The mysterious man leads me to a room, I opened the door, and see a face anyone would recognize anywhere. "Are you…who I think you are?" I stuttered. Ralph Hernandez, the CEO of Alphabet, smiles, "Hi Ann, nice to finally meet you." Since when am I important enough for a CEO to ambush me? Seeing through my anxiety, Ralph points at a chair, "sit down, I’m here today to take a look at the new store, and god just sends you in.” I honestly don’t know what’s going on, “Mr. Hernandez is there something you want to talk to me about?” He laughed, “wow aren’t you a reporter. Yes. Let me show you the reason why we stopped you out there.” Hernandez pulls up a screen displaying the search result I asked for. First is the news of me winning the Pulitzer. Wait… why does it say I won for my coverage of public education in Taiwan? As if he can read my mind, Hernandez slightly nods, “you’re probably confused how Google can make such a mistake. Well, it’s not a mistake, it’s the fact. Your reporting on the Kevin Hsu assassination was never publicly released, we hand-picked a few of your contacts to see the article and discuss it with you. The rest of the world sees this dull public education thing.”
“But why? Why would you bury the story while making me believe it’s out there?” I tried to control my voice.
“It’s actually quite simple. Let me walk you through this. Do you know who the largest shareholder of the Post is?”
“Disney.” I glanced at the Mikey Mouse sticker on my phone. We made so many jokes about that.
“And who merged with Disney in 2018?”
“21st Century Fox.” They rebooted the entire X-Men series. So bad.
“And who owns 10% of 21st Century Fox?”
“Alphabet?”
“Yes. Who do we depend on the most in US market?
“Hmm… I want to say Bell since they practically own the Internet?” Where is he going with this?
“Atta girl. And now, who is Bell’s largest client in Asia Pacific?”
“Aliba…”
The room temperature just dropped to zero.
“That is correct.” He nodded with a smirk. “Beijing-based, trillions-of-dollars-worth, 2nd largest company in the world, Chinese tech titan Alibaba. Do you really think Chinese government would let their money pour into American companies without asserting some political influence?”
“Oh Ann, come on, don’t make that face. What good will the truth do when those who care can live in an illusion of justice being served?”
Illusion? “Wait Hernadez what do you mean by illusion?”
He shrugs, “the only people in the world who think the killers of Hsu are punished are his family, you, and whoever read your article. Our Chinese counterpart altered their newsfeed and planted a bunch of fake articles, oh don’t worry all from prominent news organizations, and they move on with their lives knowing Hsu didn’t die in vain. Remember how we promised to maximize our users’ interests? Isn’t this just the perfect example? Why let them face the ruthless real world when they can be much happier knowing what they hope to know?”
Unbelievable. I can’t help but shout: “how can you tamper with people’s world like that? How would they feel when they find out?”
He almost bursts into laughter. “Oh sweet innocent Ann. How are they going to find out? Are you going to email it to them from you Gmail account? Are you going to publish it and then ask them to click the link? People have long forgotten how to put in domain names, they just google everything. And the most beautiful part is,” he paused, “If you can’t find it on Google, it doesn’t exist.”
“We are not the bad guys here. Ann? It means peace and safety right? You were tagged the second you landed in Taipei, the only reason why you’re sitting here in one piece is because the government knew we will prevent any of your reporting from leaking here. Who do you think is keeping the world safe? Party politics tore America apart years ago. Now people can no longer see opinions too different from their own, and we haven’t had a mass shooting in 35 years.”
