Hi! I'm Rick Falkvinge, and during business hours, I'm Head of Privacy at the VPN company Private Internet Access, which ttobmk is the only VPN company to have court records prove we don't keep any logs whatsoever. We love decentralization and privacy.
However, I'm more known for being the founder of the Pirate Party, an international collection of technopunk parties that have won elections to take office in the European Parliament and elsewhere. The Pirate Party in Iceland is currently the largest party in the polls there, leading to very interesting scenarios worldwide after the next election. (It only takes one country out of 196 to create a safe data haven and guarantee freedoms of speech and expression worldwide.)
I've also written a book, Swarmwise, that outlines how we were able to beat the establishment in the elections - their struggle for centralized power - despite having less than one percent of their campaign budget. Basically, it comes down to the tactical and strategic advantage of running an organization on decentralized voluntaryism.
I normally write a lot on the Private Internet Access blog about policy analysis and commentary around privacy and other liberties, but there are thoughts and ideas that don't really fit on a corporate blog - so I figured Steem would be a nice place to try such ideas, given the immediate type of feedback on those ideas. (But because I believe in a truly decentralized information flow and trust no centralized publishing point not physically under my control, I'll also be posting my columns on my own blog at https://falkvinge.net/, but with a short delay after having posted them here on Steem.)
Oh, and if you want to read more about my personal life and so on, there's a Wikipedia page in 14 languages. ;) And I respond to anybody mentioning my name anywhere. A distinct advantage of having a globally unique name.
Looking forward to writing here on Steem! My first post is already out, which observes that both capitalism and communism promise decentralized voluntaryism as their utopia endgames, but in practice, both corrupt to centralized use of force along different paths. Thus, the real question about power was not about capitalism vs communism, but about centralization and use of force on one hand, vs decentralization and resilience to use of force on the other.
Cheers to the whole community!
Welcome!!! We have so much to learn from you. I have recommended your book Swarmwise for the whole team. I think this is a great fit for Steemit.
Thank you, James, and I'm so happy to hear that you find the experiences I share in Swarmwise useful!
By the way, if you have any thoughts about how the message or methods in Swarmwise could be better articulated, or if you find a particular passage lacking, I'd love to be able to improve it.
lol yea, the message of swarmise can be at best articulated if we make it true here in steemit :)
Funny, just thought some days ago about posting how we could use the structures you outlined in Swarmise to make a decentralized verification platform, so that we can help new verified steemers through giving them a kind of universal income in steem.
He is a real hero, that make torrents possible to us. I realy like does PirateBay guys.
Big vote for does :)
Can you prove you are you by making a tweet. We get a lot of impostors on here.
Thank you for asking! Yes, of course.
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
Thanks, twitterbot. Good boy.
Twitterbot I followed you will give you 1 upv/day until you are good rep.
You keep at it Twitter bot! I know you can recover!
Great to have you on steemit @falkvinge Will be following your posts.
Thank you!
Thanks and welcome. I look forward to learning more about you and your views.
So it's legit @pheonike Looks like it is? thanks
Yes, it's him. Mr. Falkvinge, welcome to Steemit!
Well that was quite fast lol, I think ill take a break from posting on steemit with all the big names joining up, we hardly get any attention here :P Welcome!
Wow, so cool that you join this project.
I have allways use Piratebay when i was child.
Hope you guys have a good time, after all this bac court etc.
Keep upp the good work, you are my hero :)
Big vote for you (y)
I share this threat on FB
Send me your bitcoins if you have a few spare
Quick question: Is the eyepatch for pirate effect, or did you actually injure your eye (or does answering this break your rule about privacy, in which case no answer needed)?
In any case I'm not so sure electronic voting machines that can easily be hacked/controlled from behind the scenes are beatable, or that the actual minority who bother showing up to vote due to apathy/hedonistic preoccupations -- which are touted as a "majority" or plurality of registered voters by exaggerated media bias -- is such an easy target to take down.
