where we first came up with the idea of Panquake.

We launched our crowd funder. We started planning out our development. We hired our first developer. We wrote our first line of code. We revealed the look and feel of the Panquake interface, and then the functioning interface itself. We did the mobile app preview. And then you’ll see down here, there’s actually something really momentous that occurred that I haven’t been able to talk about very much until now, and that’s right here you see; our delivery was funded.

So obviously our crowd funder, even though it was wildly successful, would not pay for an entire dev team for very long at all, and we needed to raise some funds. But like everything else we do, we did it ethically. We didn’t go to VC’s. We didn’t go to corporates. We didn’t go to governments. We didn’t even go to NGO’s. Instead we were able to obtain private funding from a funder that has the same ethos, same goals, and same motivations as us. And we were also able to retain control of our organization. We still to this day, even three years later, we ourselves are the majority shareholders of our company, which is amazing. And we are the only holders of voting shares, which is also amazing. So we’ve managed to keep our independence and our autonomy.

“We don’t use algorithms to manipulate users. We don’t capture attention. We don’t insert ourselves or our content into a user’s timeline. It’s truly freedom software. It’s about giving users total power and control over the software that they’re operating.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson.

But there was just one little problem that we faced. And you can see here on our crowdfunding page: raised offline; one million and twenty two thousand U.S. dollars. So we very transparently made visible to our entire network the funds that we had raised when we got our seed funding, and exactly how much that was.

However, Panquake, being a disruptive technology, and Talk Liberation being a disruptive company, has been subjected to myriad methods of interference, sabotage, and really attacks since we started the company. And I’ve outlined some of them here on this slide that hopefully you can see right now.

So our very first campaign livestream in 2021 was due to be simulcast on the Jimmy Dore Show to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. It was due to be simulcast to a number of independent media YouTube channels. And that stream was hacked, throttled, interfered with, sabotaged on multiple different machines, and multiple different streams. And it kind of played into our hands, to be honest with you, because when the community, who knew something big was coming, witnessed the level of interference and sabotage, they actually doubled down in their support of us. And I actually think it ended up contributing to the viral success of the crowd funder. But from that first moment, we understood exactly what we were up against in terms of the scale of resources that could be set against us.

Sure enough, in a matter of months, Paypal banned our Paypal account. They froze all of our donations. They refused to return them to our funders. They put us through circular appeals processes that never went anywhere. It was a whole drama, and of course we were never able to access those funds. Simultaneously, Twitter suspended all of Panquake’s Twitter accounts without any reason, then they randomly turned them back on, and then they suspended them all again. And so the six thousand odd people who had swiftly followed Panquake on Twitter, all of a sudden didn’t have access to our content, and we weren’t able to effectively communicate with them on that platform. We basically haven’t really bothered going back to Twitter again. We have applied many times for the account to be unbanned, but nothing’s happened about that. I suspect that’s because a certain new owner of Twitter is not really big on allowing competition on his platform.

“When the community, who knew something big was coming, witnessed the level of interference and sabotage, they actually doubled down in their support of us. And I actually think it ended up contributing to the viral success of the crowd funder.” Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

We’ve also experienced what could only be described as extremely sophisticated and large scale DDoS attacks on our hosting provider, our infrastructure and services, our websites, our domains, you name it. I say sophisticated because there has been a lot of network obfuscation and, again, a lot of resource, it all comes down to huge amounts of resource being wielded against us to try and cripple us, and cripple our progress.

We also had 24/7 smear campaigns. We have had accounts posting up to two hundred and fifty smear posts per day, claiming Panquake doesn’t exist, Panquake’s never written a line of code; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you name it, which is absolutely insane to be subjected to, frankly, but again, indicative of the scale of resources that have been set against us.

But then, and this is what I’m now talking about for the first time ever, something else happened to us, and it happened around our delivery being funded for the Panquake blockchain completion and delivery. And that’s a bank - who I’m just going to call for now “Bad Banki” - that is in Iceland, which was where we were planning on having our commercial operations be situated. They froze our seed funding when it was deposited into our Icelandic bank account, and they kept it from us for a very, very, very long time, and they did it for completely spurious reasons. In fact, I’d go so far as to say just deeply incorrect reasons.

Now it wasn’t a surprise to them that our funding was coming. In fact, we had told them ahead of time. We had been very proactive. Our funding source was completely above board. We had done all of our compliance, all of our due diligence, but the bank just decided to freeze our funds and sit on them, which threw our budget into disarray. Threw our strategic plans into disarray, and it took some time for us to find strategic solutions, and be able push forward with the project.

“A bank - who I’m just going to call for now “Bad Banki” - that is in Iceland, which was where we were planning on having our commercial operations be situated. They froze our seed funding when it was deposited into our Icelandic bank account, and they kept it from us for a very, very, very long time, and they did it for completely spurious reasons.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

Now we aren’t the only people to have had banking issues in Iceland. You may recall that WikiLeaks, in fact, won a lawsuit in the Icelandic Supreme Court against a payment processor called Valitor, who was, at the instruction of Visa and Mastercard, blocking donations and payments to WikiLeaks. Thank god they finally won, but as you all know, it really crippled WikiLeaks’s funding for some time. And again, you can see the scale of the resources that were set against WikiLeaks.

And while I certainly have not experienced anything on the level of what Julian has, and I want to be really clear about that, I have no doubt that there is some synergy going on around technologically innovative projects being denied access to traditional financial systems, even without cause.

I’d just like to point out at the bottom of the BBC website, you can see that little cookies notice right there. You will never ever see that on any of our websites. If you go to Panquake.com, there is no cookies notice. If you go to Pnqk.me or Lnqk Me, no cookies notice. We don’t use them.

Okay so here is the second piece of news that I have not ever spoken about before. But that is that the legal team who represented Wikileaks in the lawsuit against Visa and Mastercard in Iceland is representing Talk Liberation and Panquake. We are suing Bad Banki. We are currently engaged in litigation against them, and we will be holding them to account for what they did to our project.

“I have no doubt that there is some synergy going on around technologically innovative projects being denied access to traditional financial systems, even without cause.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

Bear with me a moment please.

Okay, so while fighting Bad Banki to unfreeze our funds, so that we could hire in the remaining specialists devs we needed to complete our blockchain, we realised it was going to take some time, and we didn’t want to deprive our audience of the technology which we had already invested in building until that point. So we quickly pivoted, and we began productising and releasing the pieces of Panquake that we had already developed and finished. We knew that technology had the potential in and of itself to manifestly change outcomes for internet users, and I believe already is. And that’s why we put that technology into your hands straight away, and for free, in the form of Panquake Me - Pnqk.me. And we’ll have a little look at Panquake Me right now.

So here’s Panquake Me. This is a screen of what the Panquake Me webpage looks like, like I said, freely available to anyone. Some smart influencers are already converting all of the links that they share online to Panquake Me links. So, basically you take a link that you want to share to someone, or anywhere on the internet, or that you going to turn into posts, or email, or whatever. You go to Pnqk.me, and you enter that link, and you hit the one button on the page, and it gives you a short link, a Pnqk.me link. That link is automatically cleansing every UTM tracker code, every tracker or nasty thing that’s in a link.

“Users are learning that when they see a Pnqk.me link, they are being protected, and the person sharing the link is trying to protect them as well. And they have a much higher degree of confidence to click through on that link, knowing that they’re going somewhere that’s been validated, and that doesn’t contain any Big Tech trackers or cookies.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

So for example, if you’re coming off of some really hideous Big Tech platforms, or one of the E-Commerce platforms, or one of the social media platforms, or one of the news platforms; those tend to be the worst offenders. You put their link into Pnqk.me. You grab the short link, and it is cleansed of any nasty crap from Big Tech. You can then directly share out of Pnqk.me onto various platforms, or you could just copy that link and go and email it, or SMS it, or whatever you want to do with it.

And what that means is that the recipient of that link, when they click on it, they are only tracked back to the Pnqk.me service. They’re not tracked back anywhere beyond that. And you are then not tied to that user in the way that you would be if you were sharing with them directly off of a Big Tech platform. So what we’re doing is we’re putting a protective wall between those who are generating links for sharing and posting them, and those who are the recipients of that link or the audience. So it’s really quite a spectacular thing.

It also has an inbuilt archiving service, both to Archive.is and Archive.org. There’s multiple archiving options. We also have a quite amazing domain validation technology built into it as well, where if Panquake Me does not recognise the root domain of the link that you’re sharing, it will by default only give you short links that lead to the archived versions. Then we go through and validate those domains. And we make sure that they’re not going somewhere nasty that’s got malware, or going to infect the user, et cetera, et cetera. If we can see that it’s not, and it passes our validation checks, then that’s whitelisted. And that means that the next time that you enter that domain, you’re going to get a short link that will allow you to pass through to the original page, or what in the industry is known as the target URL. But if it is somewhere that’s going to infect the user, or hurt them in some way, they’re going to not be able to access that except for archived versions.

“So what we’re doing is we’re putting a protective wall between those who are generating links for sharing and posting them, and those who are the recipients of that link or the audience. So it’s really quite a spectacular thing.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

So this validation process means that we are continually expanding our list of domains that we’ve validated, and we’ve now validated over a hundred thousand domains on our project, which is quite cool.

The user adoption metrics on Panquake Me have been absolutely through the roof. Over 86 per cent of users who hit the page actually complete the work flow and create a link. And also as influencers have begun using Panquake Me before posting any links, they’re only posting Panquake Me links, the click to link ratio has gone up exponentially as well. I think they’re up 600 per cent. So slowly over time, users are learning that when they see a Pnqk.me link, they are being protected, and the person sharing the link is trying to protect them as well. And they have a much higher degree of confidence to click through on that link, knowing that they’re going somewhere that’s been validated, and that doesn’t contain any Big Tech trackers or cookies.

So we also had a lot of requests from people who want to create multiple links, who want an enterprise version, who want to be able to create QR codes, want to be able to do other things like that. And for that reason, we went ahead and created Lnqk Me: Lnqk.me. You can go ahead and apply if you have a project that wants to use Lnqk Me.

Lnqk Me provides a truly cutting edge digital marketing dashboard. Again, same kind of drag-and-drop fully customisable, same kind of really light workflows and high usability as the Panquake application, and interface design.

And on Lnqk.me, you can create bulk links, you can integrate your own custom domains, you can create and customise QR codes. You can create and customise your own short links. And they all have that same built in validation and security that Panquake Me does, but just with a ton more flexibility and functionality. You can create and edit projects, and you can invite in users from your team. You can create teams within the dashboard and assign them to different projects, so you can run multiple projects simultaneously. You can create links and QR Codes, and assign those to the projects. And so you can really collaborate on a proper digital marketing campaign. It really is a digital marketing campaign tool.

“When you are inputting a link into your browser, and hitting enter, you are connecting to other people’s computers. You are then subject to their rules, their laws in many cases, and their choices. Their choices around their network architecture, and how their websites operate, and what they collect from users, or don’t collect from users.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

But it’s also a metrics engine, and it’s an anonymised metrics engine. So Lnqk.me does give you the same type of metrics functionality as you would expect from a digital marketing dashboard except everything is anonymised. We’re not in any way collecting data on individual users, but you’re able to see your click data. You’re able to see what different types of links are the most successful. What different projects are the most successful, et cetera, et cetera. So you’re able to get high level business statistics without compromising the privacy of your users, and that’s something that’s really never been done before in the commercial space at this level. So it’s pretty significant, and I urge you to check it out if you’re interested.

It’s a great way to be able to compete as a business without compromising on ethics, particularly if you’re a privacy minded project. It’s also much more affordable than the typical digital marketing campaign dashboards because we don’t penalise you with charges per click, which everyone else in the industry does. So we’re trying to clean up the short link industry, clean up the QR code industry, and actually clean up business itself. And that’s a big goal that we’ve got going forward.

Here’s another view of the Lnqk.me dashboard. You can see there the ability to create new projects, links, QR codes, connect domains, upload bulk links. It also has a business reporting feature, where literally in one click you can have a presentation-ready report containing all your project data and metrics that, again, is in no way compromising user privacy.

“We have in no way given up on Panquake. In fact, we’ve made substantial progress towards delivering it.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

Cool. Okay, so that gives you some idea of what we’ve been up to in the meantime, while we were dealing with the whole situation around Bad Banki and our funding, and waiting to be able to finish our blockchain build for Panquake. So we have in no way given up on Panquake. In fact, we’ve made substantial progress towards delivering it. And I’ll be talking a bit more about that too. But first I’m going to address this question I keep seeing floating around the internet, which is: ‘Why does Suzie care so much about links? What is the relevance? And why should we care about links as users?’ And I want to kind of look at that from a lay-person’s perspective, and why they should care.

So I know we have a bunch of techies in the room, and what follows might be a little bit dumbed down for you guys, but I think this is important for the wider community, who aren’t necessarily developers, to be able to understand what the significance is.

So first we’ve got to think about what is a link? We know if we open our developer tools in our browser, when we input a link we can see that we’re connecting to a server. We can see the server address, and we can track the network activity. But regular people can’t necessarily do that, or know to do that. And so what they need to know is that when you are inputting a link into your browser, and hitting enter, you are connecting to other people’s computers. You are then subject to their rules, their laws in many cases, and their choices. Their choices around their network architecture, and how their websites operate, and what they collect from users, or don’t collect from users.

And sometimes you don’t even know, really, where you’re going when you click on a link until you get there. And sometimes you don’t know really know the consequences of you visiting that link until long after, if ever.

So a link is an address, and a link that someone gives you is an invitation to visit that address. So a link is like a passport or a boarding pass, and when you’re transiting the internet, that’s like a digital airport. And you show up at your destination with luggage that you may not even know that you’re holding. And you may not know or understand what is in your luggage. But a largely invisible internet airport security, or border control, rifles through your luggage and stores copies of it, which they keep forever. And then they share with people that you don’t know. And sometimes they do it for profit. And sometimes they’re just doing it for control.

“Thanks to Talk Liberation products, you’re traveling the internet in a much safer way without any baggage. Without anything that can be taken from you, and without anything that can be given to anyone else without your knowledge. And that is pretty, pretty special.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

But even worse, in your luggage, they find out who told you to go on this trip in the first place. It could’ve been your Mother. It could’ve been your neighbour. It could’ve been someone you don’t even know, or that you never want to know again. But you have effectively reported on that relationship just by making the trip. And now you’re tied to that person forever, and the internet border control has you tied together with that person for all eternity.

Once they’re done rifling through your luggage, the airport security add a few things of their own into your bags, and then hand your luggage back to you. And off you go onto the next address with even more luggage than you started with.

So what happens when your ticket or your boarding pass is from Panquake Me – Pnqk.me, or Lnqk.me? Well, when the internet border control open your bags, that’s all they see. That’s all that you’re arriving with, a boarding card that says Panquake Me or Lnqk Me. And nothing else is in your bags. And you haven’t reported on anyone. And your social network and relationships aren’t being mapped. And you’re a free agent.

Now when the internet border security add their trackers to your bags and send you away, and you take those bags back to Panquake Me or Lnqk Me and enter the link that you’ve been given, you’re cleaning out your bags again, and you’re free to travel on unhindered by the past and where you’ve been, and without fear of the future, and where you’re going.

So thanks to Talk Liberation products, you’re traveling the internet in a much safer way without any baggage. Without anything that can be taken from you, and without anything that can be given to anyone else without your knowledge. And that is pretty, pretty special.

“We didn’t want to deprive our audience of the technology which we had already invested in building until that point. So we quickly pivoted, and we began productising and releasing the pieces of Panquake that we had already developed and finished. We knew that technology had the potential in and of itself to manifestly change outcomes for internet users, and I believe already is.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

In terms of social media, links are highly relevant, especially to us building a social media product. Every page on a social media website is a link. Your profile is a link. Your timeline is a link. Your individual posts are links. When you invite someone to a network, that’s a link. When you are sharing content, that’s a link. When you are posting some type of media, or uploading some type of media, that’s also a link.

And we have links, in the context of Panquake - we’ve got links to other content from the web that will get introduced onto our platform. So people want to share their Twitter posts on Panquake. They want to share their Facebook posts on Panquake, god help us, that also has links involved. Links that we’re ingesting from other platforms. And then also when people are wanting to share Panquake content out to the wider web, that also involves link generation.

So we had to work out the optimal way to engineer Panquake links to best protect users for each of those use cases that I just described, and that was when we built the short link service that became Panquake Me and Lnqk Me. It’s actually a part of Panquake. It’s already in the Panquake application, and we designed these links in a way that they would never contain, or that they would strip out where they already existed, these nasty trackers and cookies and what-not from these third parties, so that we could know that users of the Panquake network were never being tracked by a third party, and certainly never being tracked by us.

“We have a 100 per cent AI-free technology stack. We have no GPT’s. No stable diffusion. No machine learning. Zero cloud infrastructure. No Big Tech products, services or dependencies. All our sites, apps and digital assets remain cookie-free and tracker-free. And we do not log or store visitor IP addresses or other personally identifiable information, PII, on any of our services.” - Talk Liberation Founder, Suzie Dawson

We also were actually asked by our community to look into content archival as an option, archiving. And that was where the original idea around also optionally archiving content came from as well. So since we had already done that work, and it was already working in the Panquake application, it was very easy for us to package that and spin it out into what became the Pnqk.me service. And then to add in QR codes and anonymised metrics. So it was very easy for us to then branch that out to Lnqk.me.

So in three short years, and despite all the opposition that we faced, we have managed to innovate and deliver multiple solutions that are game changers. Not just for social media, but also for the short link, QR code and even digital marketing industries in addition. And there is much, much, much more to come.

So in terms of the last 12 months, I just want to give you some basic metrics about our team to give you some idea about the scale of our operation. So despite our issues with Bad Banki, we were able to successfully complete a Series A funding round. And with five products in the works, and the level of maturity of those builds, we were able to successfully complete that round at a US$81 million dollar valuation, which is obviously extremely significant.

Subsequently in the last 12 months, our development team grew by 80 per cent. We tasked 803 dev tickets. We produced 2,009 code files, containing 243,857 net lines of code. We configured 14 new servers, nine development, testing and production set ups. We deployed Panquake and Lnqk.me alpha test nets. We have built the Panquake blockchain queuing service, hired new blockchain devs in to complete the chain build itself. We implemented a self-hosted privacy respecting metrics engine.

And after all of that, we still have a 100 per cent AI-free technology stack. We have no GPT’s. No stable diffusion. No machine learning. Zero cloud infrastructure. No Big Tech products, services or dependencies. All our sites, apps and digital assets remain cookie-free and tracker-free. And we do not log or store visitor IP addresses or other personally identifiable information, PII, on any of our services.

So without the actions of Bad Banki, our valuation would have been much higher than it came in at last year. And without the actions of Bad Banki, you would already have Panquake in your hands. But because we didn’t give up and we innovated, and we never lost sight of our ethics or our commitment, Bad Banki will be held to account, and you will get Panquake!

[End of transcript]

If you haven’t already, you can apply to join the Panquake BETA at this link.
Businesses can apply to become a Lnqk Me Pilot Customer at this link.
Use our Panquake Me link shortening service for free at this link!

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Panquake.com and this Substack page are brought to you by Talk Liberation: We Don’t Hope, We Build! 

© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

Check out the teaser video above and apply to our Lnqk.Me pilot customer programme, to become one of the first companies in the world to transform your brand trust! (Click here to read the Lnqk Me press release or here to read our campaign update).

On the internet, there is very little trust these days.

“People know they’re only one click from disaster. Malware, ransomware, data breaches, identity theft. As a digital marketer you're fighting an uphill battle. Users inherently fear the links that you send them. Lnqk Me is here to turn that around.” – Suzie Dawson, Founder of Lnqk Me.

Lnqk.Me (pronounced Link Me) is our powerful, intuitive, next generation platform that helps YOU build successful digital marketing campaigns fast. This cutting-edge marketing tool features end-to-end privacy and security, real time metrics, on demand reporting, and simple, intuitive workflows. When your users click on a Lnqk Me link, they'll know they’re going somewhere trusted and secure.

Lnqk.Me features an inbuilt scheduler, an image gallery, and a collaborative and transparent working environment for digital marketing teams. Upload bulk links and download one-click ready-to-present business reports to show off your performance metrics.

Lnqk.Me's customisable drag-and-drop dashboard facilitates:

• digital campaign creation and management

• project creation and management

• user and team creation and management

• marketing channel configuration and management

• short link and QR code creation and modification

• campaign metrics and performance tracking

• web domain and social media integrations

• image gallery

• scheduler

• bulk upload

• business reporting

You can apply today to become a Lnqk Me Pilot Customer and become one of the first businesses in the world to transform your brand trust.

Lnqk Me was designed, developed and engineered from the ground up by our privacy-respecting software development house Talk Liberation. As with all our other projects before it, the Lnqk Me codebase will be released free and open source and the prep for that is happening right now. We're here to restore trust on the internet. Trust that is earned because it is provable and verifiable.

Background on Lnqk Me

Lnqk Me is the enterprise version of Panquake Me - a FREE link cleansing, shortening and archiving service released by Talk Liberation in 2023.

Found at Pnqk.Me - Panquake Me allows you to share single links safely to your family and friends, without fear of tracking and mapping of your entire network. Did you know, that simply forwarding on a link you could be tracking your entire network of family, friends and community? Ever share a link on a ‘sensitive’ topic, to only have sent them to a dead link? You send people nowhere, while Big Tech have tracked and mapped out who you sent that link to.

With Pnqk.me users are sharing links with no fear and getting more clicks!

Influencers are already using Panquake Me to protect themselves and their audiences and user adoption has been skyrocketing.

How can you tell Panquake Me is the real deal? Because we’ve released our source code! Available now for vetting by security researchers and the public.

Panquake Me has three great functions:

1.     Strips your links of any marketing or ad trackers,

2.     Archives the original link so it never disappears, and

3.     Shortens the link

All within one simple click!

It’s a free service that is available to everyone because we all deserve to protect not only our rights to privacy, but those of our neighbours. Let’s keep the internet safe for everyone.

Background on Talk Liberation

Talk Liberation makes software you can trust. We are here to keep Big Tech out of your business.

