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Hello Wimkin.A lot of people ask where I've been. Why I don't post much anymore. Why I don't engage the way I used to. Why I seem disconnected from the platform I spent years building.I've thought about that question for a long time.The answer is simple.I don't have the same fire anymore.And I think you deserve to know why.In February of 2020, before lockdowns, before vaccine mandates, before election challenges, before January 6, before "free speech" became a business model, I started building Wimkin.Six months later, in September 2020, we launched.I didn't have venture capital.I didn't have billionaire investors.I didn't have a giant engineering team.I didn't have a political organization funding me.I had approximately $20,000, a computer, and a belief that Americans deserved a place where they could speak freely.That's it.What followed became the hardest challenge of my life.Since February 2020, I've invested approximately 30,000 hours into Wimkin.Thirty thousand hours.Think about what that means.That's six years of nights. Six years of weekends. Six years of holidays. Six years of missed birthdays. Six years of missed family gatherings.Six years of looking at a computer screen while the people I loved were living their lives.Six years of NOT being around my mother before she passed after in my opinion, vaccinations took her life. Those years are gone.I don't get them back.And I willingly gave them because I believed this platform mattered.Back then, free speech wasn't a slogan.It wasn't a hashtag.It wasn't something faketriot influencers monetized.It wasn't honeypot and do nothing Bongino at Parler "fighting big tech tyranny" only to be back in app stores a week after being deplatformed. People were being censored over Covid.People were being censored over lockdowns.People were being censored over vaccine mandates.People were being censored over election integrity.Millions of Americans were looking for somewhere they could speak freely.That was the environment Wimkin was born into.And for a brief moment, it worked. Wimkin exploded. We became one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in America.We reached hundreds of thousands of users.We climbed the app store rankings.We trended #1 worldwide.We reached the top of all categories.We were growing faster than I, and even our enemies ever imagined.Then January 6, 2021 "happened."And everything changed.The platform became associated with January 6.Government records had already identified Wimkin before January 6 and had planned to have us deplatformed on January 11.Then came the media attacks. Then came the pressure campaigns. Then came the app store actions. Then came the advertising bans.Then came the payment processor bans.Then came years of stigma.The documentation exists.The evidence exists.The timeline exists.If you don't believe me, read the Anti-Weaponization Fund submission and decide for yourself.https://wimkin.com/download/SupplementalAnti-Weaponization.pdfBut here's what most people don't understand.January 2021 wasn't the end of the fight.It was the beginning of it.Because unlike many of the companies that became famous in the free speech movement, Wimkin never got its normal business environment back.Not in 2021.Not in 2022.Not in 2023.Not in 2024.Not in 2025.Not today.To this day we still deal with the consequences.To this day we still deal with blacklisting and still can't so much as deliver an email including encrypted password resets to big tech addresses. To this day we still deal with obstacles that many other platforms never had to deal with.Most people think getting removed from an app store is the punishment.It isn't.That's just the headline.The punishment comes afterward.The punishment is years of fighting uphill. Years of lost discoverability. Years of lost advertising opportunities. Years of infrastructure challenges.Years of payment processor deplatforming and don't even say make your own and plug it in...This is years of trying to operate with two hands tied behind your back and a finger loose to make one final attempt at survival. Many of you remember when password reset emails stopped arriving.YOU blamed Wimkin.YOU blamed me.What most of YOU never knew is that we eventually had to create WimkinHelp.com and manually help users regain access to their accounts because even email delivery became a battle.Think about that.We literally had to build alternative recovery systems because users couldn't reliably receive account-related emails.YOU saw a password reset problem.I saw another obstacle that had to be overcome just to keep the platform functioning.The same thing happened with streaming.YOU complained about buffering.YOU complained about lag.YOU complained about chat taking too long. YOU complained about interruptions.But did YOU ever stop and ask what streaming actually costs and how you could help?Do YOU know what it costs to ingest video?Transcode video?Store video?Archive video?Deliver video to thousands of viewers?Every stream costs money. Every upload costs money. Every image costs money. Every message costs money. Every notification costs money.Everything costs money.At our peak, Wimkin's operating expenses exceeded $40,000 every single month.Every month.Servers.Streaming.Storage.Bandwidth.Development.Security.Infrastructure.Everything.Over nearly six years, Wimkin raised approximately $375,000 from shareholders.And I am grateful for every single shareholder.Every single one. Every single dollar. But let's put that into perspective.The entire amount invested into Wimkin over six years would not have covered even ten months of operation at our peak expenses.Not ten years.Not five years.Not even one year.Less than ten months.We've been here nearly six years.Think about that.Six years.The math doesn't work.Unless somebody carries the burden.And for six years, that somebody was me.What finally broke me wasn't Apple. It wasn't Google. It wasn't the media.It wasn't the government.At least those people were honest.What broke me was watching almost all of YOU fight me harder than they ever did.YOU fought subscriptions.YOU fought premium features.YOU fought paid streaming.YOU fought paid content.YOU fought virtually every attempt we made to create revenue after many of our other opportunities had already been damaged, restricted, impaired, or destroyed.Then, in the very next breath, YOU asked why we didn't have more developers.YOU asked why we didn't have better streaming.YOU asked why we didn't have bigger influencers.YOU asked why we weren't growing faster.YOU asked why we weren't Facebook.YOU asked why we weren't YouTube.YOU asked why we weren't X.How?With what money?Do you know how many times I heard complaints about a stream buffering?Thousands. Daily. Do you know how many times someone messaged me asking what they could do to help improve it?Almost never.That's the disconnect that finally broke me.Not the complaints.The disconnect.The same people who said free speech mattered.The same people who said alternatives mattered.The same people who said independent platforms mattered yet they flocked to the richest man in the world's platform he didn't even build and bought with GOVERNMENT MONEY. Those same people who still follow Bongino after Parler got hundreds imprisoned for J6 and Rumble bleeds a hundred million dollars in investor losses every year but doesn't bat an eye. Some of you happily paid more than $200 per year for a blue checkmark on a platform purchased by one of the richest men on Earth who didn't code one single line. A platform he didn't build.A platform he bought.Yet supporting the platform built from scratch by one of your own was somehow asking too much.Think about that.Really think about that.I started Wimkin with approximately $20,000.I spent approximately 30,000 hours building it.I sacrificed years of my life for it.And many of the same people who said they wanted alternatives fought me over the cost of a cup of coffee each month.That's hard to forget. That's why it's being bought. For years I watched people celebrate the heroes of the free speech movement.The investors.The influencers.The personalities.The executives.The people giving speeches about censorship.ALL FAKE PEOPLE. Meanwhile I was sitting in server dashboards at midnight trying to keep Wimkin alive.I wasn't building a personal brand.I wasn't raising hundreds of millions of dollars.I was trying to keep the platform running.I WAS GIVING THE WORLD A SAFE SPACE. And after six years, I realized something painful. Most people don't actually want to build alternatives. They want someone else to build them.Someone else to fund them.Someone else to sacrifice for them.Someone else to carry the burden.For six years, that someone was me.And that's why you don't see me around much anymore. I am beyond tired. Those of you that truly know me and helped, I know you will understand this and know that I have the deepest and utmost love and respect for you all. You will be beyond taken care of through this sale. My gratitude will extend far beyond this platform.Thank you.