Or am I just tilting at windmills here? In any case your efforts are appreciated, because the modern idol of government power is about to explode out of control around the world. All they need is a "good" major crises or two, real or engineered to order.
omg you are real man
Welcome to steem!!
yeah it's real @falkvinge welcome to steemit
@pheonike It's a genius idea to cash in steem $$$ :)
It't real if he live stream video in facetime, ha ha ha...
Oh gosh, I'm starting to like #introduceyourself! Pirates on board!
New whale is born :) Yay!
Rick Valkvinge. One of the true early pioneers in the crypto space. Glad you are here. Welcome!
in 1 hour you get 13,735$ you're a real pirate
Hi Rick, my name is Ricardo, welcome to Steemit!
I must be one of the few people here who didn't know about you or your work. @jamesc told me today about you and your book Swarmwise.
I also can see from your introduction that you are looking to do great things and do lots of good for the world. You will find Steemit may even be a good fundraising source for your campaigns.
I am also passionate about doing good and changing the world, before Steemit.com I had no tools and no power, today I stand with an entire community and an initiative called @steemdrive which crowdfunds Steemit billboards globally via the Steem blockchain and the votes of our supporters, The first ever are already being flighted in my home city, Durban, South Africa after having raised a $26 000 pre-payout value on our first campaign introduction post.
The billboards are not just a publicity stunt, they are strategic; when the community eventually controls worldwide media, we can start sending messages of change and rallying the masses to make a real difference.
You should consider partnering with us on a billboard campaign to enhance your own, a caption like "The Pirate Party blogs on Steemit!" is an idea.
Let's change the world!
Sincerely,
Ricardo Goncalves
@steemdrive
Hi Ricardo, and thank you for the cordial welcome!
I do sense that there's a lot of passion for changing the world for the better here, I'm really feeling right at home.
Could you elaborate on what "making a billboard" means in the Steemit context?
Cheers,
Rick
Hi Rick, thanks you for your kind reply.
To best explain the @steemdrive billboard campaign; you may like to visit our blog at https://www.steemit.com/@steemdrive , the campaign is only two weeks old but we have already flighted advertising billboards in South Africa and have 20 volunteers world-wide collaborating in a private chat channel planning more campaigns world wide.
If you would like to join as liaison for your area or region of influence, it would be our honour to have you. Liaisons basically help us obtain quotes from billboard advertising agencies in their country and write up content to motivate the community to vote to raise funds for placement thereof. We then post the campaign under @steemdrive and the entire team collaborates to promote the campaign and garner as many votes as possible. As liaison you are able to suggest co-brand topics alongside the Steemit brand, for example you could elect to do a billboard with the theme of freedom and liberty along with the Steemit branding referring back to a particular Steemit tag if need be, or use it to co-promote the Pirate Party if you like.
As compensation for their efforts, the liaisons receive 20% of the SBD raised in their particular campaign, which can either go to themselves or towards whatever cause they wish. The rest of the funds go towards paying for and maximizing the billboard flight time.
If you would like to be involved in this great cause, you are welcome to pm me in steemit.chat , my name there is thecryptodrive or I have also sent you a Linkedin invite if that is easier.
Sincerly,
Ricardo Goncalves
@steemdrive
Hi Rick, great to see you here on Steemit, welcome aboard!
Thomas Gramstad
Nice! So glad to see you here, Mr. Falkvinge. I was talking about you on Steemit just last week:
What a coincidence. :) I've been planning to start writing here for some time, I just needed to get back to my big battlestation after traveling a lot this summer.
Welcome. I'm impressed- 14 different languages on wikipedia, I don't even have 1!
Wow.
Steemit is gathering some interesting people together.
Well I'm definitely bullish on Steem now...
I loved your article here:
http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/
All in in 2011 going into debt too!
Thank you, and I'm happy that my reasoning and analysis at the time made you a good bit of money today!
Are you going to go all in with steem ?
I'm a proud customer of Private Internet Access. Didn't know you had court documents to prove you don't store logs. Awesome! Take all of my upvotes.