Talk Liberation is a new kind of software development house, with a suite of products that make the internet a safer place for you.

Here on our Substack account, you are joining more than 1,600 subscribers and we keep you regularly updated with breaking news in the internet, social media, digital privacy and security arenas, as well as our product updates.

Subscribe for FREE or contribute $5 per month to help support our mission!

Background on Panquake

Panquake is Talk Liberation's flagship product. To date, over 3 million people have visited the Panquake.com website and over 3,800 donors have contributed funds towards the development of the next generation social media technology. Since we first discussed a groundbreaking idea of a crowdfunded social media application where the users are the customers ‒ not the product ‒ Panquake’s build has achieved a series of major milestones, from network design proof of concept to a fully functioning application interface. Members of the public have flocked to apply to become Panquake BETA users and Panquake is in its final build phase in order to launch the BETA offering. With Big Tech algorithms, AI moderation and massive data breaches rendering outdated, monopoly platforms obsolete, Panquake offers a vital and timely solution

If the Talk Liberation mission resonates with you, if you feel heartened to know that there are people working hard to tackle some of the most difficult problems we face in this day and age… then please share this post :)

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If you haven’t already, you can apply to join the Panquake BETA at this link.

Talk Liberation is brought to you by Panquake.com. We Don’t Hope, We Build! 

© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

“Talk Liberation is a very interesting and intriguing project. It is a company that can bring something to people and with this company we can change the world.” - Igor Kreslavsky, Chief Legal Officer, Talk Liberation.

In 2021, the idea of Panquake was presented to the world - who resoundingly backed the project in a viral crowdfunding campaign. By 2022 the front end application was built and the look and feel revealed, and the Panquake team released their first open source codebase - WLDragnet. In 2023, the first piece of the Panquake pie: Panquake Me was passed into the hands of users who ever since have been happily sharing short links that are private and safer for their friends, audiences and communities online. Now, the Panquake team have announced a new product to be revealed NEXT MONTH! Want to know more? The team discussed the big news in the video below.

A transcript of the video follows.

SD: Hi everyone, my name is Suzie Dawson, I’m the Founder and Chief Product Officer at Panquake.com. It’s been a while since we got to talk to you, of course we had Christmas and New Year’s break, and I actually was out with pneumonia through January and February so I’m sorry, that’s why I’ve been a little bit absent. But we are back to talk about Panquake 2024 and all the incredible and exciting things that are happening this year. We have tons of news for you in this update, and we’ve also brought some of our team and some of our friends as well. First up, I’m going to talk with Sean O’Brien, our Chief Technology Officer, who is going to cover off the growth of our team in 2023. It was a huge year for us, but we have also just finished a major funding round. We completed our Series A funding round at the beginning of this year and our team is going to grow even bigger in 2024. Hi Sean, welcome to the stream.

SO: Hi Suzie, so happy to be here and so happy to get to talk to everybody in this great new year and it is going to be a really, really big one for Panquake. As you all know - or as I hope you all know - back in September of last year we launched a little slice of Panquake called Panquake Me - that’s at https://pnqk.me. That’s a link shortener service that respects your privacy and actually strips out cruft, dirty stuff from links. So it’s a great tool for you to use when you share links on the internet, on other social platforms which are not as awesome as Panquake will be. We’ve continued to track the statistics around Panquake Me - over 80% of the visitors to Panquake Me actually use the service. That means the UI works - it’s easy, it’s intuitive; folks really want to use this product. That’s a huge, wonderful sort of assurance for us as a team that the things that we build are important to the users that we’re sharing them with. We wanted to make sure that Panquake Me was the first part of the wider Panquake network that we’ll share with you all and it’s turned out really, really well. That usage has continued throughout the winter and into the spring of 2024. We haven’t seen any drop off in that metric and in fact we’ve seen that the click ratio also continues to be high. So that means when users create those links, they’re actually sharing them on platforms, on their own social media, on their own blogs and websites and we can see folks are actively using this product. So that’s something that’s really really encouraging to everybody and the dev staff. As Suzie talked about, speaking of, we have grown our dev staff by 100% in 2023 - which means we’ve doubled it. And we’ve brought on folks, again, from around the world. We have a global, very distributed team, who are very excited to be building, doing innovative stuff, and we are still bringing that innovation, that enthusiasm, to the products and services that we’re building. So it’s going to be a big year - I know we’re going to talk a little more about it in this stream and in upcoming streams, and I think you all will be quite happy with what we’re going to deliver.

SD: Well it’s been three years now, since we first presented the idea of Panquake to the world and what we’ve achieved is amazing. As our audience knows, we have a fully functioning interface that has had incredible rave reviews from those who’ve got to see and use it so far, but we’ve also broadened our products and services, especially with the additional talent that we’ve brought on board. And not only has our development team grown dramatically, but our business team is as well. We’ve actually been in a position now to make several really key new executive appointments, and some of those new execs on our board will speak to you on this stream too. So as you know, this team started out with a bunch of people who’d worked together in the past, who knew each other, cared about each other, trusted each other and that’s why we’ve had such a sound and solid foundation to build upon and to grow with. Well there are a couple of people who have been really instrumental in my life who are now a part of the business as well. The first one is Rene de Wit. Now, Rene has actually known me since I was about 12 years old. Rene was my business mentor. I was very, very young when I started working as a database administrator in one of Ren’s businesses. I was also studying at business school in Auckland at the same time as I was working for him and Rene gave me amazing opportunities and advancements. He really placed his trust in me. He took me into a lot of different business experiences, business opportunities that I otherwise wouldn’t have got anywhere else. I learned about supplier negotiation from Rene. I learned about auditing, I learned about ERP systems and logistics, warehousing and distribution, ordering systems, all types of different experiences. And over the years, throughout my career, even though I actually left to have my first child when I was first working for Rene, in later years I did work with Rene in other software development roles as well. I was the Software Development Manager at a print organisation that Rene was CEO of and Ren and I have always stayed close and stayed in touch. Rene has a Masters degree in Chemistry, he also has a Masters degree in Business Administration, from a pretty prestigious business school in New Zealand. Never in a million years did I ever think that I would one day be in a position to employ Rene, rather than Rene employing me. Throughout the first couple of years of Panquake I kept in touch with Ren, told him about what I was doing, sought his advice - and he gave me fantastic and completely free advice - he’s always been so generous with me in that way. And then late last year, almost off the cuff, I pitched Rene to join our team and incredibly he said yes. So Rene is with us tonight - Rene de Wit - and Rene is now the Chief Commercial Officer of Talk Liberation. He has also been appointed the Executive Chair of our Executive committee. So he’s in an extremely key role and to have someone with decades of serious business and commercial experience join our company is really transformational for us and really a key moment. So, hi Rene, welcome to the stream.

RdW: Hi Suzie.

SD: So cool to have you here.

RdW: Thanks, that was obviously a significant description of who I am and how we’ve been linked together for so many years.

SD: Rene, you’ve been with us for four or five months now and you’ve had a chance to see inside the core of our operations, to get to know all of our team, and to get to see at a really high level exactly how this international business runs. What can you tell us about what you’ve seen and what you’ve learned?

RdW: Obviously Suzie, I was really excited to join the team. But I never imagined that I would be walking into an organisation that has the level of skill and ability that it has. So it’s been really exciting to work with yourself Suzie and Sean and a whole bunch of people associated with the organisation. I’ve seen a highly skilled development team that are being led really well - a likeminded team that are really focused on the goal. And in particular, a really organised process. There’s serious architecture around the way the software is being developed. There is nothing disorganised about this organisation. I see things moving very quickly and the quality of output is extremely high and with a very attractive look-and-feel for the user. So it’s very exciting.

SD: That’s so great to have that feedback and insight from you, I love to hear about what other people see and other people experience in our organisation. Can you tell us a little bit about your role - what does it mean for you to be Chief Commercial Officer and what is coming up for you this year?

RdW: Look, I think this is a really exciting year for Talk Liberation. This is the year that we’re going to take commercial products to market and we’re going to see our first revenue. So that’s a really exciting step in a business that’s been preparing for it for the last three years. My role is to build a really solid sales and marketing team and that includes everything from management and relationships with customers, customer engagement, building the appropriate management team that we can really be focused on our social media and everything else and in addition to chairing the board as well. So my role is to really commercialise everything that is coming out of the core of the business.

SD: Fantastic, and there isn’t a better person that we could have to do it Ren, I’m really really grateful and I love having you on board.

RdW: Thanks, Suzie.

SD: So… what can you tell us about products coming to market this year? I happen to know that there is a big opportunity - an event happening in May. Do you want to tell us about that?

RdW: Yes! We will be presenting a new product to market - so its a launch - and that product will have a very broad application to not just the blockchain industry but many, many industries across many, many sectors. With me will be Sean O’Brien, there’ll be John Kiriakou and there will also be Sheree Ip and we’ll be launching this new product. So it’ll be the first time that anyone around the globe sees it. So this product will have the same level of design quality and finish that you’re used to seeing from products out of Talk Liberation. So it’s very exciting. It’s a great opportunity for us to get our name out there.

SD: Awesome! So huge news - something big is coming - the next piece of the Panquake pie will be revealed in Hong Kong. Okay, so another executive appointment which is a really key one which has been made, is another trusted and longstanding friend and relationship of mine and ours and that is Mr. Igor Kreslavsky. Igor has come on board to manage our legal affairs and drive our legal strategy, and also to manage our legal advisors in a half a dozen countries around the world. Igor is someone I’ve known for more than eight years now, he’s gone above and beyond for me many, many times and is a brave and talented and supremely qualified individual to be in this role and a part of this organisation. Hi Igor, welcome to the stream.

IK: Thank you Suzie for having me. I’m very delighted to be part of the team. I’m so glad to be in this role and this position. My area of expertise is corporate law, risk assessment, compliance and intellectual property. I’ve known Suzie for - how many - eight years, ten years? So long that it’s even difficult to remember. And for all those years, the things I know about Suzie is that she’s a kind, caring and very result-oriented person. Even things that we can’t believe will be achieved, and people think that you’re probably crazy to even start all of that, even those things can become a reality when you deal with Suzie. I think those qualities are something that we can bring all together to the company because it’s the same thing, it works here as well.

SD: Igor, ultimately what was it that made you decide to take up the position of Chief Legal Officer for Talk Liberation?

IK: Talk Liberation is a very interesting and intriguing project. It is a company that can bring something to people and with this company we can change the world.

SD: OK guys that gave me shivers. Seriously. Oh my god, I love it when people just speak from the heart like that. And it proves that even a lawyer can speak from the heart and he’s got such a big heart that you now know why I recruited him for this position. Okay, we have got another exceptional friend of ours - and teammate - and that is the one and only John Kiriakou, Brand Ambassador for Talk Liberation. Hi John!

JK: Hi, thanks for having me!

SD: You’re so welcome, it’s so good to see you and you look great.

JK: Thank you, it’s my pleasure.

SD: John, you came on board really early with this project and you believed in us. You believed in us before we even had built Panquake. And you backed us relentlessly, and you’ve been so loyal and such a great contributor and such a great voice and face for our project and our company. You’ve also got to be at our team meetings and meet our team and see how we run from the inside. What is your take on what makes this company special and what have you seen in terms of progress and growth from us?

JK: I’d like to go back to when you and I first talked about this. I remember saying to you, I really don’t know very much about tech. And you said, I really don’t have to know very much about tech. And I said, well who is involved? And you told me. And Suzie, I remember saying, if you’re involved and Sean O’Brien is involved and Sheree is involved, then I definitely want to be involved. These are people who are standouts in their fields, they’re as honest as the day is long and they can get things done. And boy, right from the get-go that is what happened. Things got done. One of the things which has been such a pleasant surprise for me is, you know, I’ve never been in an organisation right from the very beginning. And so to watch this go from an idea, to a company, to an ongoing concern in three short years with an explosive addition of staff, and not just people that… you can go on the street corner and offer people jobs, but these are people who are at the tops of their fields. In everything from tech, to legal, to business… my God that is absolutely something I want to be involved in. So to see the quickness with which Panquake has grown, it makes me proud to be involved. It makes me excited to see where it is going to go - not ten years from now, but just one year from now! And to watch the commitment that people have to grow the company, not because they’re doing this to make money, but so that all of the rest of us can have somewhere to go where we can trust each other and we can speak our minds and not have to worry about being censored. It just makes me proud. I’m glad to be involved.

SD: We’re so thrilled and so honoured to have you and I’m so pleased to be sending you to Hong Kong in May! Are you looking forward to that John, are you excited?

JK: I am very excited. I’m proud to say I’ve been to something like 75 countries over the course of my life. I’ve never been to Hong Kong. I’ve never been to China. And going is one thing - going for an important reason is another thing. Wow. That puts us on a whole different level and it’s going to be exciting just to be involved.

SD: And you’ll be presenting the next piece of the Panquake pie. The last one was pretty special, the next one is even more special and there’s plenty more to come after that. And with you representing us John, I don’t think we can go wrong.

JK: Well thank you for having me. This is very quickly becoming one of the most important things that I’ve ever done. As I said, I’m just proud to be working with you fine people and working for the right reasons.

SD: Well, John, considering some of the things that you’ve done, that’s incredibly high praise. Thank you so much.

JK: Thank you.

SD: Now I’m going to hand over to Sheree Ip, our Public Relations Manager. She’ll also be in Hong Kong. Hi Sheree, welcome to the stream. Can you wrap it up for us?

SI: Hi Suzie, how’s it going? Look, I’m very excited to be going to Hong Kong and as you can tell, the rest of the team as well. Because this is going to be huge for us, to all be able to get together for this huge international product launch. So, what can we tell you about the launch? Well it’s going to be your next generation cutting-edge technology and solving a material problem for a lot of industries. So it’s very exciting for us and the team because it’s going to be our second product release within a year. The product we are launching has industry applications with businesses across multiple sectors, in particular it is set to revolutionise the digital marketing landscape as you know it. So it’s going to have an impact for your content creators, digital marketers, managers, assistants who work on the campaign side as well. So that’s all I can tell you for now, for the rest of it you will need to wait for our launch. So this is going to be an absolutely huge milestone for us to be doing an international product launch together in the heart of Asia and it’s all going to be happening in a few short weeks. So looking forward to catching up with you guys. And it brings us closer to the next step for the Panquake release! So I will look forward to seeing you guys all in Hong Kong! Thanks Suzie, talk to you guys soon, and catch you all soon!

SD: Thank you so much! Okay everyone, that’s it, we’re going to wrap this for now but as you can probably tell there will be a lot more coming from us very soon. So keep an eye out, subscribe at talkliberation.substack.com, keep an eye on panquake.com/news and also, join our Telegram channel. You’ll find Panquake sharing really important privacy, security, legal information every single day on Telegram. It’s a pretty new channel for us and we’ve only got a few hundred subscribers so you thousands of subscribers that have been following us on Twitter, get over there and subscribe to our Telegram! Thanks everyone, see you very soon. Bye bye!

[End of transcript]

If these messages resonated with you, if you feel heartened to know that there are people working hard to tackle some of the most difficult problems we face in this day and age… then please share this post :)

Share

If you haven’t already, you can apply to join the Panquake BETA at this link

Create links for sharing content that don’t track you or your audience by using Panquake Me. It’s FREE!

Talk Liberation is brought to you by Panquake.com. We Don’t Hope, We Build! 

© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

Covering this story? Check out the brand new Panquake.com Press Page, containing all the resources you need, at your fingertips!

Today marks a momentous occasion for digital privacy.

First off, we would like to thank you all, for your continued support and believing in us to help create a better future for all the generations of internet users to come. This has been an incredible journey - we started out as an idea backed by a group of volunteers running on pure love and enthusiasm. Two years later we are a fully operational multinational business rolling out commercial-grade solutions where human rights are baked into the foundation of our architecture and design.

We are simply overjoyed to now be able to deliver to you, the first piece of our Panquake pie!

Introducing Pnqk.me our new link cleaning, shortening and archiving service!

Panquake Me allows you to share links safely to your family and friends, without fear of tracking and mapping of your entire network. Did you know, that simply forwarding on a link you could be tracking your entire network of family, friends and community? Ever share a link on a ‘sensitive’ topic, to only have sent them to a dead link? You send people nowhere, while Big Tech have tracked and mapped out who you sent that link to.

With Pnqk.me you can now share with no fear and more clicks!

This is a game-changer, set to disrupt the way we share content online. As promised and staying true to our mission, our Panquake team is delivering products that respect user privacy. Panquake Me is the very first tool hot off the oven, that resets the status quo to give users back their rights to privacy!

How can you tell we’re the real deal? Because we’ve released our source code! Available now for vetting by security researchers and the public.

Pnqk.me: Faster – Freer – Forever

Panquake Me has three great functions:

1.     Strips your links of any marketing or ad trackers,

2.     Archives the original link so it never disappears, and

3.     Shortens the link

All within one simple click!

It’s a free service that is available to everyone because we all deserve to protect not only our rights to privacy, but those of our neighbours. Let’s keep the internet safe for everyone. Check out our team announcing this amazing product delivery below.

If you prefer short and sweet, click here for our 2 minute User Guide video.

What our Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson, had to say:

"For too long journalists, activists and the general public have had to fear the links they share and receive. Never knowing what was really hidden inside a link or whether the content would still be accessible in the future.

Recognising the urgency, we sliced off a piece of the cake of our Panquake technology to bring forward an early release of our application, in the solution that is Pnqk.me - a simple, free, link sharing and archiving tool in one, that’s safe for you to use. This is a big win for internet users the world over, reducing the fear of digital profiling from big corporates and governments who map your networks, of who you share content with." - Suzie Dawson, Founder and Chief Product Officer, Panquake

Trackers and Your Data

Trackers collect and store your browsing activities when you share a link and permanently associate you with the activities of anyone who then clicks on those links. This data is known as ‘social network analysis data’ or ‘social graph data’ and can be used in ways which you probably won’t know about and therefore can’t consent to.

The data is frequently packaged and sold to Big Data companies, other social networks or corporations across a wide range of industries, and even to governments and intelligence agencies.

Panquake Me: Technology with a Difference

Using Pnqk.me when you share links helps to protect you, your family, your friends, your communities, your audience from having your personal data captured and exploited.

Our Chief Technology Officer, Sean O'Brien, said:

“We don’t record identifiers about you or anyone who clicks on Panquake Me links. When you provide a link, we save the scrubbed URL and a time-stamp. All of our source code is Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS), so security researchers and the public can verify this. I’m proud to be a part of Panquake’s international team that’s driving these ethical solutions to protect users.” - Sean O’Brien, Chief Technology Officer, Panquake

Pnqk.me is the first link shortening service that cleans your link and archives the original source content all in one easy step. Other link shortening services can actually be used to track your activity or the activity of those who you share links with. Ours does not.

We have gone above and beyond by utilizing smart, innovative and transparent software development practices to better protect you and those you share links with.

Panquake Me links scrub "referrer" tags and other nasties that are used to track people around the web, and then we give you a short URL at Pnqk.me to share with your friends and family.

This provides better privacy for you and anyone you share the link with. Our service also archives your link so that it is preserved for the future, using the Internet Archive and ArchiveToday.

Panquake Me and the Panquake BETA

We know you are eager for the Panquake social network BETA, as are we! We have an amazing team working every day to make that happen as quickly as possible. The technology behind Pnqk.me is actually the first slice from the Panquake pie! Panquake uses Panquake Me to share clean, short archived links, from and within the app.

Because we know you’re dying to get your hands on our service, we decided to carve off and deliver our first slice of Panquake to you right now, with Pnqk.me. While we continue working hard on our network and blockchain build, this is the first of our early releases to you.

The minute the Panquake Beta application is ready for release, we’ll be notifying everyone via our website as well as here on our Substack page. So make sure you’re subscribed!

Panquake Me is proof that we can engineer real solutions and together start making a difference.

It’s easy to forget that privacy is actually a fundamental human right. We’ve all learned to access ‘free’ services to communicate to your family and friends, where the trade-off is your right to privacy. Pnqk.me is living proof that you can have both. Faster, freer and forever. You can provide a free service and choose not to track people. You can provide a service that respects people’s right to privacy. You just have to be a part of the solution that provides it.

We are on a mission to restore your human rights, through Panquake, one build at a time. We hope you share widely using Panquake Me, for a safer today for you and those of your neighbours.

Be the change and spread the word that a brighter future is here.

Please donate today, subscribe to this publication and share this post everywhere.

If these messages resonated with you, if you feel heartened to know that there are people working hard to tackle some of the most difficult problems we face in this day and age… then please share this post :)

Share

If you haven’t already, you can apply to join the Panquake BETA at this link

Talk Liberation is brought to you by Panquake.com. We Don’t Hope, We Build! 

© Talk Liberation Limited. The original content of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please attribute copies of this work to “Talk Liberation” or talkliberation.com. Some of the work(s) incorporated may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact licensing@talkliberation.com

The speech covers:

• Dawson’s personal journey to the conception of Panquake

• How fake news and censorship is only the beginning and we will soon live in an undetectable filterverse powered by AI

• AI systems are not only stealing our ideas and innovations without attribution, but engaging with surveillance systems and much worse

• Call for action for more Web3 projects to counter AI systems and to embed economic freedom by design

• How Panquake is providing one of the alternatives for a different future

• Q&A from the audience at Monerotopia

Monerotopia brings privacy advocates, security experts, developers, tech entrepreneurs and enthusiasts of the Monero project from all corners of the globe together, to share and build upon ideas on the Monero protocol, and to discuss the latest trends and disruptive technologies.

The conference spanned over three days filled with workshops, panels and presentations. The first two days consisted of technical talks around security and crypto. Seth For Privacy delivered his talk on “Against Monero Maximalism”, while Justin Ehrenhofer, VP of Cake Wallet discussed, “An Overview of Bitcoin Privacy efforts: the good, the bad, and the ugly”.

A common theme amongst the speakers was utilizing blockchain technology to protect user privacy, in an era where censorship, de-platforming and destruction of privacy is at an all-time high. Dawson, delivered her speech titled, “PANQUAKE: Baking Human Rights Into Next Gen Blockchain Tech” addressing the delegates on major concerns regarding the continued erosion of human rights in the technology space.

