Social Network (5)
Sid lit up.
"Really?"
"Yeah. If we're going to connect reality and the metaverse, we need VR technology. And that will eventually mean BCI."
"That's right."
He looked so pleased he might as well have just been promised a new toy.
Then his expression shifted, and worry crept in.
"But I heard that company might get acquired by Facenote."
"Then we have to buy it before they can snatch it away."
Buying Link Labs would not make money right away.
Unlike HMD products, which were already on the market, BCI was still in the research stage. It would take at least five years before it could be commercialized, and until then they would have to pour money into research without seeing a cent in return. And even then, there was no guarantee it would ever turn a profit.
Only a company as huge as Facenote could afford to make that kind of acquisition. Any other firm would never even dare to try.
But Link Labs would succeed in commercializing BCI technology.
And when that happened, the real metaverse era would begin.
I could not just sit back and let a good company like that end up in Facenote's hands again, the way it had in my first life.
Suddenly curious, I asked Sid, "What do you think about Facenote?"
Sid answered without even pausing to think.
"They're bad guys."
"Why?"
"Because they use algorithms to manipulate how people think. The moment you sign up for Facenote, it analyzes your race, gender, education, where you live, your friends, and then starts showing you things it thinks you'll like. By filtering the information people see, it makes them think according to what they see instead of seeing according to what they think."
As expected, Sid had grasped Facenote's problem perfectly.
If I went somewhere and said the Earth was flat, people would call me crazy.
But if I searched for related posts and kept hitting like, before long everyone around me would be saying the Earth was flat, and everything I saw in my feed—every post, every photo—would seem to prove it.
"So you think the algorithm is the problem?"
"The algorithm itself isn't evil. The real issue is who uses it, and what for. I bet Mike Goldenberg genuinely believes he can control the way people think."
"Hmm. I see."
Hearing that, I found myself thinking I could beat him down without worrying about the consequences.
Facenote was a social network with billions of users logging in every day. Like a tree with too many branches, it was always in the wind—problems everywhere, never a moment of peace. But for all its size, it would not so much as flinch at a normal attack.
But what if several problems exploded at once?
Wouldn't that be the start of something they could no longer contain?
For now, Trish's role was crucial.
She had to get it right.
In the early dawn.
Trish rented a car and drove out to a 24-hour family restaurant on the outskirts of San Francisco. The sun still had not risen, and there were almost no people inside.
Once she arrived, she drank coffee and thought back on everything Han Miru had told her.
A little later, she heard the door open, and someone came up to her and spoke.
"Are you reporter Trish O'Connor?"
"Yes, that's right."
The woman who appeared was a white woman in her mid-forties, with red hair, a thin build, and pale skin.
"Are you the person who reached out with the tip?"
"Yes."
"It's nice to meet you. I'm Trish O'Connor."
She sat down across from Trish and ordered coffee—no sugar, just cream—then stirred it a few times.
"Thank you for coming all the way out here."
"I wasn't originally planning to meet you. I was only going to contact you by email."
"So what made you decide to meet in person?"
"I read every article you wrote. They were all truthful. That made me want to meet you. I hate lies. And I'm good at recognizing them."
"What kind of work are you doing now?"
"Come to think of it, I haven't introduced myself. I'm Emily Heisen. Until recently, I worked at Facenote as a product manager in charge of misinformation."
As expected, the whistleblower had been a senior figure at Facenote.
"So you've left the company now?"
"Yes. I quit three months ago."
From her voice and the way she spoke, I could tell she had agonized over this decision for a long time before coming forward.
Trish set a recorder on the table.
"May I turn this on? If you don't like it, you can always say no."
"That's fine."
She pressed the record button and started asking the real questions.
"How long did you work at Facenote?"
"Three years and eight months."
"Whistleblowing can't have been easy. Why did you decide to come forward?"
After a brief hesitation, Emily spoke.
"I have a son."
After her divorce, she had raised him alone as a single mother.
Her salary was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, so money had never been a problem, but she always felt guilty that she could not spend enough time with him.
"One day, my son went to a hamburger place with some friends, and there was a mass shooting."
Trish covered her mouth with both hands.
"Oh no... don't tell me..."
Emily said it calmly.
"Fortunately, my son wasn't hurt. But one of the friends he was with died. He was so shocked by the whole thing that he's still in psychiatric treatment."
Trish searched her memory.
"The hamburger shop shooting—was that the incident in California this March?"
Emily nodded.
"Yes. The shooter was an extremist and a conspiracy theorist. He was known to be an avid Facenote user."
That, by itself, was nothing unusual.
Most Americans used Facenote, and criminals were no different.
