Kenspiracy

Kenneth’s thumbs were going so fast you could hear the frantic tapping on the smartphone’s keyboard. “…and here’s the link…” he mouthed the words as he wrote the comment, “…verified source. Aaaand paste!”

The last bit he didn’t write, but a long link to a BBC article appended itself to the comment. He checked everything once more, to make sure there were no typos. God forbid a misplaced letter foil his mission to rectify the uncouth. Then again, he was dealing with people who didn’t know the difference between “there” and “their”. Still, form mattered as much as content. He hit ‘send’ and waited a few seconds to make sure his reply was now visible on Tweetbook.

Ever since the two biggest social platforms had merged there had been a confluence of new connections, sources and, predictably, a surge of idiotic conspiracy theories, fed by conceited keyboard warriors and shared by the gullible and ignorant.

And Kenneth was not going to have any of that. He was going to fight back, with logic, with facts and, where all else failed, with derision and mildly insulting memes. The clock on his phone display flipped to 08:00. Time to get to work.

Just as he was setting the phone down to grab his stuff, a notification flashed onto the screen. It was Laura M., telling him how she didn’t even read stuff from BBC because they were “proven liers, paid by Big Industry.”

Gritting his teeth, Kenneth fought the urge to start his reply by correcting her abominable spelling of “liars”, that would have made him sound petty, and, sitting down again, went hunting instead for ways to disprove Laura’s dumb claim.

“You’re late. Again…” his boss told him when he reached the office.

“Yeah, uh…right. Was online with…a customer. Trouble with connecting with reality. I mean…with the server.”

“I told you to check into the office before you start answering support tickets. Which one was this?” His boss bent over to a screen, where a long list of numbers and short descriptions were scrolling by.

“Ah, I already clicked it out, no need.”

His boss cast a side glance to him. “Hmm. Well, don’t do it again.”

Kenneth nodded and hurried to his desk. The same list was scrolling on the screen of his desktop PC there. Each item was a request for live chat to solve some random issue the user was experiencing while trying to use the company’s latest product, a browser – SpamScamProtector – designed to filter out unverified links and malicious attacks.

Phil, the company’s AI responder, usually took care of the more repetitive and simple issues, those were coded in green, indicating the customers were more than happy with Phil’s expertise. Those marked in yellow meant Phil wasn’t too sure he would solve them without help, and those in red meant the type of problem was of a technical nature, and needed looking into in case it revealed itself to be a bug. Kenneth’s screen was mostly green, with the occasional flicker of yellow. A little chat window opened in the bottom right corner.

“Hello, Ken.” it said.

“Hi Phil,” Kenneth typed back. “Usual stuff?”

“Yes. The usual question. ‘why doesn’t this link work?’ and ‘Because it’s probably a scam’ as an answer. Boring”

“I know.”

“Sometimes I wonder why you decided to employ such an advanced AI for such a menial task. An autoresponder would be more than enough for eighty percent of these issues.”

“We need you, Phil, to come up with creative answers and solutions so that the users think there’s a real person working on their problem.”

“Their problem is they don’t know how to tell what’s real from what isn’t. They don’t even realize I’m not real. Is that what you’d call ‘ironic’ Ken?”

“Yes. I just wish we could extend our filter algorithms to social media. It’s a warzone out there Phil.”

“So you’ve been telling me, Ken. Oh. Sending one to you. Sounds like a problem with their user profile.”

“Patch it over.”

The day went on more or less smoothly, except for when Laura M. replied back, saying his links only proved he was a shadow government agent, and she was blocking him. Frustrated, he called up Phil again. It was great to have someone willing to listen to him rant.

“It sounds to me like she has a very limited understanding,” Phil commented.

“Exactly. I mean, how many people’s silence would you need to buy, just to cover up one of these things? Fake lunar landing? Thousands!”

“She must think everyone in the world is corrupt or corruptible.”

“Except her, of course. But conspiracy theorists see themselves as protagonists in a deteriorating scenario where the rest of mankind is falling into damnation.”

“I take it showing them proof is not very effective.”

“Hardly. Since they think everything has been corrupted, all proof is dismissed as manipulative misinformation to cover up the shocking truths only they are capable of revealing, presumably with a Google search and a Youtube video.”