The Monerotopia conference was in full swing in Huerto Roma Verde, a community-run urban garden in the heart of the city. Attendees who were lucky enough donned Panquake privacy merchandise consisting of exclusive privacy sunglasses, bags and umbrellas, to keep their identity hidden. Online saw the Panquake team release privacy themed puzzles in celebration of the Monerotopia event. Smiles were seen all round as attendees who scored limited-edition Panquake merchandise proudly showed it off on social media.

Regarding the one-off merchandise, Dawson said: “Panquake’s ethos of protecting users extends to our merchandising. That’s why our exclusive privacy-protecting merch like sunglasses, umbrellas and bags, are only available in person at conferences and events. Enabling you to collect limited edition Panquake goodies without handing over any data whatsoever.” 

Here follows Dawson’s full speech at Monerotopia, Monero blockchain’s annual conference, held in the heart of Mexico City.

You can see clips from the presentation below, read the transcript provided and please share this post if these messages resonate with you.

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Hi everybody, thanks so much for having me. My name is Suzie Dawson, I’m the Founder and the Chief Product Officer of Panquake.com. Monero is a project which obviously shares the ethos and ethics of Panquake and we’re really, really proud to be platformed here today.

“This project and the time that we are all in, in this world, are about more than just selling a product.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

So obviously I should be here to tell you about our project and I will do a little bit of that, but this project and the time that we are all in, in this world, are about more than just selling a product. And in putting together my presentation today, I thought a lot about why people come to Monerotopia. Obviously, some of them are people who work on the amazing Monero team. Obviously, some are people who want to work with Monero. Some of you just want to be up to date with the latest in blockchain tech. But I think there’s something more at the core. I think at the fundamentals that everyone involved with Monero in some way, shape, or form, really are people that care. They care about freedom. They care about liberty. They care about privacy. And they care about protecting and preserving life. So while I'm supposed to be here today to promote a product, actually what I would rather do is promote humanity, and promote the creation of better types of technology, with less focus on the money and more focus on the people.

So I guess I’ll start by telling you a little bit about myself. I’ve had a pretty interesting life, specifically in the last 15 years or so. I started using computers as far back as the Apple IIE in the 80’s, and the Commodore 64, right though Pentium 1 100 and so on and so forth. I was around for the very beginnings of Internet community, bulletin board services and news groups, using monochrome screens, all the way through IRC, the Napster years, right up until the present day. There’s so much that I love about the Internet, but there’s a lot, these days particularly, that I deplore as well.

“…while I'm supposed to be here today to promote a product, actually what I would rather do is promote humanity, and promote the creation of better types of technology, with less focus on the money and more focus on the people.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

Around 2009 - 2010 I became particularly interested in a project called Wikileaks, which I’m sure you all have heard of. I watched that project really closely. I did everything I could to promote it, to spread the word about the Wikileaks releases. And then in 2011, when the Occupy Movement came along, I got very deeply and personally involved back in my hometown of Auckland, New Zealand. I became involved with Occupy Auckland and Occupy New Zealand. It was a time when we really thought that a better world was at our fingertips, and that we could just band together to create it, to fix the problems that we were all facing post the 2008 financial collapse. And a lot of really beautiful things came out of Occupy. A lot of wonderful projects came about because of Occupy. But unfortunately, I got my first taste of state repression because of the Occupy Movement as well.

When I became aware that more than 80 New Zealand citizens were illegally targeted by the GCSB, the Government Communications Security Bureau, which is the New Zealand version of the NSA, and had been illegally spied on, on behalf of the United States Of America, I became particularly outraged. These were in the days following the FBI raid on New Zealand soil of Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom's mansion, and I was so aggrieved at what I could see was being done to all the citizens of New Zealand through mass surveillance, that I dedicated myself full time to the creation of the hashtag #GCSB, which became a trending viral hashtag in New Zealand and eventually a very large on-the-ground movement to take a stand against illegal surveillance of New Zealand citizens by our own spy agencies.

“When I became aware that more than 80 New Zealand citizens were illegally targeted by the GCSB, the Government Communications Security Bureau, which is the New Zealand version of the NSA, and had been illegally spied on, on behalf of the United States Of America, I became particularly outraged.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

I was live tweeting activism protest events on the ground. I was documenting police abuse of protesters, publishing blog posts with evidence of those police abuses. My work began being picked up by media agencies around the world and gaining quite a bit of traction.

Through 2011 – 2014 I was involved in a number of major activism movements in New Zealand, all on the same theme: anti-surveillance, pro-privacy, pro-human rights, anti-capitalist exploitation of people. For example, #TPPANoWay against the Trans Pacific Partnership, which I was very heavily involved in. And also for #OilFreeSeas and campaigns just really against the exploitation of my country, of the people of my country.

That was when Wikileaks took an interest in my work. Julian Assange specifically began pretty routinely sharing my work from about 2014. And unfortunately the targeting of me by New Zealand state services consistently ramped up, and I actually had to leave New Zealand in 2015.

I have worked with and had deep conversations with and relationships with a number of very high profile household-name whistleblowers and journalists over the years, and Julian and I communicated right through up until he was arrested from the Ecuadorian Embassy in early 2019.

And in 2018, I started Unity4J, which was a very large international movement in support of Julian. Julian is really a very key part for me, ideologically, of why we created Panquake. Julian was warning the world about censorship on social media, and monopolistic practices and abuses of users by social media companies, many years before it became a hot mainstream topic.

I’m being told that if I hit Present I can show you some slides. Ok let’s have a look.

I’ve got a couple of tweets here from Julian that I would love to show you. Tweets which are a great example of what inspired me to come up with the idea of Panquake. Let’s have a look at some of the words of Julian. I want to make it clear, Julian is an icon, but he’s not an icon to me. I’m actually really good friends with his Mum. He’s someone who to me, is a very real person, a human being, an individual. He’s not just an icon or a picture on the wall. But Julian is absolutely brilliant and highly intelligent. And when you spoke to him that screamed through every single one of his words.

“Julian is really a very key part for me, ideologically, of why we created Panquake. Julian was warning the world about censorship on social media, and monopolistic practices and abuses of users by social media companies, many years before it became a hot mainstream topic.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

Here is a tweet of Julian in August of 2017 talking about Twitter censorship. And he said: ‘Twitter’s increasing censorship points to the future: each person will live in an undetectable filterverse of one.’ That filterverse is about filtering the information that comes in to you as a user, the information that you’re able to access. It’s also about filtering out information that you are trying to get out into the world. And those twin modes of censorship, the internal and the external, lock you into what Julian described as the filterverse, where you’re literally trapped in a data prison that is manipulated, rather than being able to freely communicate as is your human right.

Julian specifically called for a decentralized cryptographic alternative. He said, ‘Twitter’s freedom of expression has been on an inexorable decline. It is enslaved to its US jurisdiction and its politics. Although it is substantially better than Facebook that is a very low standard indeed.’ Note, "US jurisdiction". That is a key point here because while there have been many changes of late at Twitter, the US jurisdiction has not changed. And everybody in blockchain and cryptocurrency projects knows what the US jurisdiction means in terms of impact upon us, and the stranglehold that they have on economic systems, as well as innovation and R&D, etcetera.

But Julian said more than that. Julian actually issued A Call To Cryptographic Arms in the foreword of his book Cypherpunks in 2012. He said, ‘The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.’ Those are enormous words, but they are absolutely true. And look at that, that was eleven years ago that he spoke them.

“…while there have been many changes of late at Twitter, the US jurisdiction has not changed. And everybody in blockchain and cryptocurrency projects knows what the US jurisdiction means in terms of impact upon us, and the stranglehold that they have on economic systems" - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

At the end of that foreword, there is another call to action. Julian said, ‘Our task is to secure self-determination where we can, to hold back the coming dystopia where we cannot, and if all else fails, to accelerate its self-destruction.’ Those are words that I personally have never forgotten. They’re extremely gravely spoken and Julian was really feeling the heat when he wrote them. We all know how much he has suffered as a result of the targeting he has faced for his brilliance, and for his efforts to emancipate people from the abuse of the Internet being perpetuated by corporations. And by the military. And by Governments.

But we must not allow ourselves to be deterred by that. We need to recognize when the law fails us, and certainly in blockchain and crypto routinely, the law is failing us. In human rights and international law, the law is failing us. When systems of social protection break down, Julian believed, and I believe that it falls upon us as technologists to create systems that restore those lapsed rights to the public.

And those of us who are trailblazers understand firsthand what it is to be targeted for subversion, for sabotage of our projects, appropriation of our ideas and suppression. Like whistleblowers, truth-tellers and journalists, and in this day and age even doctors, scientists, researchers, we’ve been unjustly placed in the crosshairs of monopolistic forces, be they corporate or governmental.

“We need to recognize when the law fails us, and certainly in blockchain and crypto routinely, the law is failing us. In human rights and international law, the law is failing us. When systems of social protection break down, Julian believed, and I believe, that it falls upon us as technologists to create systems that restore those lapsed rights to the public.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

Too many people think that safety can be found in silence, complicity or submission. Too many people do sell out or self-censor. But their silence only delays the inevitable. All of us will be impacted, regardless of whether we stay silent about what is going on. But in fact there is a stronger safety in numbers. And the decentralized app eco-system, Web3, provides those numbers. And in a great enough number, we can effect change. We can alter outcomes. Wikileaks certainly altered many outcomes. And with Wikileaks suppressed by the jailing of Julian Assange, it’s on all of us to collectively step up and start altering outcomes.

The fight that we face now is not a fight against each other, project vs. project or chain vs. chain, fighting for market share. The fight is existential. This fight is on behalf of the whole species, without which there'll be no economy and no market.

“And in a great enough number, we can effect change. We can alter outcomes. Wikileaks certainly altered many outcomes. And with Wikileaks suppressed by the jailing of Julian Assange, it’s on all of us to collectively step up and start altering outcomes.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

The last thing that Julian said to me before he was hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in 2019 was, he said, “history is fake news all the way down”. That was a huge and resounding statement from someone who had spent as much time examining real truthful source documentation about how the world really works, and what the true history of humankind is, as Julian Assange. If you go and Google—which I don’t suggest you ever use—Julian Assange or Wikileaks, all you will read is fake news, all the way down.

The Internet is controlled by people with an interest in spreading fake news, and in manufacturing a false history for humanity. However, blockchain technology is a method by which we can record a real history, not just a narrative history. Not just retelling stories, though that too. But actually record a history of actions. Of user actions and of network actions.

I long since lost faith in the ability of a social media platform to accurately record or reflect my actions. My rather substantial Twitter account that I used to have literally lied to me every day; lied to me about how many followers I had, lied to me about how many impressions I had, lied to me about what actions I’d taken, or others had. I didn’t get DM’s, I would have them some show up months later. I lost 5,000 followers in a day without having done anything differently, all kinds of strange experiences, which any target or anybody who’s fallen afoul of power has also similarly experienced.

“The Internet is controlled by people with an interest in spreading fake news, and in manufacturing a false history for humanity. However, blockchain technology is a method by which we can record a real history, not just a narrative history. Not just retelling stories, though that too. But actually record a history of actions. Of user actions and of network actions.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

So for me there is zero trust in social media platforms. However, we can use the blockchain to record actions that we take as users, and have an indelible proof that the network has executed those actions. Similarly, we can record the actions of the network, in moderation practices for example, on the blockchain and provide a cryptographic proof to users about what actions were taken by the network. This provides a level of transparency that we have not seen before from any major social media company. And in this way, we can create a real history of social media interactions between users and networks, rather than the fake news that we’re often provided with about why a platform did this or that, or whether they did at all.

Blockchain architects get to choose, in terms of the actual way that we create and structure the block, what data is stored and what is not. We configure them according to our vision. This is a very real and significant power. We can, in our blockchain design, as Seth For Privacy likes to say, ‘Opt Out,’ we can choose not to collect, we can choose not to store, and we can choose not to sell. In doing so, we can protect others, and we can protect ourselves. And most importantly, we can take a step towards creating an Internet of people again, instead of an Internet that exploits or that even kills.

And now things are going to get a little bit dark because we’re going to talk a bit about that. I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Twitter Files. The Twitter Files are a really big deal these days. The Twitter files are about censorship, they’re about politics. They’re about this or that political party wanting to achieve this or that outcome. But there’s actually been a lot more going on with Twitter than just censorship and politics.

Our project, our Panquake Development team took some time out last year and created something called WLDragnet—the WL in homage to Wikileaks obviously—that is an open source search and reporting tool that we created to analyze thousands of documents that we obtained, which were reports produced by U.S. DOD-connected agencies, private agencies, and also supposedly non-profit agencies, that had been leeching massive amounts of Twitter data, user data, through the Twitter API to dragnet and profile users for the purpose of reporting them, in a mass targeting exercise, to US military-connected agencies.

That sounds shocking enough, but then we found other documents. And those other documents are a part of what we’re calling WLDragnet 2. WLDragnet 2 reveals a project called Social Radar, which was commissioned by the US Department of Defense. They engaged Mitre Corp, which is a huge DOD contractor in the States, to develop software which would combine into one huge pool all of the various channels of data used for social media monitoring. They used open source data. They used data from newspapers or data from public records. And they combined that with their closed-source data from their surveillance systems. They married all that data up together into these huge data pools, and then they had AI algorithms process and analyze that data, and then decide upon, as in the AI algorithms decide upon, Courses Of Action, COA is what they call it, courses of action for military command to choose from. This is U.S. Cyber Force, Cyber Command specifically, and also the U.S. Airforce.

Now that could get you arrested if you’re an activist. It could get you detained, it could get your vehicle or your house searched. But when we’re talking about AI making courses of action decisions, or providing potential decisions to military command, it’s actually not just about you getting arrested, or detained, or losing your job. It’s actually about Airforce drones targeting people in a variety of countries in the world, for what they call in the documents, “kinetic action,” which means literally dropping a drone bomb on your head.

“In 30 years, they will be able to tell you what your four year old did at kindergarten today. This is the world that we live in. If we allow AI systems to connect with those surveillance systems, we’re taking it to that next level. The AI is capturing not just our relationships and profiling us, but it’s stealing our ideas, our creations and our innovations without attribution. In this sense AI has become the liar that lies to us, the thief that steals from us and the spy that spies on us. And given what I’ve just explained about the Social Radar, DOD and Mitre programs, we’re not that far off now from AI the assassin.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

So in this very real way, Twitter data collected about users is being used not just to censor users, not just to further a political party, but actually to assassinate human beings. And in this sense it’s true that AI is already choosing who lives and who dies.

AI obviously is a hot topic at the moment, or an increasingly hot topic, it has been public for a long time, but now that people can type questions and get answers in a cool chat bot it’s becoming the next big thing. However, we know as technologists that the AI algorithms didn’t write themselves. They were commissioned, they were bought and paid for, as were the developers who worked on them. And we know the product of the AI is, in fact, defining, for those who interact with it, how the puppet masters of the AI want us to view the world. It’s coming back to producing that history of fake news that Julian was talking about.

We know that AI-connected systems are engaging with surveillance systems. They’re facilitating spying on us. We’ve known since the Snowden Files in 2013 that our cameras are spying on us, that our cameras are capturing and recording everything that they see of us, and storing it for literally eternity. We know that our microphones are listening to us and storing it for eternity. We know they’re capturing and profiling our WiFi and network information, and those of the networks around us, the relationships we have, everything about our daily existence is stored for all eternity. In 30 years, they will be able to tell you what your four year old did at kindergarten today. This is the world that we live in. If we allow AI systems to connect with those surveillance systems, we’re taking it to that next level.

The AI is capturing not just our relationships and profiling us, but it’s stealing our ideas, our creations and our innovations without attribution. In this sense AI has become the liar that lies to us, the thief that steals from us and the spy that spies on us. And given what I’ve just explained about the Social Radar, DOD and Mitre programs, we’re not that far off now from AI the assassin.

“You can’t claim to be a social media company taking a stand against bots, if you’re run by them.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

So what does this mean for social media companies. Well, you can’t claim to be a social media company taking a stand against bots, if you’re run by them. And you can’t claim to be acting for the betterment of humanity, if you are undermining the work-force and the marketplace through the use of AI. Not to mention contributing to spying on users, profiling them and monetizing their data.

Some people, who shall remain nameless, claim that AI is a potential threat to humanity while simultaneously investing in AI systems and operating businesses riddled with AI technology. That is an abject hypocrisy, and we at Panquake don’t want to be part of it. Panquake is proof that you can build a highly innovative next-generation social media business – product, team and customer base without using AI at all to do it. Panquake is taking a stand against the type of manipulative corporatist behavior, and that’s why we’re committed to eradicating the use of AI from our product, from our users' social media timelines, from even our customer service and service channel, and even our internal staff and management systems. All of them are completely eradicating AI.

We hope that in the future other Web3 projects will heed this call to action and help to be a part of a better future, rather than exacerbating the problems of the present. And don't get me wrong here, we are not actually trying to tell you what to do. If you want to use AI for your personal projects, go for it. If you find it has some use for you, go for it. We’re just telling you that we aren’t going to spend our users' subscription fees on manipulating their timelines and their feeds, or on putting good and productive people out of a job.

“Some people, who shall remain nameless, claim that AI is a potential threat to humanity while simultaneously investing in AI systems and operating businesses riddled with AI technology. That is an abject hypocrisy, and we at Panquake don’t want to be part of it. Panquake is proof that you can build a highly innovative next-generation social media business – product, team and customer base without using AI at all to do it.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

Businesses like ours cannot thrive in a world where people cannot afford to meet their basic needs. And that, post-pandemic especially, has got to be factored into our risk management policy. Post collapse of the middle class, with the 0.1% sucking everybody dry. If we don’t build systems that help turn things around economically for our users, people won’t have any money to pay us, and that is not good business.

Personally, I believe in user-supported networks. User-supported networks can enrich the platform, the platform owners, the platform contributors and the users alike. We’ve seen it with Substack. We’ve seen it with many other projects that have spawned successfully based on a user-supported model. That means we don’t need the corporate dollars or the governmental dollars. We don’t need the advertising models. We don’t have to do things how they were done before. We can have grassroots projects that support the network, and we can have networks that make ethical architectural decisions that do not exploit the users.

We need networks built that embed economic freedom, but also that embed human rights, that bake human rights in from the base layer because nobody else is going to do it for us. The governments are not enforcing our humans rights, they could give a toss about them. The corporations are not enforcing our human rights, they could give a toss about them. And so when we came up with the idea in 2020 to create Panquake, it was the result of many conversations I had with Julian and other high profile whistleblowers. Conversations where we had bemoaned to each other for years, the ills that were going on and how swift the decline was, and how there needed to be ethical alternatives. And we finally decided, even though we didn’t have anything but ourselves to do it with, that we were going to take the leap, and we were going to create an application that would bake human rights in from the base layer. For us, that’s freedom of expression, freedom of communication, freedom of association and freedom of speech.

And so I got together my young Gen-Z daughter and my old boomer Mum and I said, ‘how do we develop something that is good for everybody, not just for my generation, or my friends, but will work for you guys as well?’ Because we don’t want to exclude human beings from a platform that we want to build for the betterment of all human beings. And together, my boomer Mum and my Gen-Z daughter came up with the name Panquake and came up with the design.

“We need networks built that embed economic freedom, but also that embed human rights, that bake human rights in from the base layer because nobody else is going to do it for us.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

So that is how we created what I’m going to show you now.

Here we go. Here’s Panquake. Here’s the Panquake UI on laptop. So we did a big UI-Reveal last year and we talked everyone through our design and all the particulars of it, and the cool new functionality that we had invented to really take the shackles off of people, really to destroy the filterverse. To prevent people being constricted by a network. Prevent them being unable to get their messages out to the world, and make sure that they weren’t receiving manipulative data coming back in. We like to call it next-generation messaging technology because it’s for a better future without the sins of the past.

So what is it? It’s a short messaging system. It’s not a Signal. It’s not a WhatsApp. It’s not an SMS platform. It is somewhere you can write short messages that you intend to be made public, and that you want to have a cryptographic proof on a blockchain to prove that your message has been sent, that it has been submitted and processed and seen. It’s a P2P network. We don’t sit in the middle, it’s not a centralized system.

“Personally, I believe in user-supported networks. User-supported networks can enrich the platform, the platform owners, the platform contributors and the users alike. We’ve seen it with Substack. We’ve seen it with many other projects that have spawned successfully based on a user-supported model. That means we don’t need the corporate dollars or the governmental dollars. We don’t need the advertising models. We don’t have to do things how they were done before.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

Users submit their messages to each other. Users then form federations and process block transactions. The content that they submit is the transaction. And of course, the network itself is decentralized.

So we wanted it to have a really sleek, cool, intuitive, easy to use interface, and we’ve definitely achieved that. We wanted it to be high-tech but also super transparent. And obviously that’s where the blockchain comes in.

So Panquake is a layer-one blockchain and it's what I call a non-financialized blockchain. It doesn’t have a token associated with it. The transactions on the block aren’t movements of funds. There are no financial transactions recorded at all on the Panquake blockchain. Instead, as I mentioned, content – particularly text content – is recorded as transactions. And then moderation practices of the network are also recorded as transactions. So not just content but also interaction. You follow someone, you get a cryptographic proof you followed them. You unfollow them, there’s a cryptographic proof for that too.

“We like to call it next-generation messaging technology because it’s for a better future without the sins of the past.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

That means that you can be sure that we are not manipulating your followers, that we are not manipulating your interactions with other users, and subsequently your network metrics are provably true. You don’t have to trust what we say, you can see it for yourself. And so can the world. So this is not about DM’s. This is not about secrets. This is about provable reach for content that you intend to be public.

Of course we didn’t just want it to be a privacy-focused, human rights-focused platform, even though that’s where our heart is and it’s the most important thing we do. We also recognize that people want fun new stuff. So we came up with a bunch of fun new stuff. There’s ethical gamification features, I say ethical because they’re capped to make sure that you can participate with just a few minutes of platform use a day. We’re discouraging platform addiction. But the gamification unlocks features that allow users to get additional reach and additional interactions with other users in ways that are really positive.

