GUEST BLOG: Talk Liberation – Humans Reject AI, Panquake Goes Viral Again

As AI discontent spreads, people-powered social network Panquake is perfectly positioned to give users what they need – at exactly the right moment.

After a long period of awakening to the dangers of AI, humans have begun organising against it en masse. The fight back is cutting across every sector of society, from young to old, from the academic class to the working class. In the last month alone we have witnessed mass boycotts, protest marches on two continents, the spawning of new anti-AI NGO’s and think tanks as well as multiple major Ivy League research publications excoriating the largely unregulated commercial AI sector. As word spreads about a seemingly endless stream of what has become known as “AI Incidents”, the negative impacts of AI particularly on the young, the vulnerable, the labour force, the environment and the economy become ever more apparent. But worst of all is the information space – polluted beyond recognition, social media has become a sespool of “AI slop”, bots and fake content. Artists and content creators feel robbed, exploited and are up in arms. Nobody trusts what they see or what they read anymore, and humans are forced to dig amidst the ashes of their public communications networks to try to find other real humans to interact with. But there is a ray of sunshine – and it is in an orange to purple gradient. With nearly a million impressions this week alone, Panquake Founder Suzie Dawson has been leading the charge, both on calling AI out for what it really is and what it is doing to us all – but most importantly, in presenting real, concrete solutions that are ready to go to market right now. Panquake, dear humans, is coming.

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:

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.

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