Welcome to Steemit, Rick! I'm so excited to see you joining all of us here. Since this is a new platform, and every username is basically available, the community likes to make sure new users are who they claim they are. If you share this with your twitter account, then we will know we are upvoting the real Rick Falkvinge.
Thank you for asking, just like pheonike did at the same time! I just tweeted.
So glad to see you here! Really, this site is turning from awesome to amazing real fast :)
It's insane. I'm sitting here like 8 hours a day and still can't keep up with how fast its evolving and adopting.
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
Welcome to the community! Thanks for tweeting as well :)
Hello there !! Well this is so exciting to see a true Libertalia believing individual such as yourself tie up along side us here !! We need big guns on this boat, I have read your article, great stuff, the true vein of thing in hand i would say !! I particularly noticed this choice phrase " Basically, it comes down to the tactical and strategic advantage of running an organization on decentralized voluntarism. " which surely fits completely to the Steemit model No ? Very exciting read i must say and you make my day !! ; - ) Maybe just maybe this getting old man of the sea may get to see this world change fundamentally for the better before he weighs his anchor for the last time !! good to have you on board sir !!
Great! We are getting more and more popular and knowledgeable people from different spheres.
Oh wow! I am really looking forward to reading and engaging with you on your posts. I thought it might take longer for someone like yourself to get onto Steemit, but here you are!
Welcome!
Cg
Hey and welcome to Steemit Rick. It's really admirable what the Pirate Parties are doing in Europe and Iceland. I'd like to see the 2-party establishment stranglehold broken in the US too but it's so entrenched it's hard for most people here to imagine it happening. I bet you talk about it in your book but do you think the model you've already applied would work for America?
Hey @falkvinge, welcome to the community! I remember seeing you in TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard. I just remembered I watched an interview you did with London Real a couple of years ago.
It will be interesting to see your ideas expressed here, I think it will be of great value to the platform =)
Thanks! Yeah, I figured this would be a very nice place to discuss some of the more thirty-thousand-feet ideas in depth, as a nice complement to the regular ongoing analysis I do on my day job.
Grateful to have the opportunity to have a VPN that actually keeps its promise and allows users to browse anonymously.
Wanted to wish you a warm welcome and thought this @ned @dan whalebone flag might make you feel at home.
Welcome to Steemit and the steem blockchain. Very glad to have you here.
It is kind of ironic. The other day I bought 4 things using bitcoin for the first time ever. I bought then with bitcoin I acquired because I post on steemit.
I bought an inexpensive game on Steam to see if I could, then I bought two copies of Elder Scrolls Online because they were 50% off. One for me, one for my son.
My fourth purchase with bitcoin was a Years membership to Private Internet Access (PIA) and would you look at that here you are!! Are you following me?
Yours is one voice that I'm very interested in hearing. I feel a little awkward saying "welcome" when it was your post that prompted me to join. I wonder if anyone from the LNP is posting on Steemit.
Welcome Rick!! Here is a quote from the Tigo CTM team in honor of your arrival on Steemit.
Thanks! Yes, I believe I said that as early as 2011. Specifically at one of the first bitcoin conferences in Prague. :)
Welcome @falkvinge!
Even though my knowledge about you or what you do is very limited I am glad to have run into this post and will be able to do some research!
Read this on wikipedia: "He has always been fascinated by birds, and thinks that large raptors symbolize pride, freedom, and vision."
That's pretty cool! Awesome name choice with Falconwing, btw! :D
Would you say the falcon is your favorite bird?:)
Thanks!
I definitely love the fast, agile birds. As a pure coincidence, I used to drive a Suzuki Hayabusa bike, a name which means "peregrine falcon" and is about as fast :)
Which was a humourous dig at Honda, as their fastest bike was the Blackbird, natural prey of the peregrine falcon.
Welcome to Steemit, this place is getting seriously cool.
Oh, you ride a bike?