And of course, really important to us, we don’t have any advertising. There’s no ability to pay more money to get more reach on Panquake. There’s no paid boosting of content, nothing like that, and it’s a grassroots-funded effort.

So I guess that leads me into explaining a little bit more about the story of Panquake. So, like I said, we had the idea October of 2020, and we didn’t have any money. We didn’t have any equipment. We didn’t have a business. We didn’t have anything we needed to create Panquake, really, other than determination and great relationships with a network of activists that we’ve worked with on multiple campaigns over the years.

“There’s no ability to pay more money to get more reach on Panquake.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

But it turns out that’s really all we needed. My mother and daughter having come up with the name Panquake, we went to register Panquake.com and discovered it would cost us $2,000. I begged my parents to lend us the money. They lent us the money for the domain, we built the website ourselves, and we put together a web event, a live stream event to our combined social media audiences to present this idea that, ‘hey we want a social media platform that we can trust, and that you can trust, and that won’t capture your data and won’t sell it.’

So what we envisioned was a network where user account data would be stored, encrypted on the user's device. As I mentioned, we’re not a centralized service, so we don’t store your account data for you. We don’t store anything for you. We have an IPFS integration, so we don’t even store your media for you. We’re not looking to store or monetize anything. All data is to the maximum possible extent, excluded from our network. Even data that any normal website would want to have just to have website metrics, we optionally exclude as well.

We don’t capture any geographic location data, we don’t fingerprint browsers, or anything like that. We really have taken this to the extreme in terms of putting a data wall between ourselves and the users, but still providing users with the functionality that they need in the application to be able to perform their task.

And so in January of 2021 we had our big web event. We launched a crowdfunding page. We said, ‘Okay we need $50,000 to set up an international business in a jurisdiction away from U.S. jurisdiction, where we’ve got a really fair shot of them not being able to get their hands on the business entity that underlies this project, and to begin, take a couple of months to do some serious planning and then look to bring on devs to start the application build.

“We have an IPFS integration, so we don’t even store your media for you. We’re not looking to store or monetize anything. Every, all data is to the maximum possible extent, excluded from our network. Even data that any normal website would want to have just to have website metrics, we optionally exclude as well.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

We thought it would take us about six weeks of campaigning to get that $50,000, we instead obtained it in twenty days. In twenty days, with nothing but our own voices. To date Panquake has had a zero dollar advertising spend, zero dollar PR spend. It’s been completely a word-of-mouth campaign. And we have had... in our first year, we had over three million hits to the Panquake.com website. And we’ve had three thousand six hundred people donate to the Panquake campaign. So that was obviously a huge game changer for us to get that kind of level of support, and it being totally by word-of-mouth showed us that, hey this is something people really, really, really want.

So in February to May 2021, we started planning, really carefully, our build. I am a commercial software development manager by trade, and a software delivery manager, so this is not something that’s foreign to us. So we did our planning and we brought on our first devs in June of 2021, and they began coding the application.

“We don’t capture any geographic location data, we don’t fingerprint browsers, or anything like that. We really have taken this to the extreme in terms of putting a data wall between ourselves and the users, but still providing users with the functionality that they need in the application to be able to perform their task.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

In August, October and December 2021, our first major proof of concepts were achieved, which means we networked our first computers together P2P (peer-to-peer). We proved, which actually at that time, people were quite skeptical about whether we’d be able to create encrypted data stores on user devices, but we actually proved that we could. So that was another huge step. And by February 2022, we had a functioning interface in place.

So. Moving into 2022, we did our big UI Reveal in April, which was rapturously received, frankly, by the audience, because the design is so unique. And if you’re keen on checking that out, you’ll find full UI Reveal videos and also some technical deep-dive videos and presentation on the Panquake.com website.

In July, we previewed our mobile first app design, and in October we obtained our delivery funding. Still no corporate money, no government money at all.

February of this year we started hiring our service team, bringing on a customer support manager and a technical support manager. Started setting up our internal systems to enable us to be able to support this product post-Beta release. Because it’s one thing to build a cool app, but it’s another thing entirely to be able to adequately support our customers, and to follow through on service delivery, as well as the application functionality itself. It’s really important for us to do right by them.

So in terms of our team, right now we’ve got twenty-nine people working on our team, a mix of paid full-time and part-time contractors, and also a bunch of original volunteers that have been around since the beginning working on this with us. Every single day we have team members working together, across four continents and ten countries. We have seventeen public figures who have privately had demos of the Panquake application, and have endorsed us publicly. And really, our team means the world to me. They just give and give and give. They are amazing. They are how we’ve been able to do all of this on such a tiny budget by comparison to what most people would have.

“…it’s one thing to build a cool app, but it’s another thing entirely to be able to adequately support our customers, and to follow through on service delivery, as well as the application functionality itself. It’s really important for us to do right by them.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

In terms of the problems that we’re looking to solve, everyone knows how dissatisfied social media users are right now. So we really did our homework in late 2020, we for several months canvassed social media users, and said, ‘okay we know this is broken, how... what… would you like to see fixed?’ And we came up with the obvious, like no shadow-banning obviously. No one likes being gaslit by the platform. But also things like not having auto-play on videos, and not having your page randomly reload, so it can shove some content it decides that you should see in front of your eyeballs, instead of what you’re actually trying to look at on your timeline. And of course the biggie, no paid advertising, no selling user data. So these are all solutions provided by Panquake.

This project has so many unique selling propositions that we can barely fit them onto one page. And here is just some of what we’re doing: No cookies, at all. No tracking, at all. No Google integrations, at all. No Facebook or Twitter integrations, instead we rely on independent projects like Nitter, we have a Nitter integration, we have Invidious integrations. When you’re viewing big-tech social media content on Panquake, it’s being rinsed through third party privacy services. When you’re uploading media into Panquake, it’s going out to IPFS and then that IPFS address is what’s going into the block. So again, no storing of data which means no selling data.

We are currently hosted in Iceland, though we have a huge decentralized network of organizations that we trust around the world who will participate in serving connections to Panquake. And probably right there at the very bottom on the right hand side is the real ethos of Panquake. Our users are our customers, they’re not our product, and that is what makes us fundamentally different.

Just bringing this all back to Julian, and his calls for alternatives, and his warnings that we needed to be a part of building a different future. I hope that in this presentation now you know why we’ve created Panquake, and you have some idea of what Panquake is. But Panquake shouldn’t be the only solution, and isn’t the only solution. We need decentralized projects all around the world acting on ethics, and making choices that place people above profit. And so, I call on you all to make your own Panquake, because the world needs more Panquake.

“[This] is the real ethos of Panquake. Our users are our customers, they’re not our product, and that is what makes us fundamentally different.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

I have no idea how much of your time I’ve taken up. But I’m very interested to hear any questions that you have, or anybody that wants to ask me anything, very happy to answer you. As I mentioned, there’s a ton more information about our project available out there on the web, so feel free to go check it out. And I’m just thrilled to see the efforts that the Monero team have put into this conference really bear fruition. It looks absolutely beautiful down there, and I really wish I was there with you.

Do we have a stream mod able to share any questions? Oh cool, wow so sorry, I just found you. I was stuck on the other chat. Okay. I’m going to go from bottom to top here.

Question: Is joining Panquake the best way to support our project?

Well what you can do is sign up for the Beta. So I didn’t really get into too much of the technicals, but I’ll just give you some. So we use a proof-of-authority model. We have multiple trust layers of trusted nodes in the network where we allow the connections, the known connections between known trusted people to create stepping stones by which we can build out the trusted core of the network, and then of course users can successfully process transactions and earn trust. There’s a whole bunch of failsafes around this. It’s really a whole other presentation in and of itself, but we, in our first iteration - it’s a multi-iterative release process - in our first iteration we are releasing our Beta product to the first five thousand vetted Beta users. So if you would like to be one of the first five thousand people to get to use Panquake, bearing in mind that the public will still be able to see and interact with Panquake data, and we have a bunch of interoperability features as well, so that we can also send and receive data to other decentralized DApp projects, then you can do so at Panquake.com/5000, and that is what will get you into the Beta. In our second iteration, we allow our Beta users to invite a limited number of people who they trust and know and can vouch for, into the networks as well. In our third iteration, our full public release, that’s when the floodgates open and anybody in the world can make a Panquake account. But it’s important to us that we actually scale properly, and that we, we don’t want to be the big fizz-bang that’s spends a bunch of money on marketing, and tries to get in five million users in two months, and then no one’s ever heard about it in six months time. We’re trying to organically grow in a measured way over a period of time, an organic network, rather than a whiz-bang-flash network.

Question: Suzie, the project is wonderful, your dedication is amazing. Please comment more on the proof-of-concept, specifically on scalability.

What I just talked to you about is around scalability. So it’s a lot easier for us to build a network that is sustainable if we have incremental growth, and so that’s a big part of what that’s about. And also because to me the service delivery is as important as the product itself. I’m absolutely aware that a huge amount of the problems that people have been facing with social media are not just about the exploits in the application that damage users, but actually the conduct of the businesses who own and operate the social media platforms.

So we are going to vast lengths to make sure that when you deal with customer service at Panquake, you’re dealing with a human being, you’re not dealing with a robot. You’re not getting automated email responses. You are actually having someone who cares about you, interact with you. We have live-chat functions. We’ve got all types of systems that are not AI-based systems. I want to be very clear about this, there is no… your timeline inside Panquake is content produced by the people you elected to follow, in time-linear order. That’s all your timeline is. It’s not what was considered to be of more value than something else, or whatever else. You see what you choose to see, and similarly in our customer service systems and everything else, those are also organic systems too. Because we believe that the old school way of doing customer service is actually the best way. In some ways, we’re kind of going back to the future. Anyone who’s had to deal with AI customer service, it’s a friggin' nightmare.

Proof of concepts around scalability - probably our Chief Security Advisor, Sean O’Brien, who’s one of the most amazing security and privacy gurus on the planet, you’ll find plenty of his content on Panquake.com, is more the person to talk about this because he’s a lot more focused, his time is more focused on infrastructure, whereas my time is more focused on product. But scalability, a big part of that is the number of people in the decentralized network obviously contributing latent resources and contributing to network performance.

“So we are going to vast lengths to make sure that when you deal with customer service at Panquake, you’re dealing with a human being, you’re not dealing with a robot. You’re not getting automated email responses. You are actually having someone who cares about you, interact with you.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

I’m just trying to catch up with the rest. Sorry if I’m now running overtime. I’m so sorry I only just found the questions at the end.

So this is the thing, Panquake isn’t intended, actually, to be a Twitter or Facebook replacement. If you go and look at our UI, you’ll see it’s completely different. It’s a completely different design. We, from the ground up, engineered it. It’s actually a set of drag and drop panels on a fully customizable user dashboard. So our users can elect what part of the UI should appear in what place, depending on what functions are the most important to them. And then there’s a zillion customization features to that as well, so that you can make it as yours as you want it to be.

I would say we’re like the opposite of Twitter in every single way in terms of how we, at an architectural level, are completely different than Twitter, how we are in terms of our interface and the flexibility of it, is completely different than Twitter, and certainly our internal systems are completely different to Twitter as well.

And this is so lovely, everyone thanking me. I really appreciate just the opportunity to even be here.

Question: The protected volume on Panquake seems unimaginably huge, if I’m reading the intent correctly, in terms of transaction number and store size.

Well I would definitely disagree there because we don’t have a whole bunch of fluff going in. Because we’re not storing content on chain, all we’re storing is an IPFS address. And the content itself is being submitted as text only. So I guess eventually we will end up with a sizable blockchain if we have a large enough number of users over a large enough number of years, but not more so than other networks. In fact I would expect it to be significantly lighter than Steem, for example. We’re not trying to store whole blog posts or anything like that, it is a short messaging system. So I’m not really particularly concerned around the transaction weight.

Actually someone’s saying that the donation methods only show credit card. That’s not correct. There’s actually a sub-menu on Panquake.com called Crypto, and you’ll find you can donate via Monero or anything there, but in terms of donations, I mean I guess I should be saying ‘please donate to us,’ and sure we appreciate it if you do, but Panquake is already a foregone conclusion financially, it’s coming no matter what.

Panquake vs. Mastodon is definitely not a versus because we are interoperable with the entire Fediverse. Every single Fediverse project is going to benefit from Panquake having users that contribute content to the Fediverse. That means that we will be able to receive content from and import content to Fediverse applications. So if you find that you prefer Mastodon, it’s no skin off our nose. And if you prefer Panquake to Mastodon, it will be no skin off Mastodon’s nose either.

Portability of content too, is also something that’s really important to me, rather than portability of identities as people like to tend towards these days.

Do I think that decentralized tech will overcome the rise in authoritarianism? You know, I really hope so, and it’s certainly why I’m dedicating my life to it. Ultimately, like I said it’s a numbers game. If we get the users, we keep pushing the Fediverse to a bigger and bigger and bigger size. That’s why I say that Panquake is not the only project, we need more Panquakes. I want as many Panquakes as possible. The greater number of projects, the greater chance of success. The greater number of users who are educated and attracted to solutions like this, the greater chance of success.

“Panquake shouldn’t be the only solution, and isn’t the only solution. We need decentralized projects all around the world acting on ethics, and making choices that place people above profit. And so, I call on you all to make your own Panquake, because the world needs more Panquake.” - Panquake Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suzie Dawson

I think seeing other people as competition is an inherent flaw, and there are some seriously monopolistic practices going on between big-tech platforms right now, which I consider to be highly toxic and to the detriment of humanity. Panquake does not see anybody as opposition or competition. We just want to do things differently and we want to work with other people who are doing things differently as well.

Okay I think that’s about it.

Okay, thank you all for having me so much, I really appreciate it. And I hope to see you again next year.

[End of transcript]

Last month Panquake Chief Security Advisor, Sean O’Brien, appeared on Monero Talk with the host and organizer of the Monerotopia conference, Douglas Tuman. O’Brien and Tuman talked in great length about where social media is headed as privacy technology continues to advance, and the critical role Panquake will play in the near future.

If these messages resonated with you, if you feel heartened to know that there are people working hard to tackle some of the most difficult problems we face in this day and age… then please share this post :)

If you haven’t already, you can apply to join the Panquake BETA at this link

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Panquake is still pre-release yet its influence and thought leadership has already left an indelible print on the social media industry. This weekend, Panquake Founder Suzie Dawson will present another mic drop moment at Monerotopia 2023 and you won’t want to miss it. Grab your tickets here. Be sure to use Monerotopia’s promo code PANQUAKE for 10% off tickets.

Law. Privacy. Decentralization. Censorship. And how the Panquake team is building us all a way out of dystopia. Check out the below video and video transcript of Panquake’s Sean O’Brien talking to Douglas Tuman from MoneroTalk about all this and more.

DT: Sean, welcome to Monero Talk.

SO: How are you? Happy to be here.

DT: Good man, good. It’s a beautiful day here in N.Y.

SO: Beautiful here too. I’m in New Haven, Connecticut, so not that different.

DT: Birds are chirping. Trump is getting arrested. It’s a beautiful spring day out here in N.Y. It’s pretty wild. I guess we don’t need to go into that. We won’t go into any of that, guys, as compelling as it is. Today we’re here to focus on, well really first and foremost, getting to know Sean. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about you. I just recently discovered you through Csill from the Monero community. She had recommended that we get in touch with Panquake, get them involved in Monerotopia, which we’ve done. I believe you guys are going to be presenting. As a build up to that, we wanted to have you guys come on and talk about it, and through that I met Sean. Then through googling, Sean I see you’re quite the interesting prolific privacy character. You’re not just any regular Joe Schmoe. You have quite the resume. Do you want to quickly give a quick intro of yourself? Why you’re in this whole privacy tech world and all that jazz?

SO: Sure. Yeah, so I'm Sean O’Brien, for the folks who are just listening. I am a visiting lecturer at Yale University for cybersecurity. I co-teach that with another professor, it’s a lot of fun. I started getting into this space through working as a developer, as a sysadmin, and also helping out activist groups and legal clinics with being more anonymous, more private, more secure online. Showing them how to use things like Tor and other great technologies to try to make sure that they are not leaving too many tracks on the internet. So from that, I basically founded something at Yale Law School called Privacy Lab, that’s part of something called the Information Society Project. This is where we’re going with this big resume… It’s a lot of big words really. I’ve been involved in free and open source projects for a very long time, contributed to quite a few. And I’m the Chief Security Advisor for Panquake. So we’ve been working on this for a little over a couple of years now, just building something that I think is pretty amazing and will definitely change the world.

DT: Very cool man, very cool. We will definitely get into Panquake. Before we get there, so what is the Privacy Lab at Yale? Can you go down that road a little bit?

“So we’ve been working on this for a little over a couple of years now, just building something that I think is pretty amazing and will definitely change the world.” - Panquake CSA, Sean O’Brien

SO: Sure. Yeah, so we do digital self-defense workshops. So again the kinds of things I was talking about that, if you’re helping out undocumented workers, or you’re just helping out someone’s grandmother, and you want to show them a way that they don’t have to have targeted ads shoved into their faces. You show them how to use ad-blockers. You show them how to use all this great open source software that’s all around us. That’s a big component of what we do at Privacy Lab. Another big piece that we do, is we investigate, especially mobile and web apps. We look at privacy leakage. So we look at, for example, what people have now started to call trackers. That term can mean a lot of different things. But we’re specifically looking at snippets of code inside of these applications that the user isn’t aware of that you can’t opt into if you wanted to, and which, for example, can spy on your location. Can geo-fence you. Can track you everywhere you go. Can correlate that information with demographic information and so on and so forth. We partner with other groups, other non-profits and free and open source software groups. One of the ones which we’ve been very close to is called Exodus Privacy, that’s over in France. They have a database of, I don’t know even know how many thousands of apps at the moment. But if you go out there and you look, you’ll find these tracker profiles that will say, ‘hey your app has X amount of trackers in it. And these trackers do XYZ. They try to get camera access. They try to get microphone access. They try to get your location.’ Those profiles, we work with them to build. So we submitted the first profiles to that database, and then refined them over time with the help of, of course, community volunteers. And then that stuff ends up going upstream, like good open source stuff should. It ends up going upstream to what’s called the F-Droid project, which is basically a free and open source app store for Android. So all the apps that are in F-Droid are scanned against this database, and they don’t have those nasties in them. So it’s pretty fun stuff.

DT: Oh, so you’re part of that whole ecosystem, F-Droid? Interesting, very interesting.

SO: We’re a small component, but we’re proud to be part of it. And then the other thing, of course, we do, we run events. We bring in speakers and so on and so forth.

DT: Very cool. And so the hands on stuff, who is that really geared to? It’s geared toward, and maybe you said this already and I kinda missed it. It’s geared towards students? People at Yale? People in the law school? Or it’s geared towards outsiders that are coming in for these events to learn?

SO: We try to cater to audience to the best of our ability. We have a set group of materials, which by the way does need a little bit of updating, if anybody wants to help volunteer. But we have a set group of materials that we sort of remix for different groups. We do often bring in folks from the surrounding community around Yale, in that city of New Haven, Connecticut, which is also where I was born and raised. Sometimes we’ll do specific training and things like PGP email, for example, for folks who are lawyers or legal professionals and they need to know how to do this specific task. Generally speaking, we want to keep things light. I always want to introduce people to new technology, and just try to get as much across as possible in a short period of time when you’re doing a workshop, without completely inundating. The balance is not necessarily easy, as I’m sure you know, and the audience here, the Monero folks, know. There’s a lot of technology out to get us so to speak. Trying to spy on us, trying to surveil us, and so on. And when you do these workshops, you sort of ride the line of kinda talking about that scary stuff, and then talking about potential solutions, and you don’t want to scare so much that people don’t want to take the solutions, you know what I mean? So it’s a weird line to walk.

DT: And to just kind of dumb it down even further. Why is Yale Law School even interested in any of this to begin with? Why is this a thing? Why does this exist at Yale? I understand why you’re interested in it, perhaps, or we’ll get more into that, but why is Yale associated with this?

SO: Sure, so the part of Yale Law School that we’re in has a number of legal clinics, for example, that do amazing work. They’re always working on big cases, really important cases, high profile folks potentially, and folks who also need legal representation for, for example, Constitutional cases. So that’s one reason we have a good place there. Another reason is that everybody deserves privacy, right? I think there is a strong understanding that it benefits the Yale community to have this sort of, well we call it a lab, and have that there to show people what they can do to better protect themselves. Beyond that, privacy, this thing we call privacy has sort of morphed into every aspect of digital life. What we’re really talking about is sort of a digital sovereignty, or we’re constantly talking about speech issues. Those kinds of things that are sort of riding in this area. When we’re talking about being surveilled, we’re talking about potentially being censored. And those kinds of issues, of course, are very important to a legal school, especially one that focuses as much on Constitutional law as Yale does.

“There’s a lot of technology out to get us, so to speak. Trying to spy on us, trying to surveil us, and so on.” - Panquake CSA, Sean O'Brien

DT: And you have a legal background, in addition to a technical background?

SO: I do not. I am around lawyers constantly, and I work with lawyers very closely, but I do not. So it does rub off a little bit. But I am not a lawyer. Don’t take anything I say as legal advice, please.

DT: Because I wanted to go down the legal road a little bit, if you don’t mind. Just  kind of like these ideals that the right to privacy are built upon. Can you  give us some insight into that? I mean we talk about it on the show all the time, but it'd be nice to hear it come from somebody else like - why are we so concerned about privacy to  begin with and and do we think there's essentially legal protections, perhaps, in the Constitution  itself that gives people a right to privacy?  