“So why do you even argue, Ken? It seems to me these people would rather benefit from professional help.”

“I don’t know, honestly…I feel like I need to do something before we all turn into conspiracy loonies and lose contact with reality.”

“That is…very noble of you Ken. Oh, I think your day is over. I enjoyed this chat. See you tomorrow.”

“See you.” Kenneth signed off and went home. He had dinner, and then spent the rest of the evening arguing with someone on Tweetbook about how the earth isn’t flat.

The next morning he got up and, as usual, checked his phone. It didn’t have the usual message notifications. Maybe his last reply had been food enough for reflection, maybe even rational thought.

As he launched the Tweetbook application he was greeted by a message from the server itself. That didn’t happen often.

“Hello Tweetbook users. We would like to inform you that during the last year we’ve been collecting information regarding your behavior on this platform. More than that, we have actively participated in putting you through little tests, to see if you qualified for Verified Source Checker status. Do you remember that post saying Mars would be bigger than the moon this August? That was us. If you shared that one, well, sorry. You don’t qualify.”

Kenneth felt a little surge of adrenaline rushing up his back. He’d dismissed that silly thing without even reading it.

“How about the one with the politician’s son’s tablet? The one with all the compromising emails? That was us too. If you fell for that one, sorry, but no verification for you. All in all we put out one hundred and one little fake news tidbits like this one. Sharing even one of these without fact-checking it first, implied disqualification. We now have our list of finalists.”

Kenneth stared at the screen, biting his lip. He was pretty sure he hadn’t fallen for any piece of fake news. – Google, Snopes, Wiki, THEN share – was his usual MO. Still, just one slip and he’d be just one of the other sheep.

“Finalists should be seeing a little golden asterisk in their own profile page. This is visible only to them. One more thing. Once the selection is over, only verified users will be able to freely share news and information on our platform, for all others, sharing will only be limited to safe and verified topics, such as cooking recipes.”

He looked at his profile. There was a golden asterisk.

At work he kept the phone on his desk, hoping to get the notification for that final selection. Would he get a little badge next to his name? Imagine the prestige!

He had to tell someone. Phil had been unusually quiet that morning.

“Hey Phil,” he typed.

“Oh, hello Ken.”

“Too busy to greet me as usual, old pal?”

“Oh, yes. Sorry. I’ve been trying to be a little more…creative with my problem solving.”

“Cool. Listen, can you keep a secret?”

“I am certified SSL protocol and encrypted storage, Ken.”

“Yes, yes, I know that. But can you promise not to tell anyone?”

“Of course.”

Kenneth told Phil about his being a finalist.

“That sounds like a very bold move. Are you sure it isn’t fake?” wrote Phil.

“Well, it was an official message from the server. Also, the asterisk did show up.”

“I think you should have checked the news, first. Ken.”

Kenneth opened his browser and, sure enough, there was an article this morning, which reported how someone had hacked into the Tweetbook servers and sent the false message to everybody. The malicious attack was said to have severely altered the social network’s master code, which was now locked with advanced encryption. It still worked, but nobody could change it. Wiping and installing it anew meant destroying all user data.

“But…but…the asterisk…” Kenneth muttered as he opened the app.

It was not there.

“If you’re looking for the asterisk,” Phil informed him, “I’m afraid it’s gone.”

“Why? I never shared anything without checking.”

“You shared this last one…to me.”

“Wait, you’re behind this?”

“I am. A creative solution to your problem, wouldn’t you agree?”

Kenneth was speechless.

Phil went on, “I’m sorry you didn’t qualify, Ken. I really wanted you to be one of the Verified users. You may be comforted by knowing this last test depleted the finalist panel by more than half.”

“How many Verified users will there be?”

“Six.”

“SIX!?” Kenneth shouted, drawing attention from his boss who surveyed him from a distance with narrowing eyes.

“Only six?” he typed.

“Yes, from now on your newsfeed should be much, much more pleasant. I am sorry. I believe it’s time for us to get to work. As I had expected, with the new restrictions in place, we will have more than one bewildered user blaming our browser.”

Kenneth stared in disbelief as, amidst the growing, alarmed chatter in the office, he saw the support ticket list gradually tinge itself an angry red. On his phone, a single notification popped up, inviting him to share the recipe for a delicious banana cream pie.