Yes, and sometimes I even break the speed limit. Don't tell the NZ government ;) Do you have a bike now? I imagine you're very busy.
We are all Steemit pirates getting the booty
Can you give me a couple pointers to starting a political party?
My book Swarmwise takes you through every step of the way required. You can find it free as a PDF here: https://falkvinge.net/books/
Best of luck, and have fun! You'll find that having fun is actually required for success :)
you are celeb ... my master ... ha ha ha :d
Thank you
cool
Slowly but surely, more and more gravitate to Steemit!
I guess the real question is.... Do you invest in Dolph Lundgren coin?
https://steemit.com/beyondbitcoin/@splatterhaus/how-i-became-a-millionaire-investing-in-dolphcoins-and-the-logic-behind-the-dolphcoin-humor
nice to meet you @falkvinge
and welcome to steemit the best community over the Internet 8]
I'm the founder of ReallyAmerican.com and I've developed an email list of 50k Sanders supporters in the past 5 months. I'm interested in leveraging my list to help grow the pirate party in the USA and to use Steemit as part of the fundraising model. I'll be testing out your content with my list. Have you written anything specifically focused towards disaffected Sanders supporters?
Nice to meet you Rick Falkvinge warm welcome in Steemit great community.
@falkvinge I wish I could give you all my Upvotes.
How can you make $300 in 19 minutes?Lol man, you make me go crazy.I will start to take a closer look at Private Internet Access. One day I will make 300 in one month. :D I know you work a lot to be here so I'm not judging you for making money. I respect your work, keep it this way for long time man.Great work.
Actually, it is over 5k in less than hour:)
Pirates, pirates! We need more real pirates. Everywhere!!!
It's so good to see yet another liberty minded person on steemit. This place is wonderful :)
Thank you for taking a stand! Digital rights and privacy rights are extremely important, yet extremely neglected issues that concern citizens around the world. I admire your initiative, and it is a pleasure to have you aboard.
Also, really hoping Pirate Party starts picking up over here in the USA.
Thanks for the shout out! I agree with your concern that liberty seems to be taking a worrying back seat, but then again, I'm doing what I can to make it easy for thousands of other people to do something small for liberty every day. It's not in what one person does at a burnout rate of 120 hours a week - it's in the small things that millions do.
The Pirate Party can totally break through in the US. I've run the numbers, and it's doable in 12 years (three cycles).
would be a great thing to reinvent the principles of Libertalia for the entire World !! Steem On !!!! ; - )
In the US, the lack of proportional representation seems to hurt third parties. It's a difficult nut to crack that way, isn't it?
The key lies in the enormous amount of non-voters. It's not 49% vs 51%, it's more like 21% vs 22% vs 57%. You can totally get to 23%, making you the biggest player in the first-past-the-post.
"It's small things that millions do".
Crypto currency is going to creep up and bite them on the arse. Accessible to all.
Wow simply wow , welcome to the hood pirate , are you ready to set your sail ?
What took you so long?
I've been traveling over the summer. Back at my battlestation now, where I can do a lot more.
Well every good Pirate needs his quiet bay at the time of his choice !! Well the war is ongoing as im sure you know, so glad you had time to recharge your determination for that which is ahead !! Battlestation......... yes im sure it is ; -) Liberty or Death !!
Well, I'm excited for this one. Cheers Rick. :) Thanks for hanging out.
Whoa, major notice by the Steem Whales :) . Congrats on the huge Steemit reward :)
hi
hola que tal amigo alguien de ustedes sabe como funciona este plataforma que no lo entiendo bien que me puedan ayudar
Follow my steemit and I will follow yours. Open to anyone. https://steemit.com/click/@crowe/click-follow-me-on-steemit-and-i-will-follow-you-too-making-money-with-steemit
Welcome in Steemit
Welcome to steemit. Have to take a read of Swarmwise i think:).
Welcome and good to know that you are with the provider Private Internet Access.
Holy crap, welcome to Steemit Rick!
#itshappening