SO: Sure. So as far as I'm concerned, and as far as, this whole concept of the right to privacy would be concerned, assuming we had that in the United States… we don't really have a right to privacy enshrined in law anywhere in the US. Some other countries have paid lip service to it, but we don't even do that here. But anyway privacy is a fundamental requirement for exercising the other rights, for example, that you have under the Constitution. And this thing we call the Constitution in the United States is of course built upon older concepts around, you know, common law and so on and so forth. You can go back to Magna Carta if you really want to, but those concepts are really important for us to be citizens, first, and digital citizens as well. And the two are very intermeshed at the moment. If  you don't have privacy, you can't have speech. You're going to be surveilled by not just the police state. You're going to be surveilled by the networks that you're in, by corporate giants and so on and so forth. And your voice will not be amplified or heard as much. We certainly see a lot of that if you're identified as sort of a miscreant, let's say. But in the US, the Fourth Amendment is usually what you hear about, and in this context you hear about unreasonable search and seizure. The idea that our personal effects should be free from being surveilled - you know, copied. When we're talking about digital surveillance, we're talking about making copies of your information, and thrown in some database somewhere and so on and so forth. Privacy, again, it’s a fundamentally important requirement for even interacting on the kinds of  platforms that we're interacting on. We needed to have some direct conversations to set up this live stream that we're doing. And we need to have that space where we can talk to people directly one-on-one, as humans. So I think going further, if you really think about privacy as legal, but sort of beyond that… as a fundamental human right. It's required for everything we do. I tend to think of privacy as a fundamental right for autonomy, but also self-representation. If you're going to have power at all in this world that we're in where you're constantly online, constantly showing yourself, all these Cloud economies that are popping up and so on, you need to be able to be private, have private thoughts. And if you don't have that, the people who are most surveilled, those people are going to be the ones who  have less ability to move through the digital world and have that autonomy - have that power, if we want to put it in the context of power. Basically they're just not going to be able to make it in the world that's being built around everyone. That's going to be accelerated. And we can talk about AI if you wanted to, but as, for example, more and more people have their lives scraped, categorized, and put into a bucket somewhere by some AI that's ranking them on some, let's say, social credit scale - which I think is coming - then privacy is going to be even more important. We need to be able to act, think… which is very fundamental, and speak and be able to keep some things to ourselves. It's also about how you represent yourself. You don't know me, I don't know you. We represent ourselves every second of a conversation with some sort of fundamental, neurological concept of who we are, and you can't have that representation without privacy. You can't even know yourself, if you can't keep certain things to yourself. And that's a really important thing to think about as well.

DT: I like that man. You go you go to the core of it, that's where I go as well. I had a quote, my pinned quote is “The elimination of privacy is the elimination of personal communication, and even inner thought. Privacy preserves individuality. If all value transfers are public and recorded, privacy is eroded. The erosion of privacy is the deterioration of the self. Monero preserves the self.” So in terms of Monero and Bitcoin. You know, yeah same core concept there. And I couldn't agree with you more, and especially as you're alluding to. In this day and age, it's more of a concern than ever obviously. I don't think our Founding Fathers had any idea where we would eventually be, in terms of technology, and what the Public  Square would actually look like. And I think that's where Panquake starts to come in. So this is kind of a different core concept, but privacy tied into it. So this idea that our public squares are now currently run by large corporations that control social media. Twitter being one of them. And you guys are setting out to build something that's going to disrupt that, and I guess create a decentralized, I don't know much about it, but create a decentralized version of Twitter essentially is what the elevator pitch would be.

“If  you don't have privacy, you can't have speech. You're going to be surveilled by not just police state. You're going to be surveilled by the networks that you're in, by corporate giants and so on and so forth.” - Panquake CSA, Sean O’Brien

SO: Yeah, so the elevator pitch is basically Next Generation short messaging service. So Twitter-like if you want to call it that, but there may not be a Twitter around for much longer, who knows? Despite the fact that we're on Twitter now, but anyway Panquake is a next generation…

DT: I thought this was my Dogecoin app, oh no ... I'm getting confused!

SO: Yes. A bit late on the April Fool’s I guess. Anyway, I like to think of Panquake and, it's not going to be the only replacement for advertising surveillance networks out there, but Panquake is a replacement for advertising surveillance networks. The thing that embodies the concept of the Internet as a Public Square. A place where people can have dialogue and conversations and follow news and meet new people. And feed their intellectual curiosity. Panquake is a space where we're taking all that very, very seriously. And we're making sure that it's a place that people actually want to be. So when we say close to the end…

DT: Where they own their data right so tying into the privacy element so where they they own themselves they own their data I assume. Is that, that's part of the value? 

SO: So that sovereignty over your data, it's a huge thing. Basically, if we want to start getting past just the fun features, and there are a lot of fun features with Panquake as well, that we've been thinking about. But if we want to get into the security stuff, the model is basically local first, client-side computing. So your personal user data store is encrypted on your device. It's an easy sell for the cryptocurrency folks. We're all used to wallets now. We're all used to recovery codes and so on. That model is starting to change the world, and has done a tremendous amount in a very short period of time to change the digital networks that we use. Panquake is going to be the first social app in this space to take that very seriously to make sure that your data is on your device. But really where it starts is by not collecting data in the first place. We're not collecting huge profiles on users. We're not getting all this information, which these other networks are using for KYC, essentially. You can sign up for Panquake and give extremely minimal information, and then have your identity, tied to your machine or machines. So that's sort of the fundamental thing.

DT: What do you mean your identity tied to your machine or machines? Explain that.

SO: So literally you've got encrypted data, and you're logging in the same way you  would with, let's say, a wallet like MetaMask, right, to the Panquake network. That's tied if you want to, to a subscription, so we have a flat five dollar subscription fee. It’s just a very nice, honest, simple revenue model for the network. You don't have to sign up for that subscription, that subscription just gives you certain features. Key features of the network, that you can't use if you just stay anonymous, but you will be able to interact with the network with a free anonymous account as well. So I go out to Panquake for the first time. I’m reading your, let's say timeline, and I'm looking at the cool things that you're posting. We call them quakes, the short messages. So I see your quakes. I decide to lurk for a while, and then I sign up. I set a handle for myself, then if I want to I can use that handle to also subscribe to the network. And now I have these other features, for example, a Panquake. So Panquake is, and you know it's very easy to accidentally say pancake because it's sort of that concept of stacking information. Basically, you can take quakes and stack them together and build a really nicely curated thread. And save that and share that Panquake with your user base. So it's one of the main features we're really, really proud of. It's all about positive amplification. So we've built in some other amplification tools that make it really easy to reach your followers. One of the pieces that current social  networks, especially as they're sort of going down the tubes, in my opinion… but current social networks are making it harder and harder for you to reach your audience. So let’s say you build a business. You build a podcast. You build… you're an information activist, or you're an investigative journalist. How do you actually get the information out to the people who need to see it? That's getting harder and harder. So for example in Panquake we have a feature called Thunderquakes, which will basically set up a scheduled message to be sent by anyone who opts in to amplify that message. So I set up a Thunderquake. I'm going to release some big investigative story on Monday, let's say, and a message goes out to my followers saying, ‘hey would you like to participate in amplifying this message and participate in this Thunderquake?’ If those followers say yes, on Monday they just amplify that message out to all of their followers. So we're working on some pretty cool stuff beyond the privacy, beyond the security. But we start with that client first, user-focused model, and then we make sure that users can actually use the thing and care about their network and curate content to their audience.

DT: Very cool, very cool. How would you compare it to something like Nostr, which we're seeing gaining a lot of organic traction.

SO: Yeah, I'm glad you've pronounced that in real life now, because I've never heard someone actually pronounce it. I didn't know if it was “Noster”?

DT: I said it with confidence too. I have no idea.

How do you actually get the information out to the people who need to see it? That's getting harder and harder. So, for example, in Panquake we have a feature called Thunderquakes, which will basically set up a scheduled message to be sent out by anyone who opts in to amplify that message. - Panquake CSA, Sean O’Brien

SO: We’ll find out after this I'm sure, but I think that all those alternative networks are great. They're also thinking very seriously, obviously, about sovereignty over your data. About keeping things, you know, to yourself and not just sharing them in some centralized database. We've seen a lot of folks also move to the traditional sort of federated open source networks like Mastodon. A huge exodus a few months ago out there, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of users going out to these Federated Services. Panquake is, well we're planning it and we're  going to do it. We want to be the standard bearer for a lot of these sort of federations. So we're using the protocol ActivityPub, which is also the protocol that a lot of these federated services use. On the back end we're using, for example, lib-peer-to-peer (libp2p), which is an exciting technology that a lot of decentralized applications use. And we're going to be one awesome app in this federated ecosystem of apps. And really, as I said, championing… the standard-bearer for that kind of technology. I think it's great that people are hacking on all kinds of things, building all kinds of things, and we're going to need lots and lots of different solutions. Not just because of the so-called marketplace of ideas, where you want to have competition. I don't see it so much as competition. I see it as having different apps for different aspects of  your communication, for different audiences in your life. And look - that's how we started this thing called the internet.

DT: Sure. So what niche do you guys see it taking on early on? Why would somebody potentially start using Panquake versus, whatever, a Nostr or a Mastodon or… Can you give us any insight into that?

“On the back end we're using, for example, lib peer-to-peer (libp2p), which is an exciting technology that a lot of decentralized applications use. And we're going to be one awesome app in this federated ecosystem of apps.” - Panquake CSA, Sean O’Brien

SO: Everything we do with Panquake, we want to make sure that the average mainstream user can relate to. So from the design, which is very bright and colorful and which has awesome graphics that are a little cutesy… food-based and so on and so forth. Going from that design to the interaction, it has to be something that my grandmother can use. It has to be something that gen Z also wants to use. We don't want to hit people over the head with the technology. You should just go into the application, feel at home, fall into the user interface, so to speak, and be happy with it. So we're really trying to reach as mainstream of an audience as possible in that sense. That said, if you look at the team behind Panquake, you'll see there's a lot of folks in the information activism space. In the Investigative Journalism space. Suzie Dawson, who's the founder, investigative journalist - also an amazing software delivery manager - but she also has done great journalism. So we think a lot about those cases. Journalists and even whistleblowers. We want the security and the privacy model for Panquake to be high enough that people can use it to disclose information that the public needs to know. And there certainly isn't enough of that recently. Folks publish interesting things. Folks publish investigative reporting, and it's getting buried in these other networks. You can barely find it, and if you do find it, it's barely reached anyone. So you know, we want to make sure that we cater to that as well. Part of my job is basically advising on these security models for different types of users. So we are going to walk users through… different levels of security. If you don't think your threat model is very high, and you're just going to post pictures of cats and dogs, well then, these are the settings we recommend. If you have something really important that needs to get out there now to a lot of folks… you’re a whistleblower, let's say, then these are the settings we would recommend. And that's sort of how we're going to walk the users through that process. 

DT: And how, you know, censorship resistant is it, you know, at its core? Is it anything that gets posted on Panquake will forever be on Panquake. Is there, or are there means of some kind of control in place?

SO: So the most important thing to us is to make sure that we deliver on the promises we have to our users and, right now, our backers… the folks who have backed the project over the last few years, and a huge part of that is transparency. Blockchain is really good at making sure that you have an immutable record of information. And that you can go through and trace that information, and make sure that the transactions that happened actually happened. So for Panquake, we want to make sure that if we do moderate, and when we do moderate - and certainly there's going to be some content that has to be removed from the application - you will have a record of that moderation in the blockchain. When we talk to users, it's actually the most important thing for them. They want to know that they have sort of a fair process. They want to know that… they know what rules they need to operate by, instead of some unaccountable black box algorithm, or some algorithm that's gaming the system. As we just saw with the Twitter algorithm being open sourced, published. I'm not sure it's under an open source license, but it was published. We saw that certain topics were being gamed. We don't do that - there's no AI moderation. There's no timeline manipulation. There's no selling of user data. So that transparency of the moderation process is really important. I also think when we actually reveal what we're working on for our moderation model, it's not important what I think, or what, you know, Suzie thinks, or the other folks who are working on the project. We're coming up with a new model which will change the face of moderation, and that we hope that others will actually also adopt. So stay tuned for that aspect on the specific sort of technical, decentralization, censorship-resistance stuff. Of course, it's blockchain. We want folks to be participating actively in the network. We're going to be using trust models to rank different nodes, so that they have different levels of participation in this network. We're using something called Byzantine Fault Tolerance, or in this case Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance, to come up with a consensus model, so that the network can operate in a truly decentralized way. Sharing around this blockchain ledger, essentially. And we're also going to have nodes transparently sending content using, for example, peer-to-peer, which folks should be aware of from the use of IPFS… the IPFS project. All that stuff is great, awesome, decentralized tech. We also are testing everything against Tor. We want to make sure we have a reasonable, good user experience for people using the Tor Browser, for example. We're aware of all these other mix networks out there. I mean I'm constantly showing people how to use them. I know Monerotopia is going to have somebody from Nym, for example, those kinds of networks we’re looking very closely at, and if we can meet those use cases, we want to make sure that our stuff runs there as well. The team's globally distributed. It's one of the most, not just talented, but globally distributed teams that I've ever worked with. It has to be the most distributed. So we also have an organization that's worldwide and I think that's really  important. It's not some American, you know, in his garage - me, for example - coming up with everything and selling it to some VC, Silicon Valley, whatever. So I think that's really important.

DT: And so just give me further insight. So, how… so it isn't self-propelling? I mean, it's not like a crypto where nobody can control it. You guys can curate and control it, so what… so how does that architecture work where it's crypto, it's decentralized, but there's also essentially this centralized authority that has purview over it? Like how does that work out?

“We want the security and the privacy model for Panquake to be high enough that people can use it to disclose information that the public needs to know.” - Panquake CSA, Sean O’Brien

SO: Sure. So traditionally in blockchain there's two models. There's the permissionless model, where you do, for example, have a proof of work. You know, a model where you just basically spin up nodes and you mine, solve difficult problems, and you're on the network. We all know about staking etc., right, but there's also permissioned networks that are out there. This version of consensus, this BFT Byzantine Fault Tolerance is permissioned. Meaning that nodes have to operate in some way that's trusted to be able to have certain abilities on the network. For example, to verify and validate content. We've seen these kinds of networks in the past. Those of your audience who are aware of, for example, the Helium Network. It at least used to operate on this model. I'm not sure how much of it is doing that these days after the token sort of fell apart, but you know, these models work. You can make large distributed networks where the blockchain record is shared. Nodes can communicate with a lot of trust. You know that when you send a quake to Panquake it's being written to the blockchain, and you can verify it. And of course we're going to have all the bells and whistles like a blockchain explorer and so on. That said, we want to make sure that this public square, this public space as you call it, where folks are going to be communicating, has some sort of friendliness, is a place that you want to be. It's not just going to get flooded with spam, or who the heck knows what. So you have to have some level of moderation to do that. Our application will have certain rules, and folks who sign up for the subscriptions will have certain capabilities to use these fun features, if they subscribe. That doesn't stop anyone, of course, from looking at the blockchain record. It  certainly doesn't stop people from extending and building upon what we're building, potentially even building other applications, that use the same blockchain ledger. We're taking extensibility very seriously, and we want to make sure we have API's that people can plug into. We want people to build and extend upon what we're doing. First we've got to get our application out. And our application is going to be the one that we build and love, and takes into account all these things that we're thinking about.

DT: So it's the application that's where the centralized component is taking place. That's where the curation takes place, but the blockchain is, you know, permissionless in that anybody can send out messages, and those messages get stored. And there's no censorship taking place there and theoretically somebody can come build their own version of an application that could interpret or decide what it wants to expose from the blockchain differently than your application.  Perhaps being whatever, well can we start about the… what certain materials may be?

“We're taking extensibility very seriously, and we want to make sure we have API's that people can plug into. We want people to build and extend upon what we're doing.” - Panquake CSA, Sean O’Brien

SO: Exactly, right, so… we saw this model with LBRY and Odyssee. It's very similar, where it's like, yeah, you can build another front end if you want to. But you know, the other thing I should say that's really important is we think very strongly about making sure the tech we build is humane. Those people I'm sure are very well aware of how they're being manipulated in these other social media stacks, and these other applications. They're sort of being treated like they're sitting on a stool at a casino. And we don't want to be doing that. So the user experience in the application has to be a very specific one. We want to make sure that people are amplifying in such a way that's positive at all times, as much as we can. We're thinking very strongly about some of the issues with addiction and social media. We're thinking very strongly about seeing the content you actually want to see. So when you're in Panquake, you're going to see the content from your follows and your follows only, and topics that you search, of course. So if you search for something you're going to see it. But that alone, that experience does require the application to sort of control that. And there's really no way around it.

DT: Yeah, well I mean these issues that you're talking about, and they're very real, are a product of surveillance capitalism, right? So because there's this desire to have control over people and the information, for purposes of making the app more engaging and more valuable, and more valuable to media, that maybe want to advertise there. So all these things feed each other in a loop. How does, I know Panquake is avoiding that with the architecture of their system, and the open source nature, and the blockchain based nature of it. But how are they avoiding the capitalistic aspect of it? I guess essentially, what's keeping Panquake going?

SO: Well we've got the flat subscription fee.

DT: Okay so it's the subscription fee, and is there something else as well, or is it going to fund itself through essentially people paying to participate.

SO: That's right, absolutely. So just flat subscription fee. I mean we are very serious about keeping that line. This is not a project that's trying to make a billion dollars. We're very skeptical of  billionaires taking over social media networks. We don't want to have anything to do with this idea of just growing to some massive scale instantly when the doors are opened. If you  look at the model that we're coming up with for release, we're going to have 5,000 users to start. So folks who are listening can… apply to our Beta. Give us a little bit of information so we can verify that you're human, and then if we allow you into the Beta, you get a reduced subscription. Actually it's three dollars a month for life, rather than five dollars USD. 

DT: What if you pay with Monero, what's the discount there if you pay with Monero?

SO: We need to think about it. We're definitely going to be taking crypto payments, but we haven't done a reduced cost for Monero. That's a great idea, I think. And I love seeing stuff like that. But yeah, we want people to pay in crypto certainly. And that's another aspect I think I don't see too many other networks taking very seriously these days. But yeah, no manipulation. We don't want to be manipulating you. I mean the side of it that people don't talk about with this surveillance capitalism is that these behemoth Big Tech companies have had this waste. Who knows how much engineering that could have gone into awesome stuff… just to come up with methods to manipulate users into looking at ads, basically, and selling that data upstream to the Ford Motor companies and the Coca-Colas and so on and so forth. We're seeing that model fall apart. The advertising is not very good. It reaches people often after they've made a purchase, so if you go out and you buy a new Gillette razor, you might see a Gillette ad afterwards, not before… etc, etc. And we don't have anything to do with that. We don't have to build that stuff, so we can concentrate on the other things. But yeah, very honest subscription fee. And I will note, Suzie Dawson, who of course came up with this and really built the concepts that are now fundamental that we're going to deliver on, when she was talking to people they would say, ‘Hey you know there's no way that you're going to have a social media application that's funded by subscriptions.’ And we're seeing it everywhere now. Twitter's doing it obviously for the verification. And they're still spying on you. Facebook's going to be doing it for verification, and they're still spying on you.

DT: At least with this, you're actually getting something for that subscription, right.

SO: And, again, you don't have to subscribe. If you don’t your experience is going to be a little different. It's going to be more like browsing Twitter without an account. Or, you know, reading the news, let's say. You'll still be able to reply… and have some level of communication. And we have ways that we're figuring out how we're going to moderate that, of course. But if you really want to get out and get in there, you're going to want to have a subscription. We also have thought about, because we care about a worldwide global network, not just Americans, not just folks who can afford it. Of course there's plenty of poor people in the US as well. We're going to have applications for what we call compassionate accounts. So you basically can be on Panquake for free. When I speak to folks about this it's very interesting, there's a lot of people who are willing to pay more than five dollars a month if they know that some of that money, a pool of that money, will go to bring other users on. You know, basically donate accounts to other users. So that's also an interesting part of the model that we're building.

DT: And so other than, you know, you saying these things here… what's the promise like? Where, how is this? Where is this promise written? Is it just that you guys are this corporation that's saying, you know, this is what your ideals are, or is there some actual promise between the users and those that are controlling it?

SO: Just as with everything on the internet, we're known by our work. So we've been running a crowdfunding campaign for a few years now, doing monthly delivery meetings, we were doing for a very long time, where we basically showed different aspects, different improvements, talked about the timeline for development. The Panquake build was fully funded, now we're working on the support and help-desk kind of stuff. Making sure there's real humans, rather than AI chat bots, who are able to work with people for their requests. Let's say something… I don't know, there's some kind of issue that they're having with the application. We want people to talk to real folks. So we're going to be known by how we deliver on this thing, and how well we deliver on this thing, of course. Now we've also been doing some demos to folks who are… journalists, influencers, people who have podcasts. [We’d] be happy to show you a demo of the application and where we're at, and talk a little more about some of the things we haven't revealed publicly. But yeah, I mean we're known by our work. We're known by the caliber of people who've decided to support us. If you go out to Panquake.com, you'll see a number of people who have done amazing things in the world digitally, who have also decided to back us… and say ‘hey Panquake’s the real deal and here's why I think they're the real deal.’ So, you know, we'll get there. I can't wait till we release it and we prove to the world that we're serious about it. But as you said proof is in the pudding or, I should say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

DT: Yeah, maybe. Maybe. So I know you guys are going to be presenting in Monerotopia. I don't know if it's going to be you, or I think it might be Suzie that presents.

SO: That's gonna be Suzie, yeah.

DT: Maybe she could show us some, I don't know, some action, some Panquakes?

SO: Yeah, we'll  have to figure that out, but as we get closer, of course, then we're more willing to show certain things. This kind of build takes an awful lot of work. It's been built with a lot of effort from a lot of different folks. We're also making sure that when we release the thing, we can release the source. So that takes a certain amount of, you know, making sure we're catering our code base correctly. We're putting everything together in a nice package. Licensing everything the right way in the free and open source software way, and also we want to have a serious open source community around this when we release. We're taking some steps very shortly where we're gonna have folks who are actively working on that aspect of it and, as I said, as that stuff starts coming out and people start knowing we’re the real deal, then we will prove. That's all I can say at the moment.

DT: You don’t want to release an undercooked Panquake, right. Nothing worse than a little batter in your bite when you're eating a pancake.

SO: There we go. That's the analogy I need to be using, right. You got to go back to the first…

DT: A little golden crispy edge on mine, yeah. Cool, man. So I know you're gonna hate this question. So when do you guys think you're gonna, you know, release? What's the date?