"When something like this happens, Facenote immediately deletes the killer's account and starts removing the related posts. That's the work I do."
Because the incident involved her son, she had traced the shooter's footprint on Facenote and investigated it for herself.
What she found shocked her.
"Owen Marcus was a shy, introverted man. He was kind, and he hated causing trouble for other people."
He was awkward with people, so he mostly stayed home and spent his time on the internet. For someone like him, Facenote was a window to the world.
But the problem began when one of the friends he met there turned out to be a conspiracy believer.
Owen didn't really believe the things he said or the news he shared, but he kept commenting and clicking like anyway, just to be a good friend.
Then, at some point, his feed started showing only conspiracy-related posts, and he began connecting with people who were obsessed with them.
They posted all kinds of articles, photos, and copied internet scraps, railing against the world.
At first Owen only watched for fun, but little by little, those ideas sank into him.
And before long, he began acting the same way they did.
This is all the immigrants' fault. Getting rid of them is what will make America great.
The government is trying to control people by implanting chips through flu vaccines.
Islamic fundamentalists have infiltrated the White House. If we don't stop them, America is finished.
Jewish capital is taking over the financial markets and making us poorer.
Big pharmaceutical companies are creating lethal viruses in labs. They plan to spread them and control the population.
The world was horribly broken, and yet no one seemed willing to fix it.
Then one day, Owen came across an article.
At first, Owen didn't believe it.
It was just too ridiculous.
But all around him, there were endless pieces of so-called proof.
Some people claimed Democratic lawmakers were using specific words and hand gestures to pass secret codes to one another, and they broke down every detail, posting their analyses online.
How could such horrific things be happening, and what in the world were the police and the FBI doing about it?
The reason was simple: the politicians.
High-ranking figures in the Democratic Party were deeply involved. That was why law enforcement was staying silent.
This could not go on.
Someone had to step in and set things right.
Whether it was fury at the politicians who had committed such monstrous crimes or a sense of justice that told him the kidnapped children had to be saved, I did not know, but he picked up a gun and stormed the hamburger shop.
Owen opened fire on anyone who tried to stop him.
Those he hit died, and the others fled from the restaurant.
He searched the hamburger shop, trying to find the children trapped in the basement.
And then...
Emily let out a hollow laugh.
"There was no basement in that hamburger shop."
"..."
I already knew that, but hearing it again was still absurd beyond belief.
How must he have felt when he found out there was no basement?
Did he realize the thing he had seen was fake news, or did he cling to it until the very end? No one could know.
Because he was shot dead by the police who responded to the scene.
"Facenote designed an algorithm that gives greater weight to posts sharing similar thoughts and emotions, so those posts are shown more often. It always feeds users what they want to see. Whether it's true or not doesn't matter. People would rather have lies that match their beliefs than uncomfortable truths that don't. So Facenote deliberately let fake news, misinformation, and extremist content circulate. No—worse, it rewarded those posts with ad revenue and encouraged people to upload and share them."
"So a shy, kind young man ended up becoming a mass shooter because of it?"
Emily nodded.
"Ten years ago, mass shootings were rare. But now? Do you know how many happened last year alone?"
Trish counted in her head.
"More than 600."
"The official figure was 612."
That number included only indiscriminate shootings aimed at random people, not gun accidents, suicides, or murders.
If this had happened in Korea, all that hate and rage would have had nowhere to go. But America was a country where anyone could buy a gun with ease.
All you had to do was pull the trigger.
"It takes a lot of effort to stir up good feelings like love or sympathy, and they don't appear right away. But hatred and anger are easy to provoke, and they respond instantly. People don't like complicated thinking, either. It's easier to hate immigrants than to ask why you can't find a job. It's easier to call an election fraudulent than to analyze why you lost. The whole society is moving toward feeding hatred, loathing, and rage. And at the center of it all is Facenote."
"Did no one ever raise this as a problem?"
"Why wouldn't they?"
People inside the company had been pointing out these issues for years.
But the executives never listened, and the people who raised the alarm eventually had to leave.
"So why didn't Facenote fix it?"
"Because of money. Users are the product. Facenote tracks everything they do, turns it into data, and sells that data to advertisers. To collect more data and show more ads, they have to keep users trapped inside Facenote. That's why they work so hard to addict them. Comments and likes are like the coins spilling out of a slot machine. Once users get rewarded for an action, they fall even deeper into the addiction."
Trish could not say anything.
When she had first decided to pursue the story, she had thought the tip would be somewhat exaggerated. But after hearing Emily out, she realized it was far worse than she had imagined.
Emily let out a weary sigh.
"Facenote turned into a monster before anyone noticed."