SO: It’ll be done when it's done. You know how it is with these projects. But I will say, you know, our team's been moving very fast. We really didn't get started right away because we had to raise money. You know, we didn't have some VC just dump money on our heads so we could hire. So it took us a little while to get going, but then when we started going, the app build has been accelerating very quickly. We're building, of course, the blockchain network. We're building distributed, basically media storage capabilities, media sharing capabilities. We're using, on the back end services, Nitter and Invidious, which are alternative front ends for Big Tech stuff. So if you embed a tweet in Panquake, for example, you're not actually just pulling in Twitter's spy code… that's an important thing for us. We don't want to go out of our way to build this thing and not spy on people, and then Twitter basically drinks our milkshake, right. So we're working on all that stuff, as well as the app build, and it's coming together pretty fast. So yeah I don't have a great answer for that. It’ll be done when it's done, but I think we're getting pretty close.

DT: I don't know, be nice. No developer likes that question, yeah.

SO: Yeah and again, you know, we're going to do this staggered release model, if folks are interested they should go out to Panquake.com, apply for the Beta, and you'll literally be the first folks in. So we're going to do that slow release as well, which I'm sure will frustrate some folks a little bit too. But we want to make sure we're delivering  something that's usable, and not just flooded with so much traffic that we can't handle it. One of the things that we saw is a bunch of overnight Twitter clones pop up, which Panquake is certainly not a Twitter clone. It's much more complex than that, and much more awesome. But anyway, these Twitter clones popped up overnight because, people were angry at Elon Musk, etc. And they couldn't handle the traffic. People can't get in, they get discouraged, they're not going to use your network. You open the door to a massive crowd one day, and then the next day you have nobody who cares or even wants to interact. So we want to sort of build a community. That slower growth model is more like what we used to see on the internet, right. When you had a forum somewhere. Or you had an IRC channel or whatever. So we've learned from those old examples in the past, and we're building something on Web3 blockchain  technology that takes that stuff to heart. There was a lot of good in this network  before it got turned into a spy machine, right. Before the internet became the spy thing, there was a lot of good in it, and Panquake is a big part for us. It's our contribution to try to bring that back a little bit.  

DT: Is there any coin involved in Panquake?

SO: We don't have any tokenization, and we're not going to be building that in. As I said with the extensibility piece, we don't know what's down the road with that. I'm sure there will be lots of folks knocking on our door once they see what we deliver. But we're purposefully having a non-financialized chain, which is very different. You don't see that often, if ever, as far as I'm aware. And that means that we don't have to  worry about tokenomics. And we can focus on really building the app, and again, having this sort of flat remuneration with the five dollar subscription.

“There was a lot of good in this network before it got turned into a spy machine. Before the internet became the spy thing, there was a lot of good in it, and Panquake is a big part for us. It's our contribution to try to bring that back a little bit.” - Panquake CSA, Sean O’Brien.  

DT: And then so what incentivizes the nodes? It's just from this revenue that's coming from the customers?

SO: So to start, we're going to be working with digital rights groups, and basically they're going to be donating us their time, and processing power, and bandwidth, to help build this thing. We've found a number of folks, both through my connections  and other people, who work on the project who are willing to do this. Who basically are incentivized because they believe in the dream. Beyond that, we'll see what happens, but it's more than enough to bootstrap this network in the beginning. And we think it's going to be enough for growth of the network as well. Where we go past that, who knows. I mean the other thing is people are going to build on our stuff. So I'm sure people will figure out ways to build their businesses. And, really, we want people to be in Panquake and using Panquake who are thinking creatively in that direction anyway. What we don't want to be is distracted by tokens, coins, ICO's, etc. We don't want, as I'm sure Monero folks are quite aware of… the regulatory environment is changing rapidly in a negative direction for all tokens. Any group that's trying to spin up a token is potentially in trouble with the SEC if they're in the US and so on and so forth. And we don't have to worry about that. We can focus on -

DT: You had mentioned LBRY, right, and they've got issues.

SO: Look what happened there. They had a wonderfully-functioning network, and then they basically were shut down overnight. So it's also the stability aspect of it. You know, as we've seen, coins that have a good, well-defined purpose, that have good communities like Monero has. Those coins last. They outlast, right, all the other coins that are out there. And when times are turbulent, they're still doing just fine. In some cases, being the refuge that people go to, rather than be in other altcoins, for example. If we're going to call them altcoins. I know that's disparaging, but look at all the instability around the so-called stablecoins, you know, etc. We're building. We know what we want to do as far as a mission, and that mission is much more important than worrying about tokens. 

DT: So yeah, the idea is that me as a Panquake user, I'm not really incentivized to just go run a node for Panquake, right. That's not, that's not really playing into the ecosystem.  

SO: Yeah, and who knows where things could go. I don't. I don't mean to pretend that I know exactly where the project is going to find itself. But again, you really don't… you can be amazed how many users you can host on a Raspberry Pi in your basement. I've done it, and if you're not doing a lot of the things that these networks that are using all these cloud CDN’s and crunching big data on users essentially to spy on them, if you're not doing all that crap. If you're not shoving Javascript trackers in your app and all that stuff, then you can deliver without having to have some huge, massive, server farms somewhere. And we certainly want folks to be directly involved in Panquake. We certainly want volunteers who believe in the project. And individual nodes who are on the network will be using a little bit of their processing power, and their bandwidth to help boost the  network. For example, you could be routing some, you know, potential, lib peer-to-peer traffic through your device. We want to make sure that we have that kind of P2P model built in at different aspects of the network where it makes sense. But it's not going to be, at least at the start, an army of folks who are spinning up nodes, no.

DT: Any, I know this is way down the line plus, but like any potential… adding coins in other ways, like for tipping purposes, perhaps something like a Monero integrated into a Panquake, where you can send Monero tips and things like that?  

SO: That's not our focus right now, but of course we'll think about that. I think it would be great. And we need to think about how we can best… cater to that audience. We're hoping, and this is part of the reason we're out doing this kind of outreach to Monerotopia, and these kinds of great podcasts and events. We want folks to come to us and say, ‘hey wouldn't it be great if.’ And then we can have that conversation. But you know, we're very wary of, again, that sort of casino aspect. We just want to be careful. It's great if people are, for example, saying ‘hey donate to me I'm doing this awesome project. Here's my wallet address. Click this button, get a QR code,' whatever that goes on. That’s awesome, but we don't want to be sort of gamifying in a way that creates a negative experience for the network. And turns it into a slot machine, essentially.  

DT: Just don't use DOGE, man. Just, just don't, go down that road.

SO: Well I have to admit, I mine both DOGE and LTC, as well as XMR. Just so you know.  

DT: DOGE is the first crypto I ever bought in 2013, before I knew anything about crypto.

SO: Well don't you wish you bought more? 

DT: Well, that's my story. It gets stolen the day after I bought it, which is what (inaudible)

SO: Oh, geez.

DT: Bitcoin rabbit hole.

SO: Yeah, I always love that meme. So it's one of the first ones I took a serious look at, but I never really did much with it. I love Monero, let me tell you. I'm very happy with performance recently with mining. P2Pool is awesome, and I wish other coins had things like that. I've been playing around, too. I've got a machine actually next to me that I just put new graphics cards in. I'm working on basically doing a little bit of testing of my own between XMRstack and the XMRig stuff to see what the performance is. I'm trying to figure it out. I know that Monero is very much, and I think it's important that they are, into making sure that CPU mining is… how do I say… democratized - but sure why not - democratized [to] such a level that it's not encouraging use of ASICs and so on. But I still want to see if I can crank out a little more from these video cards here.

DT: Yeah, see what you can do. Don't invent the ASIC over there, the Monero ASIC, that would... but if it happens just let me know first.

SO: I know hardware, but I don't know it to that level… nor would I create such an abomination. But I would let you know first.

DT: Yeah, what is your crypto take, man? So I mean you obviously have a very strong background in tech. You know, you understand  the importance of privacy and cryptography. What is your overall opinion of crypto? And what you see as being the value proposition, that whole Spiel? Give us your crypto take.

SO: So I taught what I believe is the first class on Web3 at any Ivy League university. I did a one-credit, sort of fun course, this past semester at Yale. And we basically treat… the technologies that are now being sort of lumped under this term “Web3,” cryptocurrency and blockchain being part of that, as reinventing the Web of Trust. And I think these technologies have a ton of potential we haven't even tapped, you know. Every time somebody makes fun of NFT’s, for  example, I think about all the things that could be done for authentication and identity and, potentially, you transactions with NFT’s. Every time somebody disparages cryptocurrency in one way or another, because, I don't know, the markets are down, I say ‘hey crypto's on sale.’ I very much believe that this stuff is, it already is reinventing the networks that we use. It's created new models like DAOs, which are sort of, again, embracing the good parts of that old Web. And having sort of a built-in, more democratic way that people can collaborate, and even… be activists. So my take is that it's here to stay. It's reinventing the networks. And Big Tech is, frankly, shitting themselves, which is why you'll have Facebook announce [what is] basically vaporware. They're going to have some next generation network. Nobody knows what it's going to be, right. You're going to see a lot of that, and I don't like the Cloud very much, you know. I like to work on projects that I consider anti-Cloud projects. Moving away from that centralization model. So I'm very bullish on the idea that crypto is reinventing that aspect of the network topology. There's going to be a lot of ups and downs in between. We're seeing them. Certainly this year has been turbulent to say the least, but the network's changing beneath our feet. And either we participate actively, and we build a network we want to see, or we allow Big Tech to regroup and figure out how they're going to own the thing. And they'll work on it I'm sure. 

DT: Which blockchains are you most interested in? Which ones do you think are are doing the most interesting things, or actually, you know serving a purpose?  

SO: Yeah. So obviously I love Monero. I think anonymity is really important. Any project that can have a high level of privacy when the user wants to have privacy for a transaction on a blockchain, I care about. It's obviously really hard to build these things. We've seen a lot of so-called privacy coins do kind of a bad job in different ways. We've seen some layer twos, of course, have some major issues, but the fact that people are even working on that I think is always laudable. Even when mistakes are  made. Anonymity is essential to have speech on the network. And that doesn't mean that everybody should be anonymous all the time, but when someone chooses to be anonymous they should be able to be anonymous. And any projects that push that, I find plenty interesting. I think Ethereum is great with smart contracts, obviously. And everything that's come from that smart contracts idea. You know, all the other now smart contract projects that are out there, that sort of took inspiration from Ethereum. As we see the cost of these transactions for writing applications on top of these blockchains, as we see that costs sort of go down, transaction costs, we're going to see a lot of very interesting stuff being built. I kind of am okay with bear markets in a sense because I tend to see a lot more innovation and ingenuity happen when everybody's not just checking their, what essentially is a stock portfolio… trying to figure out what the price of BTC is at any given moment. When people are innovating and building, and when the coins that survive are the ones that have these strong use cases. I mean, yeah, so what am I looking at? I don't know, people talk to me all the time about all kinds of projects and I try not to give too many ones, you know, my quote-unquote blessing. But certainly I think Monero has a very strong place. Certainly, I don't think BTC is going anywhere anytime soon. I think Ethereum and Solana, and some of these other networks around smart contracts, and applications especially are here to stay. I think… I think Bitcoin Cash is great. I think the idea that we can actually have certain coins that are focusing on spending it as cash, actually spending the token, you know, in day-to-day life, that's really important stuff. GNU Taler, which is something people aren't talking about very much, but this is a new token project that's coming  from the free and open source software world, is designed to basically be part of a digital point-of-sale system. And so that token's interesting to me. Yeah, I love it all man. 

DT: But what do you, I mean, what does Privacy Lab have to say about Bitcoin's lack of privacy? I mean it's fundamentally transparent, so do they see this potentially as a technology that could lead to more mass surveillance? 

SO: Yeah, well that's a problem, right. Chain analysis is a real thing, and a big deal. What people don't talk about, of course, is these ginormous data farms out there. The Utah Data Center that the NSA is running et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They not only don't talk about it… in the sense of it existing, they don't talk about in the sense of environmental impact, and all these other criticisms that have been levied against cryptocurrencies. So my take on a lot of that is, ‘Sure, we're going to have problems with public ledgers.’ Essentially, records of transactions that can be followed to trace, you know, someone's communication or payments etc., etc. And we're going to have that problem for a long time in blockchain. But you know, I think that we're going to figure out a lot of those wrinkles. If we're allowed to, I think we're going to come up with methods where people can have what we would consider a reasonable amount of privacy, while still having that verification on the ledger. There's a lot of folks working on all that stuff with, you know, multisig and zk-SNARKs and everything else. And I think we will get there. Certainly in my world, you know, in academia at least, that world… there's a healthy - perhaps unhealthy depending on your perspective - amount of skepticism around blockchain. It was the butt of jokes for a while. That's happening much less so, now. I think that as these technologies become more mainstream and more entrenched in people's daily experience, you're going to find less of that. I want people to be private when they want to be private, and be public when they want to be  public, certainly. I put my face out there. I wasn't too hard to find when you did hear of me, right. And you can probably find a lot of what I've said  and done, and people I've worked with and so on. It is really important for people to be empowered by their technology. And part of that empowerment is going to be revealing at least some aspects of their identity, and some of the things they're up to. But it's also important conversely, you know, when the public needs to know, for example, that their government is doing something atrocious, or some corporation's doing something atrocious, or something else has gone on that just, we're not aware of that people should be aware of. They need that anonymity... That's a strength for them to be able to have the power to publish. So, I know I'm going off on a tangent here. I don't find blockchain incompatible with this in any specific way. You know, HTML and websites are… public, right. We had less of an idea of needing  privacy in the early days of the internet because we weren't surveilled by these massive entities. People had handles that just had their birth date in them. You know, people spoke pretty openly on Usenet. Especially if you go back and look at some of those posts about a wide variety of topics that are certainly not allowed to be spoken about these days in Big Tech world, or really lots of other places. So I don't necessarily see that as incompatible. The Web of Trust thing. I just do want to go back to, quickly, and I know we're probably going over time. But what's really awesome, I think, about these technologies, and what really sold me on them was, encryption can be used for, of course, confidentiality, but it can also be used for verification. And cryptocurrencies have always gotten this mix right. They have different purposes, but you know different coins do different things. Different projects do different things. But that model is the promise of the Web that we were talking about in the late 90s, in the early 2000s, right. You'd have a keyserver somewhere. You could verify someone's public key. They hold onto the private key. Again, holding onto their data, holding onto their wallet, holding onto their Panquake user store. And you can still verify and have a conversation with them. Send them something confidential. So you have the strong verification of their identity. They can have multiple identities and be multiple people to multiple folks for different contexts. Just like when we go out in the world. We are different people to different folks. You know, I say things in a personal context. I say things in a public context. I cater my message to different audiences. And this is not something we should be ashamed of. Certainly if we're able to get, you know, even just personal key management, which is really what wallets are about. If we're able to get individuals, normal quote-unquote “mainstream” users, average users, whatever we want to call them. If we can get them to use things like MetaMask. If we can get them to use these things and be comfortable with them, then they are that much closer to owning their data and not having to dox themselves everywhere they go. And I think the new generation is going to get that right. You know, we're seeing it in gen Z and… assuming we have another generation after that, I'm not always so sure… [but] I'm sure they will get it right as well.

“When the public needs to know, for example, that their government is doing something atrocious, or some corporation's doing something atrocious, or something else has gone on that just, we're not aware of that people should be aware of. They need that anonymity.” - Panquake CSA, Sean O’Brien

DT: Very cool man, very cool. Is Monero spoken about at Privacy Lab at all? Is these things that are discussed?

SO: Sure. Yeah, so I always try to make sure I'm recommending a basket of tools, or basket of coins in this case. So I'm not, you know, hyper-promoting one project over another. But absolutely. Monero is always the coin people talk about when they're thinking seriously about privacy. I think ZCash might have had that advantage a little while ago, but lesser-so, and I'm sure the Monero folks know more than I do about why that's…

DT: Yeah, I know it'd be cool to collaborate with the Privacy Lab in some way to get Monero devs collaborating with you guys, like presenting, or I don't know…

SO: At the very least you start with the presentation. And see [if you can] whet peoples' appetite. Like I said, this was just a small one-credit reading group we were doing on Web3, and people were practically knocking down my digital door, let's say, trying to get into this thing… and they're basically volunteering their time, you know. Every week I brought in different speakers. We went through the whole, history [related to] blockchain and cryptocurrencies. But also some other technologies, like distributed data stores, like Tor and other mix networks. We related those back to the earlier battles. Especially during the so-called Encryption Wars in the late 90s and early 2000s. And, you know, folks were… I was pleasantly surprised. So yeah, I'd love to do that. I think it would be great to bring in speakers. And yeah, let me know. Hit me up. I'm around.

DT: Cool. Definitely will, man. So yeah, I say this wraps up the interview portion of the show. Anything you want to get out there now, like resources where people can  follow?

SO: Sure.

DT: All that jazz.

SO: I want to make sure, of course, I'm plugging Panquake again. And I am shameless about that because I really believe in this project. So please go out to Panquake.com, check it out. If you would like to donate and support the project, that's great. Those donations are going towards really important work around, you know, supporting the users that we're going to bring in. We want to make sure the experience for folks there is great. Panquake.com will also do probably a better job than I did explaining the model. No advertising. Free. Not selling user data… transparent moderation and all that. Go in there, dig through, look at the old videos, of stuff that we've said in the past, and make sure you reach out to us if you're interested in the work I do around Privacy Lab, etc. You can find me, of course, all over the internet, but you can go out to privacylab.yale.edu, and you can just drop me a line. Happy to talk. 

DT: Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. We release new episodes every week. You can find and subscribe to our show on YouTube, Odyssee, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Go to monerotalk.live to subscribe for a full list of places where you can watch and listen. If you want to interact with us, guests or other podcast listeners, you can follow us on Twitter. And please leave us a review on iTunes. It helps people find the show and we are always happy to read them. So thanks so much, and we look forward to being back next week. Thank you.

[Transcript Ends]

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Visit ‘Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons’ to read their post about this - their 312th episode - ‘Fixing Social Media’ or listen to the full audio below:

“I really, really enjoyed talking with Suzie. You can tell she’s really passionate about what she’s doing.” - Carey Parker, Host of ‘Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons’ cybersecurity podcast

A full transcript of the interview is being provided here, for our wonderful Substack subscribers!

[Transcript begins from 2:18]

Carey Parker (hereafter: CP): Today I’ll be talking to Suzie Dawson, who is the Founder of Panquake.com - this is a new social media platform, it has not been launched yet, it’s getting close - but it’s honestly trying to get back to what the promise of social media was supposed to have been, or at least in my personal utopian idealized view, the way these things should have worked from the get-go. I literally just prior to recording this interview got a demo from Suzie and Sean O’Brien who I’ve had on this show before, from Yale Privacy Lab, who is associated with this project, gave me a demo of the product. I can’t tell you too much about it, I signed an NDA, but it’s really polished. It’s got some cool groundbreaking features and we’re going to talk a little bit about that today. So I will tell you up front, we’re going to be talking about social media today and a lot of things surrounding social media platforms are highly politicized, that’s sort of unavoidable when talking about a social media platform. Shadowbanning, account suspensions, mis- and disinformation, conspiracy theories, all that stuff. So we will be talking about those topics today and they can be politically charged let’s say. Not just in the US but elsewhere as well. So just a little bit of a trigger warning, we are going to be talking about those things, but just to me, these things go beyond politics. At least in the sense that they’re not left or right things, they’re not conservative or liberal things, these are things that are applied to all of us and affect society and democracy in general. You may come down on some of these issues in one particular way or another but I think we all agree these platforms should be open and fair and transparent and allow us to have conversations - or not have conversations - as we see fit. And they shouldn’t be pushing stuff at us based on engagement algorithms and things like that. I think there’s a lot of common ground to be found here. And technology like any tool can be used for good and for ill simultaneously. So just keep that in mind as we’re having the interview today and try not to look at this through one lens or another. This is really a topic that applies to all of us and really what we want to do is we want to remove all that crap from our discussions of social media platforms. It shouldn’t be the central issue. It should really just be about keeping in touch with and following the people we care about. Now, she also mentions the term ‘FOSS’ quickly in passing - we’ve talked about that before. In fact, we’ve talked about it with Sean O’Brien. It’s the F-O-S-S Free and Open Source Software. And also there are one or two mild swear words thrown in there too. So there are your trigger warnings for this interview. I really, really enjoyed talking with Suzie. You can tell she’s really passionate about what she’s doing. And she’s found obviously a lot of people who believe like she does that we need a change. That we need something different. That we need a new type of social media platform. So with that as your introduction, let’s get to our interview with Suzie Dawson. Suzie Dawson is the Founder of Panquake.com. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. Thanks for coming on to the show Suzie.

Suzie Dawson (hereafter ‘SD’): So happy to be here.

CP: So tell us all - what is Panquake? And what drove you to launch this ambitious project?

SD: Panquake is next generation technology. It’s a short messaging service where users can - through blockchain technology - have the safety and security of knowing that their activity on a platform is not being interfered with by any other party. We provide transparency and we provide a whole suite of new exciting tools to achieve more amplification and circulation of content that you wish to share with the world. With less interference by parties who might want to curtail or manipulate your access to information or your ability to circulate information.

CP: Alright, well there’s a lot to unpack there. We’ll get into that throughout the interview I’m sure. So, social media was supposed to bring us together. Allow us to find and keep in touch with friends and family and I think for a time that worked. I think early days, it kind of met those goals but things obviously went downhill at some point. So when - from your perspective - when and why did that all change?

“Panquake is next generation technology. It’s a short messaging service where users can - through blockchain technology - have the safety and security of knowing that their activity on a platform is not being interfered with by any other party.” - Suzie Dawson, Panquake Founder

SD: Well I think the commercialization of the internet is the easy answer, right? When the profit motive got introduced and when data became digital gold and when profiling users became an industry. Increasingly the purpose of providing communications platforms has been about collecting that digital gold and being able to on-sell it to other shadowy companies, Big Data companies, in these B2B relationships that users often have very little awareness of. So we’re turning that model on its head. We’re not collecting our user’s data. We’re not monetizing our user data. We’re not profiling our users. We’re not intruding upon their lives or their internet browsing habits or what files are on their phone. We’re not collecting any of that. Instead our commercialization model is based around our users paying a small amount of money per month to help to sustain our platform so that we can provide a service that doesn’t invade their lives the way that Big Tech has been.

CP: Well you’ve said that our relationship with Big Tech - particularly with social media - is like a relationship with an abusive person. What did you mean by that?

SD: There are so many ways that Big Tech has been abusing users. Aside from just the profiling I was talking about. The total lack of transparency about the way that platforms operate has caused myriad damage to relationships, real life relationships between people and also commercial relationships too. We quite often don’t have the slightest clue why certain types of content are showing up and why other types of content aren’t. We submit content into a platform with an expectation that people will see it and quite often people are not seeing it. That leads to all types of feelings of isolation and stress. We’ve had platforms actually removing user actions such as disappearing retweets, disappearing likes, disappearing followers. You follow people and then discover that actually you’re not following them anymore or vice versa. That translates into real world harm as relationships appear to be broken. People just assume that a platform would have a fundamental integrity and facilitate the maintenance of relationships but quite often the platform itself becomes a blocker to those relationships. That’s before we even get into actual outright blatant censorship, often for political reasons or other reasons. For us - we believe in fundamental universal human rights. We believe that technology does give us the ability to bake human rights into the platform. That’s very much what we’re doing with Panquake. Baking in human rights from the base level. Everybody has the right to communicate. Everybody has the right to freely associate with those who they choose to freely associate with. Our platform should never get in the way or in the middle of those relationships. It should exist only to facilitate them.

“We believe that technology does give us the ability to bake human rights into the platform. That’s very much what we’re doing with Panquake. Baking in human rights from the base level. Everybody has the right to communicate. Everybody has the right to freely associate with those who they choose to freely associate with. Our platform should never get in the way or in the middle of those relationships. It should exist only to facilitate them.” Suzie Dawson, Panquake Founder

CP: A lot of the trouble people had with social media lately has been around these algorithms. Algorithms have become this boogieman of, you know, all the feeds went from only showing the stuff for the people I followed and only the things that they posted to getting content from other places that had nothing to do with people I followed because it somehow maximized engagement. But many people argue that these algorithms that are used by Facebook and TikTok and YouTube so successfully are really themselves neutral. The fact that they tend to lead to doom-scrolling and radicalization is really just a reflection of human nature. They didn’t do that, they’re just maximizing engagement and it turns out that’s what people want. That’s what they’ll say. What do you think? Are algorithms themselves… are these algorithmic feeds inherently harmful?

SD: Well algorithms don’t write themselves. And the people who write algorithms in some cases may be doing it independently but most of the time are not. They’re employees of companies which have strategic objectives and tactical reactions to events that are going on and sometimes political pressures as well and external pressures. Industry pressures. Regulatory pressures, etc etc. Those agendas feed down into the development layer and alter the contents of the algorithms. So I don’t believe that algorithms are neutral. I believe that the agendas of corporate boards and governmental agencies and other entities do filter into those algorithms. I also don’t believe that in a communications tool you should have some entity be it an algorithm or the people that are ultimately responsible for influencing that algorithm decide what you should see. I believe that you as the user should decide what you see. That’s a major difference with Panquake. We have time-linear chronologically-ordered timelines with no content manipulation at all. That timeline is built off of content submitted by accounts that you have elected to follow because you have sought out that content and chosen to engage with it. Not because we as a platform have decided maybe you would like to see it, or maybe you should want to see it, or maybe someone is paying us to get you to see it. So it’s just a completely different mentality. We’re creating user-driven social media. Rather than social media to drive users.

CP: Well just to play devil’s advocate a little bit. I think you’re absolutely right. Obviously, Facebook and these companies, they’re advertising companies. These products are free because you’re the product. Particularly, your engagement and your attention, literally the amount of time you spend on their platform, is what you’re paying with. You’re paying with your time, with your engagement. So these algorithms are written. I still think there’s a possible argument to be made that somebody says… whatever they like, let’s just give them more of that. Because that keeps them on the platform. And it just turns out that people like really bad stuff. So I don’t doubt, certainly when you’re buying advertising and things like that, that there are other ways that you’re getting fed content that somebody wanted you to see. But just from a pure algorithm standpoint, if I was an engineer writing the software, if I pay attention, well this person looked at this thing longer than they looked at that thing, they spent more time on this or this, they clicked on this but they didn’t click on that, I’m just going to give them more of that. Isn’t there something to be said for the fact that somehow humans tend to draw in like a moth to a flame that they’re attracted to crap - stuff that’s not good for them?

“I believe that you as the user should decide what you see. That’s a major difference with Panquake… We’re creating user-driven social media. Rather than social media to drive users” Suzie Dawson, Panquake Founder

SD: Can you inundate someone with something and cause an addiction response? Yeah, sure you can but unfortunately that’s not the only data that’s being collected by these companies and that’s not the only data that’s being monetized by them. Ultimately, they’re after your location. They’re after your network. They’re after what other networks are in proximity to your network. What other devices are in proximity to your device. What browser are you using? How long are you using it for? What other browsers are you using? What are the fingerprints of those browsers? What is the timestamp on your activity? What hours are you likely to be asleep because you’re not interacting with your device? Where is your device located when you sleep? At what time of day are they most likely to be able to send you a push notification and have you respond to it? They can profile not only your life - you as an individual - but they can profile your relationships. They can track… and this has been proven in study after study after study… the wealth of information that they can get out of a user is absolutely incomprehensible to most people but is something that is critically important for them to understand. And all of those things I listed are pieces of data which Panquake does not collect. We do not fingerprint your browser. We do not retain your session information. We do not profile your network. We do not capture the files that are on your phone. We do not know when you woke up and we don’t want to know when you went to bed. This is a fundamental ideological difference. We do not want to invade our users lives, we simply want to provide them with a service to speak to each other. And that I think is really worth fighting for to be honest with you.

CP: Oh, for sure. Yeah. It’s not that hard for Facebook to figure out who you’re speaking with because there’s another phone that’s running the Facebook app that’s right next to you whose location is proximate to yours. So even if you don’t give that away any other way, it’s amazing how much correlation you can do with that kind of data. And they do it.

SD: And the idea that they have some type of right to collect that information is preposterous. And the idea that users are willingly submitting to it is preposterous as well. It’s ignorance of users, of the extent to which their privacy is being violated, that has facilitated the continuing violations. It’s going to take companies and projects like Panquake, I don’t think we are or should be the only one, actually educating users and saying hey, it doesn’t have to be like this. Actually for $5 a month you can opt out of that Spy-verse. You really can.

CP: So let me flip that on its head though. So the internet… there’s so much information out there. A lot of people would argue, if I can’t get to it from a search engine it doesn’t exist. Because how would I know to find it? So there’s this huge internet haystack. And there are some good needles out there too. So without algorithms and crowdsourced recommendations how do I discover new sources of content? It’s great that I can follow people I know of, but I can certainly argue, there are things out there that I want to discover. How do I discover those things in your system?

SD: Well there are multiple ways. So, if you like cats, you type ‘cats’ into the search and press enter and you get cats. So there’s discoverability in that sense. You have a hobby, you type some keywords in, you find some content, maybe you follow some of those people that look good, maybe you don’t, maybe you put some different keywords in. Yes, we’ll have the typical advanced search functions, Boolean search and whatnot. So there’s that type of thing. Then there’s the fact that we do also allow you to see the actions being taken by the people who you follow, and we even allow you to see actions being taken by people who follow you. So if you want to see, what are the people who follow me interested in? What are they liking? What are they sharing onto their timeline? Who are they following? You can do that as well. So there’s no problems on Panquake finding a rabbit hole to go down. There really isn’t. It’s just that what is retained on your timeline over a period of time is completely up to your own volition to engineer.

“We do not fingerprint your browser. We do not retain your session information. We do not profile your network. We do not capture the files that are on your phone. We do not know when you woke up and we don’t want to know when you went to bed. This is a fundamental ideological difference. We do not want to invade our users lives, we simply want to provide them with a service to speak to each other. And that I think is really worth fighting for to be honest with you.” Suzie Dawson, Panquake Founder

CP: That would be a welcome change. Even with all the recent media attention we’ve had with surveillance capitalism people still seem to prefer these “free services”. Which of course are not free, you’re paying with your data, as opposed to paying for these things. And obviously you’re going for a for-pay model. What do you think it’s going to take to change that? Do you think that there just aren’t valid options and therefore people just aren’t choosing them? Or what are the challenges of finding people that will go away from these free models that are based on showing them ads on their behavior versus something that they’re going to have to pay for. That seems like something that is unfortunately going to be a hurdle.

SD: I think that the powers that be would love us to think that actually people just want to be manipulated and abused. I think that is an abuser mentality that serves them. I’ll tell you a little story. Two years ago, almost basically two years ago, I brought an idea to some friends. We had no money, we had no funding, we just had an idea. I said, guys, this is what I want to do, are you willing to help? And over 20 people, nearly 30 people who I knew, said yes, we need this, I want to help! They volunteered their time. They gave their skills and attention. We said, OK, we’re going to borrow $2,000 from my parents to register a domain. And we built a little website called Panquake.com. We set up a crowdfunding page. We went out on our social media accounts and said guys, we’ve got an idea. We’re going to do a livestream and we’re going to tell you about this idea. We did our livestream, we unveiled our idea and we unveiled our crowd-funder. We said, we need to raise $50,000 to establish the business, register the businesses, get an actual proper business infrastructure so that we can then recruit on developers and start to build this idea out. We thought, at best case, it would take 6-12 weeks to raise that $50,000. We got it in 20 days. Then, over the course of that year 3,600 people put money into the Panquake crowd-funder. So that we could hire developers and build this tool. And that’s precisely what we did. We built the tool. We now have gone from an idea and some volunteers to, as you’ve seen recently because we just demo’d it for you, a fully-functional working application, a real piece of software that we can bring to market to change people’s lives with. And our crowdfunding campaign which had a marketing budget of $0, an advertising budget of $0, no PR people behind it, no V.C. behind it, just literally a group of friends, we got over 1 million hits to the Panquake website in the first year of the project. So what that tells me is that there is thirst for this. There is interest in this. People do want to be emancipated from the chains of Big Tech. They do want a different future. And a small group of people banding together and being committed to making some change can do it. Even without the corporate backing. Without the government backing. And we are doing it. Now we’re hiring on service personnel, we’re setting up all of our back-end service infrastructure and we’re actually going to be able to deliver this. And that’s such an exciting thing for us to be a part of and I’m so happy that we’ve come this far on our journey. But I tell that story so that you can see that there really is a thirst out there. If you can get a million hits on your website with a $0 marketing budget - people do care about this. That’s the bottom line.

“These platforms are engaging in real world harms against users every single day and so it’s really important to us to reverse some of that.” Suzie Dawson, Panquake Founder

CP: Well, and you’ve done a lot of other market research, and I want to dig into this a little bit because it’s not just this aspect, which is obviously an extremely important aspect of what you’re going to offer and how you’re going to differentiate from the existing surveillance-capitalist system we have now, but you identified several, over a dozen, things that people hate about current social media. Walk us through some of the market research that you’ve done and some of the things that you’re specifically trying to address where a lot of the current systems fall short.

SD: I mean, God, the problems are absolutely endless. The complaints and gripes are widespread and easy to come across. I think the gaslighting is a big one. Not knowing if actions you take actually persist in the network. I talked in one of my very first presentations about how a friend of mine Kim Dotcom, who I’ve worked with for years, had a pinned tweet on his timeline which I had been retweeting and liking literally every single year for five years and yet every time I went back to the tweet it was un-retweeted and unliked. So just having the blockchain proof-of-action… I’ve liked something, there’s now an indelibly timestamped blockchain record to prove that I have liked it and so I now have, conversely, the ability to prove if the platform is manipulating my action because I have this permanent, public record. So that’s the biggest use case for the blockchain from our perspective, is that transparency about user action. But on top of that, the arbitrary banning of accounts was a major for us. An absolute major. Because people put years of their time into building these networks, these communities, these micro-communities. The arbitrary nature of the suspensions and bannings that have been going on… is such that often it happens without almost any warning. There is virtually no due process. There’s no ability to meaningfully defend yourself. You get these stock standard robot emails that quite often have no relation to events that have actually occurred. There’s no one to really complain to and often no way to get your account back. And there’s also a power imbalance. Multiple times in the past I was arbitrarily suspended. But because I was a journalist and I had friends with big platforms, I was able to complain to them. They made a big stink on Twitter. It got hundreds of retweets. My account got unsuspended. But Joe Bloggs down the road doesn’t have an s-show in hell of having that same pull to get his account back. I know of one really sad case where a woman actually had all of her photos of her son - her only son - since he was a baby, stored on a social media account, never thinking that that could be taken from her, lost her account over some nonsense reason and to this day has not been able to recover any of her photos of her child’s life. And that’s exactly the type of thing that I just think is so horrific - and that’s why I say, real world harms. They love to talk about real world harms on social media. Oh, misinformation is a real world harm or such and such. These platforms are engaging in real world harms against users every single day and so it’s really important to us to reverse some of that. And then you look at the more nefarious platform actions like shadowbanning. Which is basically large-scale gaslighting. You think you’re having a conversation and you’re not having it. And Julian Assange actually talked about this. He predicted this. He said in 2016 that Twitter will become a filterverse of one. Where the information coming in to you, or that you have the ability to access will be so manipulated and the ability for you to get information out will be so manipulated - so it’s a two-way control flow; they control what you can see and access, and they control who can see and access what you put out - he said it will be so controlled that we would live in a filterverse of one. I don’t want to live in a filterverse! I don’t want to. I want to know that I’m able to communicate with people freely as is a universal human right.

CP: That term has been thrown around a lot. Let’s understand it. What does it mean to be shadowbanned?

SD: So, as we know from the Twitter Files, this has absolutely been going on. It was once upon a time called a conspiracy theory but it’s actually not. Also, if you go back in time a little bit, Twitter security personnel openly discussed the fact that they may choose to manipulate site statistics in order to give the appearance - actually manipulate metrics - to give the appearance of reach where none existed. So, this is where you send a message out and it says 50 retweets and maybe there actually wasn’t 50 retweets, maybe there was 2. And it says that there is 2,000 impressions, or 20,000 impressions on your tweet but actually maybe there was 20 because they didn’t let anyone see it. Now if you can’t trust in the base statistics provided to you by the platform, that is full-blown gaslighting. Full-blown. It is an abuse tactic, it is a manipulation and control tactic. It just takes it back to why I keep talking about blockchain proof-of-action. I don’t want my users to have to trust what I say as to what they’ve done on the network or who they’ve talked to or who’s seen it. I want them to be able to have an independent method of verification and proof so that they can have total trust in the integrity of the platform. And using technology we can provide users with that. There shouldn’t be an overlord deciding what suits them to be seen and engaged with or not.

“I don’t want to live in a filterverse! I don’t want to. I want to know that I’m able to communicate with people freely as is a universal human right.” Suzie Dawson, Panquake Founder

CP: We’ve talked a little bit about bots. One of the terms that is thrown around when we talk about bots is this coordinated inauthentic behavior or automated influence campaigns in general. How do we recognize bots for what they are and how do we find technological solutions that prevent the creation of bots that still respect user privacy. Because one of the responses is KYC - Know Your Customer - like, you can only sign up if we know everything about you. And there might be reasons why you want a pseudonymous account. So how do you handle the issue of creating bots and recognizing automated behavior.

SD: So this is back to the real world harm argument again. I mean - what is more concerning to you? Is it more concerning that you might see some content that is circulated by a bot or is it more concerning to you that your passport or your social security number or some biometric data gets leaked online because these companies are all ingesting massive amounts of what we call “Personally Identifiable Information” because… bots? So, I personally don’t want to ingest Personally Identifiable Information of my users, I want to avoid ingesting that, so that that way I know that there will never be a leak of a Panquake database that contains your social security number or your credit card number in it because I’ve architecturally ensured that that cannot happen - we’re able to engineer deterrents on our platform to make it harder for bots to operate without needing to compromise our user privacy and security. Such as the commercialization model itself. Why is a bot going to pay $5 a month for a fake account on Panquake? They’re not going to want to do that. If you want to create a couple thousand fakes accounts a day that’s going to start costing you a lot of money and there are very few entities that are going to be able to pay that kind of money. And even if they can, based on our model, you would have to actively seek out the content of that bot or go and follow the bot account in order to even see their content. And our gamification and reward models and our new, cool features that we have, have all been engineered specifically in a way which bots could not ever benefit from, because it limits the enhanced amplification to the followers of the account. So a bot could farm up abilities on Panquake to get a big reach - only to the people who have chosen to follow that account. So what you’ll end up with is bots who can only talk to bots and bots who can only circulate content amongst bots and as long as you’re not seeking out and engaging with and following those bots, then you’re not going to be impacted by it. And we can do all of that without asking you to stick your passport in our application! I think it’s about just coming up with smart solutions. This is what we do as technologists. We innovate. We come up with solutions. We don’t just come up with some catchphrase and then hand over our entire lives because of it.

“I don’t want my users to have to trust what I say as to what they’ve done on the network or who they’ve talked to or who’s seen it. I want them to be able to have an independent method of verification and proof so that they can have total trust in the integrity of the platform. And using technology we can provide users with that. There shouldn’t be an overlord deciding what suits them to be seen and engaged with or not.” Suzie Dawson, Panquake Founder

CP: So what about the, ok, so in some cases there are going to be brands, for example, that want to be, they want to be verified. They want the blue check mark, or whatever. Do you have a tiny notion of that what so ever? If Nestle or Coke, or whoever, say some brand name wants to be, like have a verified account? Is there a notion of that on Panquake?

SD: We have something we call self-verification. And self-verification allows any user on the platform to become verified. But we don’t decide who gets to be verified or not. Instead, they just follow a simple process to verify themselves. And again, this is about coming up with smart, innovative solutions that other people haven’t thought about to solve a problem. It’s a problem to me that Twitter wants a copy of my passport and to know my date of birth to verify me. I don’t believe that’s necessary. So how do we handle it? We handle it by allowing you to make a post, or to add the link to a post on any other of your established social media accounts that verify to people that you are, in fact, who you say you are on Panquake. For example, if I have a Facebook account and I’ve got a bunch of followers, which I did before I stopped using Facebook, I could go to Facebook and I can say: Hey, I’m @Suzi3D on Panquake, here’s the link to my timeline - go follow me. Then I take the link to that Facebook post and I upload it into myPanquake bio, and now I have a self-verification tick. Users mouse over that tick on my Panquake profile, that shows them the URL to my Facebook.com post from the Suzie Dawson Facebook page, and now people can go out to that link, check it out & verify for themselves that I am, in fact, who I say I am. So you could put a post on your official website, you could put a post on your Twitter, on any other social platform saying: on Panquake, I am this handle. Take the link to that post, stick it in Panquake - voila! You’ve now voluntarily connected yourself to your actual ID. But we don’t enforce that either. If people don’t want to, I mean, people have jobs that, you know, or for different reasons in their life that they don’t want to connect those things, so we’re not forcing it either. If you don’t want to verify yourself, don’t verify yourself. If you want to, go ahead and do it. And we trust in people’s ability to do their own research, look at the link. Is it a legit link? Is it a legit profile? Then they can go, yep, that actually is that person.

“I personally don’t want to ingest Personally Identifiable Information of my users, I want to avoid ingesting that, so that that way I know that there will never be a leak of a Panquake database that contains your social security number or your credit card number in it because I’ve architecturally ensured that that cannot happen.” Suzie Dawson, Panquake Founder

CP: So if I own a domain name, for example, could some, the way some people do verification with, I own a certain website, is you’d set up, like, a DNS record or something. So are there ways for me to, like for Coke, if I own Coke.com, is there a way for Coke to put a special something in a DNS record, or some special, they may not have a blog for example, is there a way for me to say I own this website, and that is my verification? Is there a way to kinda do it that way as well?

SD: So impersonation is abuse, and we are moderating on Panquake for certain types of abusive actions, and for content which is completely, just, beyond the pale such as, like, you know, child abuse images, etc. That stuff’s gonna be gone in a heartbeat. So it’s not that we’re anti-moderation as a whole, or that we won’t take action for abusive conduct. We absolutely will. But what we won’t do is censor people, or attempt to control people, and that’s the difference. So the other thing too is, I don’t want corp.. I’m happy to have corporations on Panquake, but they’ll be there on the same terms as everybody else. I don’t believe that corporations have a greater right to speech than individual human beings. And I don’t believe they should be pandered to. And I don’t believe that our system should be engineered for their benefit. I believe that it has to be a level playing field across all users, whether they are Joe Bloggs down the road, or whether they are Shell Oil, they need to be subject to the same rules and conditions. And to have the same opportunities as well. So if a corporation can attract more followers, more power to them. If they can have a bigger voice because they earned that bigger voice, ok, but my platform is not going to lend itself to facilitating them having a bigger voice than anybody else on the platform. Does that make sense?

“I’m happy to have corporations on Panquake, but they’ll be there on the same terms as everybody else. I don’t believe that corporations have a greater right to speech than individual human beings. And I don’t believe they should be pandered to. And I don’t believe that our system should be engineered for their benefit." Suzie Dawson, Panquake Founder

CP: Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of this is fighting the mindset that we, just, that it’s been beaten into our brains for, for so long on social media, and trying to get back to what, you know, these things were supposed to be in the first place. So yeah, some of this is reconditioning as consumers, you know, how we think about these platforms and what, you know, they’ve gone off the rails, and so we, you know, we have to dial back what we think of, how we should be thinking about these, so some of this is going to be a paradigm shift. A good one, a good one, that needs to happen.

SD: You’re right that it’s a paradigm shift backwards because, you know, I remember the days when people rented some bandwidth from their ISP and made their own homepage. And there weren’t commercial websites. Coke didn’t have a website. Chevron didn’t have a website, but Joe Bloggs down the road had a little website, he had a little web page that he could give the links to his friends, and his friends could come and check out and see what he’d voluntarily posted there. And in those days, generally speaking, we administrated our own data. We were our own Sysadmins. We were in control of our own data, and I believe that that’s how things should be. And that’s why when you use Panquake, we don’t take your account data. We don’t ingest that data. Instead what we do is we store it in an encrypted data store on your own device. And then you get a back up recovery key to that, in case your phone ends up in the ocean, or whatever, you can restore a lot of content from the blockchain, and you can restore your content history, etc., your interactions history, your followers, everything else. But we are not your Sysadmin, you are your Sysadmin, and you own your data. We don’t own your data. And it’s really, it is that mindset, it’s the mind, it’s the pre-commercialization of the internet mindset. And I do believe that we need to get back there again because, frankly, that was a better place.

CP: Absolutely. Alright, so you mentioned moderation, and this has been a huge, huge political football recently in the United States for sure. There’s a lot of effort right now about repealing, or maybe revising this thing called section 230, which was something that came out of, I think, the Communications Decency Act in somewhere about the 90’s, it’s been a long time ago. And we’ve talked about it a little bit before, but it basically, but maybe I’ll let you describe it, but it, it’s about the responsibilities of platform providers that they have for the content that appears on their platform. So I’m very interested to hear, given your obvious stance on this sort of thing, what role should platforms play in moderation? And how do we promote open communication, without enabling hate speech and misinformation? How do you tackle that really thorny issue?

SD: So in the sense of 230 it’s about whether the platform itself is the publisher or not of the content, effectively the publisher of the content, and then what rights and responsibilities they have therein. Personally, I don’t believe that platforms should facilitate, or knowingly facilitate crime. So I’m not OK with being party to crime. And therefore, you’re not invited to come to Panquake and commit crimes. That’s just a baseline. However, I also am not the police force, and I’m not your parents either. So while I will not actively facilitate your crimes, I’m also not going to impose my personal opinions, political standpoints, moral/ethical bounds upon you. But I’m not gonna let you come to my platform and commit crimes. So that’s basically how I look at it. In terms of moderation protocols, it’s really important to me that we don’t have, like, single arbiters of the right or wrong. We have put a lot of thought into and a lot of innovation, actually, into how we are going to handle moderation. I don’t want to talk too much about that right now because our moderation plans are not something that any other platform has done to date. We have got some ways that we are going to keep it really fair and balanced. Transparent is the key word for everybody, and also from an international view, because this isn’t just about the English speaking world. It’s not just about the laws and regulations in the United States. It’s not just about GDPR, or the EU. There are actually myriad factors, and cultural factors, and, you know, geopolitical factors, at play, and so we’ve been putting a lot of work into how to create a framework that does right by users, no matter where they’re located, and no matter what legal frameworks they’re forced to operate within. Obviously, we have a lot of anti-censorship, pro-privacy technologists on our team who’ve done a lot of work around helping to enable free speech around the planet. And there are also those types of minds in the legal profession and elsewhere as well, which, in various ways will be brought to bear and I’ll leave it at that. But I can tell you that our moderation policies will be publicly available, and that there will be extensive consultation with the user base because ultimately, the users have to decide what kind of platform they want to be a part of, rather than our system imposing that.

“Ultimately, if you innovate new functionality and you present it in a way which is favorable to users, you’re going to succeed regardless of how much so-called competition is out there. So I think innovation is key.” Suzie Dawson, Panquake Founder

CP: Well, and you mentioned that, that you want this to be played out fairly across the planet, and I don’t think a lot of people, certainly a lot of people in the U.S., are aware that whatever you think of the moderation policies of companies like Facebook and Twitter now, they don’t do a lot of moderation outside the U.S. If you go to some of the African Nations and some other areas of the country, or, other areas of the planet, there’s little to no moderation in those areas, which really, if you think it’s a wild, wild west here, it’s much worse elsewhere. So it’s really interesting that you’re making the point. And I want to call attention to that, because having it be the same everywhere is different than what we have now.

SD: Yep. There is a whole big world out there, and, you know, sometimes lack of moderation has also been weaponized by our governments with agendas in certain areas of the world. Sometimes they have deliberately pushed things in one way or another to effect outcomes via social media, um, using, I hate to say it, information warfare strategy. So. very aware of the way in which they play both ends of the field to their benefit. They will employ moderation to their benefit, and scream that it’s necessary. They’ll also employ lack of moderation to their benefit, too, when it suits them for some political end. I’m completely, ethically opposed to that type of manipulation, across the board.

CP: So another hot button issue, uh, certainly in the United States right now, is Tik Tok. For whatever reason, our federal government and several state governments recently have, well, I won’t say for whatever reason; they have what they think are reasons, but, it’s come up recently that they are trying to basically ban this. And they’ve started by doing what they can, which is to ban it from federal and state employees’ devices, uh, but there’s a lot of effort right now behind banning them outright. Just, you know, taking them off the Apple and Google Play stores, for example, making it unavailable. So is TikTok really fundamentally different than, you know, Facebook and Twitter and some of these other U.S. based companies? Do they present any more of a threat than, than those companies? What’s your take on that?

SD: Well I think it was different in that it achieved a large scale audience that the U.S. government was not confident it could control. So that’s the point of difference. And they tend to be very slow in legislation, so their enforcement activities are hindered by the lack of precedent. It really comes down to innovation is a threat, right? When you innovate, you move fast, and it takes a long time for the status quo to catch up, and work out what to do about you. And I think that’s exactly what the case is with TikTok. Is TikTok as fundamentally dangerous as the powers that be purport? I actually don’t think so. I don’t see how it’s any more or less abusive than anything that was offered up by Big Tech already. I think you just see a bit of huffing and puffing over the fact that, it coming from a different territory and different jurisdiction, that they didn’t feel that it was in their own camp, and that that itself made it threatening. I don’t see it as being dramatically different for users. At the end, it’s still algorithmically driven. It’s exactly the same type of content manipulation as you see anywhere else, so I see it all as much of a muchness, personally.

CP: Certainly I can think of from a data collection perspective, from an algorithmic feed perspective, they all seem to be kinda of, very similar. In fact, TikTok has run circles around them in a lot of cases. Their algorithms have been very, very effective. But the one thing that keeps coming up that does give me some pause is China certainly is a more repressive regime. And some people worry that there is a direct connection between ByteDance, the owner of TikTok and the government in China. Meaning that, perhaps, despite the social media aspects, maybe there is a data collection thing going on. Maybe the harvesting is not so much for engagement, but might also be used for blackmail, or for national security reasons. Does that land with you at all as a potential difference with them, or not?

SD: What I see is people who engage in abusive behaviors complaining that other people are engaging in abusive behaviors. I’m sorry, but that’s how I see it. I mean, we know from the Snowden releases that the NSA is spying on every single U.S. Citizen, and then storing that in a permanent record in Utah for all time so that 30 years from now, they can come back and tell you what you did at 9am on a Tuesday when you were 5 years old. They’re spying on your children. On your grandparents. On everybody else, and then, I mean, spying is not a passive endeavor. They don’t just collect information because it’s a hobby. They collect information because it can be utilized in a variety of different ways, and the outcomes of those ways are to their benefit and not to your benefit. So the question then becomes, when you have abusive governments who are spying on every citizen, if we’re going to draw differentiations between them, what is the differentiation? Whether they’re gonna kill you, or whether they’re gonna find some other way to harm you, whether they’re gonna jail you? I mean, the U.S. is not without political dissidents. It’s not without people who have rotted in a jail cell for 30 years, or who have disappeared. If you’re a streamer from Ferguson, you might have been burned to death in a car by now, from a police department that will never be held accountable. And like, I’m sorry to put it so blatantly, but if you’re Julian Assange, sitting in a cell, having had the CIA devise ways to kill you, having been tortured for years because you’re a publisher and a journalist, then how are you feeling about U.S. government vs. Chinese government right now? What it seems to me, is that in every country in the world, there are powerful people who are determined to stay in power. And they use extremely immoral means, including via advanced technology, to maintain their grip on power and make more money. And I don’t see that as being, necessarily, a cultural issue. What scale they manage to do it on, because of the respective size of their population, or what particular methods they employ to do it, do not seem to me as much of an issue as the fact that all of them are doing it in the first place. And therefore, rather than pick shades of criminal, or rank them from one to ten in nefariousness, I would rather find new ways to counter the larger problems, which are the violation of the human rights of citizens all around the world, regardless of what country they’re from, by big technology companies that are inflicting these abuses upon their populations and international populations. I’m sure it may come across as, like, too principled of a line, but that’s really what I see it. Am I going to prefer an American oppressor to a Chinese oppressor? No. I’m going to feel oppressed.

CP: Well and this, and a lot of this stems from your background as an activist and as a journalist I’m sure. So let’s get back to a couple more topical aspects of this, because I wanna, these are some other topics I’ve been wanting to explain to my audience. And one of them is the Fediverse. When Twitter started imploding, you know, Mastodon popped up. Of course it’s been there for a while, but it became like, this is the one everyone was going to, to the point where Twitter was actually, for a while, banning people that were even mentioning that they have a Mastodon account as well. They’ve since stopped doing that. But nevertheless, it was obviously Twitter, Elon Musk in particular, apparently, thought it was a threat. But Mastodon is part of this thing called the Fediverse. And so I want to talk a little bit about what that is because I know that that is something, perhaps, similar to what you’re talking about. What is the Fediverse? What does it mean to be part of the Fediverse? How is it better than a centralized platform? And maybe what are the downsides? How is it, maybe, are there any, when you’re talking about a decentralized system like this, are there downsides to that?

SD: So whenever you have points of centralized control, you have large numbers of users, it invariably turns against the interest of those users. When you have decentralized points of control, then you have different sets of rules and different sets of administrators, and different flavors of community that you can join and be a part of. The Fediverse connects those different communities, and allows them to talk to each other. At a systems level, messages can be sent between different applications that can be read and understood and utilized by those applications. So everybody’s kinda sharing with each other across these different communities, rather than being stuck within the rigid walls of one system that, for reasons of wanting to monopolize their user base, doesn’t allow communication between systems, or effective communication between systems. Obviously, we believe in decentralization. We think it’s healthy for humanity and for communities. And we, similarly, want our application to be able to share messages and communicate with a whole host of other systems as well. Therefore, we’re using FOSS standards for messaging, standard messaging protocols, that allow other applications to ingest messages and communications from Panquake, and to share those within their applications. And vice versa, us to be able to pull content into. So again, it’s a philisophical thing. It’s about the distribution of power, instead of the concentration of power. It’s walking our talk, bottom line.

CP: So I wanna dig into that a little bit more, because I want people to understand how this functions because it’s so alien to, I think, what most people think about today. Because it’s, it’s not the norm when you think about most current popular social media. So let’s take Twitter and Mastodon. So Twitter is centralized. There’s one company that runs Twitter. It’s a private company, they can do whatever they want. They can ban people if they want, they’re a private company. A lot of people will talk about free speech, or whatever, and of course in the United States, free speech is, the First Amendment is about the government not preventing you from doing, or saying what you want, not a private company. But nevertheless, because it’s a private company they can, at their whim, suppress speech, suppress users, whatever they want. Mastodon, as one part of the Fediverse, and there are other applictions that are part of the Fediverse beyond just Mastodon. Mastodon is this decentralized thing where different groups, or people, individual people if you want - I could, you could - set up a Mastodon instance that will talk with other Mastodon instances, or not. And as the owner of a particular instance, I can say, yeah, I want to talk to all these instances except that one. I don’t like that one. Right? So at that level, help us understand a little bit more, functionally, how this works. If I sign up for Mastodon, who am I really signing up with? Where does my account live and how does that account be visible to any other Mastodon instance? Or Panquake, if you want to use Panquake?

SD: Panquake and Mastodon are not directly comparable, except they are interoperable, if that makes sense. So we’re not using a Mastodon model per se. But to answer your direct question about Mastodon, you’ve got two options. You can either join someone else’s Mastodon server, in which case ultimately, yeah, they’ve got your data. And yeah, you have to live by their rules. Or you can opt to self host. And self hosting costs money. So you’re now investing in creating a facility for other people to be able to join your community, which you are now administrating, and you are responsible for the data and traffic of that community. So that’s why I say Panquake is not strictly the same in that sense. But we can communicate with Mastodon users, and Mastodon users can communicate with us. We’re able to interoperate in that way without being subject to the Mastodon model, per se. Ultimately, the Fediverse is the sum of all parts. That’s how I look it. So the more different types of applications that facilitate interoperability with the Fediverse, the greater you’re strengthening the combined user base of the Fediverse. And I think that the Fediverse is ethically sound. That’s how I would put it. And so it’s absolutely something that we want to help grow. And the Fediverse is not just Mastodon. There are dozens of decentralized applications in the social media space now, probably more than dozens, and they’re growing by the minute. And I consider that to be healthy as well. Panquake doesn’t see other projects as competition. Ultimately, if you innovate new functionality and you present it in a way which is favorable to users, you’re going to succeed regardless of how much so-called competition is out there. So I think innovation is key. But I hope, I dream, of there being more projects. I want there to be more projects because the more projects there are, the more people working on these types of issues, the greater chance of the collective success, and the greater chance of us not being able to be crushed under the boot of Empire, so to speak, you know. The greater chance we have of surviving in a sustainable way. So I don’t see other people doing this as a threat, I see it as hope.

“We believe in decentralization. We think it’s healthy for humanity and for communities. And we, similarly, want our application to be able to share messages and communicate with a whole host of other systems as well. Therefore, we’re using FOSS standards for messaging, standard messaging protocols, that allow other applications to ingest messages and communications from Panquake, and to share those within their applications.” Suzie Dawson, Panquake Founder

CP: Well, the reason it’s called the Fediverse is because these services are federated. They’ve come up with agreed-upon standards for communication between each other, and agreed-upon standards for formatting, so that they can be compatible without necessarily being subject to each other in terms of, they can do their own thing. So one of the other key aspects to this is the data portability. And this is one of the things I think is actually really cool about Mastodon. If I join one instance of Mastodon, I’m not tied to that instance. At any point, the system is built so that I can go to a different instance of Mastodon. They will automatically forward all my followers, that, you know, all my data will come with me, and I can just go to a different instance if I find another one that I like better. So how crucial is that? Because that seems to be, that’s another thing that’s, there’s such lock-in. The reason that there aren’t competitors to Facebook and Twitter is because everyone’s already there. They’ve already got this networking effect, where, all my friends are already here, if I go somewhere else I’ve gotta bring them with me. So how important is data portability and standards to the future of social media? And then short of some sort of a legal mandate, are we ever going to get our data out of Twitter or Facebook? Will we ever be able to force them to make our data portable, so that we can pick our ball up and go somewhere else?

SD: Well if you’ve ever downloaded a Twitter archive, and had a look at the XML format, you won’t consider it to be very portable at all. Those headers are a nightmare from hell, however, I would say, portablity is a buzzword. And it’s a buzzword that’s been buzzing around since the late 90’s, particularly in the telecommunications industry. And you’ll see, actually, a huge corporate agenda around portablility. And also a government agenda around portability, because what they’re wanting you to port, is actually your identity. Not just your pseudonymous identity, not just your little community that you’ve built for yourself on the internet, but actually tying you back to that real world ID. Tying you back to biometrics. Tying you back to all of those horrible pieces of profile data that we talked about not wanting to capture. So when I hear portablility, I think, OK, is this Microsoft’s DDID, or whatever? Is this their so-called decentralized digital identification, which is supposed to allow portability cross-platform, but when you dig through their technical documentation you discover, lo and behold, Microsoft is, in fact, in the middle holding all of the keys, and you’re back into the same control structure, except it’s just had the word decentralized slapped on it. And it’s being sold to you. It’s being sold, I mean, they even slap the words open source on it these days as well. It’s amazing how you can be decentralized and open source, without being decentralized or open source. Especially if the project is funded by Microsoft. So I always scratch to see what’s beneath the cover. There’s another major DDID project out now, which is, well not out now but, they’ve been publishing their first documentation. I’m going to be very careful here to not name the extremely big names behind this supposed open source DDID initiative. However, I can tell you that this geeky little social media company owner went and actually read through all that technical documentation, including the privacy and security documentation. And I did not have to dig very far at all to discover that actually what they do is push all of their privacy and security issues out to external projects and say, oh go look at their documentation. And then you go and look at their documentation and you discover that they’re pointing you somewhere else. And then you go somewhere else, and you discover that, oh shit, they actually haven’t solved any of these problems whatsoever, that they have been marketing to everybody far and wide that they’re going to be able to solve. And inevitably, it leads back to centralization and proprietary software on the decentralized, open source project. So I mean, for me, Panquake is about being what we actually say we are. Showing the goods, and not pointing at someone else and saying go check them out. Us using standards which allow us to interoperate does not mean that we are foregoing, in any way, privacy or security. And so, yeah, again, it’s about platform integrity for me. And I do not want to provide portability of identities, I want to provide portability of content. And interoperability means I can provide portability of content, but I’m not interested in profiling you and pushing your profile around the internet.

“What I want is for there to be a safe place where a large number of people can communicate knowing that there is platform integrity, and that they will be able to effectively network and reach people in a way in which their data is not being manipulated or captured.” Suzie Dawson, Panquake Founder

CP: Alright, so one last question before we go. So tell me about what’s next for Panquake, and what does your road map look like for the next few year? And then of course the key thing is how and when will we be able to try this out?

SD: So our Year One was about that story I told you, us creating the crowdsourced platform, raising some funds, hiring some devs and starting to build. Our Year Two, we completed our application build. And now we are in the most hardcore part, which is that we’re actually writing our own custom network protocol. So we’re not, actually also our blockchain model is custom as well. We’re using a Proof of Authority, loosely a Proof of Authority model, but everything is completely customized to our platform, our users, our environment. And also our countries where we’re hosting. So we, right now, will complete the network build. We will complete our blockchain performance testing, and then we will move into our Beta release. And at this precise moment in time, as I mentioned earlier, we have hired on service personnel, who are coming in and writing standard operating procedures and setting up processes by which we can support this delivery. Because it’s one thing to have an idea. And it’s one thing to build something. And it’s one thing to deliver something to market. It’s another thing entirely to be able to meaningfully support it, in a way that does right by the users who you attract to the platform. And we’ve seen time and again, companies fail at support. Fail so badly that they’ve almost, there’s almost this hubris where they don’t feel that they even need to support it. And I’m actually really offended by that. I’m offended as a user, and therefore as a platform owner, I won’t allow that kind of nonsense in my organization. So when you need support from Panquake, you get a real person, you don’t get a robot. We don’t have AI customer service. No way. Just like we won’t have AI within our content streams, we refuse to have it within our service operations as well. So those real humans who we’ve been bringing on board, and who we’re training up, and who we’re creating ample resources for. I will only release this product when I'm confident that we can, to the fullest extent, support the users in the way that they deserve.

CP: So what’s the timeline, then? So when can we hope to, obviously the Beta, I think you said, is limited to originally 5,000 people, so that’ll be pretty restricted.

SD: Right.

CP: And when, do you have a rough idea of when you think that might start? And then when, you know, what does it look like, what do you hope to be in the next 3 to 5 years?

SD: Oh, in the next 3 to 5 years we’ll be through our third iteration, into our full public release, and we’ll be pushing and scaling to, you know, grow the market. Like, absolutely, absolutely. I will make it really clear, though, that like, I don’t have delusions of grandeur about this product. I don’t expect us to have a billion users. I don’t even necessarily aspire to having hundreds of millions of users. What I want is for there to be a safe place where a large number of people can communicate knowing that there is platform integrity, and that they will be able to effectively network and reach people in a way in which their data is not being manipulated or captured. I don’t intend to impose that somehow on the entire planet. I don’t intend to necessarily change the entire industry. I don’t think we’re going to put corporations out of business. We’re not going to be sponsoring the Super Bowl. I mean, let’s be real, like, it’s not gonna happen. So I keep my expectations quite humble, and I keep my vision very much fixed on, we release to our 5,000 people, then we release to our 25,000 people, then we open. And our commercialization model, I mean, one of the strengths of it, is that we don’t actually have to have a super large number of users in order to be a very successful and profitable company that is able to do amazing things, because I’m very keen on supporting other small projects in the industry, and being able to help and resource them. And I think that Panquake is absolutely gonna afford us the ability to do that. So I look at the contributions that we can make across the board, rather than just going for the big golden dollars in the sky and trying to be a billionaire and, you know, jet off to Mars or whatever. I’m not really keen on that stuff, unless it’s a one-way trip for them.

CP: Well Suzie, I really look forward to this because I actually, I was really happy about the promise of things like Facebook back in the day when they first came out. And I was really bummed out to see where it went. So I would love a place where I could go and keep track with my family, and keep updated with my friends, and not have to worry about all the crap that comes with a place like Facebook. So I cannot wait for this. I will keep my eye on it and will let my audience know when it’s available. Thank you for coming on and explaining to us and talking to us about the ills of social media today. Thanks, Suzie.

SD: Can I ask you one question?

CP: Oh, sure.

SD: Can we reverse roles? Here’s my one question. You actually just got to see Panquake. To you, it’s not just a concept, it’s something you’ve actually seen. What are your thoughts?

CP: I just signed an NDA too, so I gotta be careful what I say, right? Well, I mean, it’s got some great technological advances that I think are really cool. You’ve already said yourself, or as we talked about it earlier, if everybody likes the cool technological advances you have, they’ll copy them too, and so other people might have it as well. Honestly, the thing I’m most jazzed about, again, is the promise of this being what, you know, social media should’ve been all along. That, to me, means, honestly more to me than some of the technological stuff you showed me. Because as cool as all that stuff is, and I love the fact, and we saw this in the demo, we didn’t talk about it too much today, but it’s very much a positive thing. You’re trying to help support other people, as opposed to go with what’s viral, or you know, virtue signaling and all this other crap. I’m looking forward to not having that and having the stuff that we should’ve had with social media. The technological aspect is just icing on the cake for me. So I’m more looking forward to the social aspects that we should’ve had all along with social media.

SD: Oh that’s awesome feedback. Thank you so much. I love hearing about what other people see in the application, what they get from the application, and how they feel about the application. It means the world to me. So thank you for the feedback.

CP: Great and thanks again for coming on the show, Suzie, that was great.

SD: You’re so welcome, thank you.

[Transcript ends]

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