Chapter 315 - Insider Information & A 10 Million Yuan Bonus. The Internet Explodes!
Chapter 315 Insider Information & A 10 Million Yuan Bonus. The Internet Explodes!
Su Yang carefully dripped a few drops of almond oil onto the weighing device he made with the Unknown Sticky Note as he casually asked, “What happened?”
As he asked, he took a look at the digital display on the weighing apparatus. ‘Hmmm. 2.1 grams… That’s over by 0.1 gram… I failed again…’
‘Could the weighing accuracy requirement be the reason this recipe is so difficult to craft?
‘That’s a hard number to get accurately!’
Li Zijun said on the other end of the phone line, “Our Find Me app has been subjected to a massive online slander. Some people are claiming that we’re a dating app, some others say we’re a pornography app, and there are others who are saying that there’s a lot of information in our app that hints at certain illegal services.”
After wiping off the almond oil, he dripped a few more drops. 1.9 grams. Sh*t! How the hell could he get it to weigh exactly 2 grams?!
He replied, “Oh. Are there any screenshots or actual evidence then?”
Li Zijun had obviously made preparations before coming to deliver his report, and just from this, one could see the difference between her and Wang Dong. She said firmly, “No! All the online messages are text messages, there isn’t a single picture posted. However, negative news of our app has flooded the internet. It even came up as a top and trending search on Weibo.” She hesitated for a moment before continuing, “Didn’t we just launch the (100 Days of Stars] collaboration? There were many big stars and celebrities who saw these negative messages and sent inquiries to us. They’re obviously worried that such negative information would tarnish their image.”
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Su Yang paused as he thought, ‘I didn’t know it would be so troublesome.’
He raised his head and pondered. Just as he was about to speak out, Little Deeny’s voice rang in his ears…
After listening to Little Denny for a brief moment, he nodded and said to Li Zijun, “I got it. It’s okay. In that case, let’s issue a public clarification.”
Li Zijun, who was waiting on the other end of the phone line was speechless after hearing Su Yang’s words. In the age of the Internet, there were many things that were true and false, and most of the time they were just rumours.
Moreover, because of the loss of the Internet’s credibility, most of the refutation rumors were often disregarded as enterprises attempting to cover up their dirty secrets. One couldn’t expect to take it seriously these days. Hence, one couldn’t guarantee the outreach of the public clarification. Even if many people saw the public clarification online, not many of them might believe it.
With these thoughts in mind, Li Zijun frowned slightly and decided to use the remaining budget after spending the bulk of the money on the public announcement to pay off the various websites to remove those negative articles and reduce the overall negative impact.
Just as she was planning for the next few steps ahead, Su Yang’s voice sounded from the other end of the phone line. “Let’s not release a boring public clarification. Let’s make it into an event. Every time a netizen finds an illegal message or post on our app, we’ll award him with prize money. We’ll set the prize money at… ten million yuan for each post.”
Li Zijun’s head buzzed, as her jaw fell and she gaped. She wondered if she had heard him wrongly. With trembling lips, she asked, “D-Director Su, how much did you say?”.
Su Yang who was on the other end of the line busy fiddling with the weighing apparatus did not even raise his head as he replied swiftly, “Ten million. Ten million yuan per illegal post.”
This time Li Zijun heard it clear as the day. However, instead of doubting her ears, this time, she started to doubt if her brain was working fine. She let out an awkward laughter. “Director Su, I may have misunderstood your meaning. Did you actually mean 1000 yuan for each illegal post found, to express our stand to fight against illegal information? Am I right?
She felt deep in her heart that even 1,000 yuan was way too much as prize money for detecting an illegal post. After all, she could easily earn 10,000 yuan if she found 10 illegal posts. If that was the case, she wouldn’t be focusing on her work; she’d rather spend every day searching for illegal content on the app.
Even then, compared to the ten million yuan per illegal message suggested by Director Su, that was peanuts!
He suggested ten million yuan! Even if one lived without eating or drinking, how many years would it take to save up ten million dollars?!
Su Yang was adamant about his suggestion. “No, it’s not 1,000 yuan, it’s ten million yuan
—10 million yuan for every illegal post. Wait a moment, I’ll send you the details later. You should immediately sign-up for a Weibo account, and then post it. Then, find a few media companies to promote it.”
Su Yang dripped almond oil on the weighing device for the third time, and finally it was exactly 2 grams. He happily put it aside and said, “Since someone wants to screw with us, let’s make a bigger deal out of the entire situation and blow up the whole Internet!”
While Li Zijun was still lost in a state of confusion, Su Yang had already hung up the phone. She plonked on the sofa, her confusion clearly evident in both eyes.
She did not expect her one phone call to end up with such a huge and drastic event.
Suddenly, a thought popped into her mind, ‘Did the company have ten million yuan?’
She gave it some thought. ‘Probably not. But Director Su should have…’ She didn’t know how much Director Su’s net worth was.
‘Is he actually a billionaire?
‘But… Even with hundreds of billions in assets, one wouldn’t be able to handle the heat from a global search for illegal posts, right?
‘Didn’t Director Su know that such illegal posts were abundant?’
In the midst of her desperation, her cell phone rang-it was a WeChat message. Li Zijun was reflectively hesitant to open the message, as if it was a Pandora’s box-once opened, it was bound to release endless disaster.
However, her professionalism got the better of her. With a gulp, she picked up the phone, and it was just as she expected-Su Yang’s publicity plan.
The plan was very simple: From 12:00 noon today to 12:00 noon tomorrow, a total of 24 hours, find any illegal content on the Find Me app. Then, use a second phone to take a video of the content. There would be a few features including “Open the Find Me app”, “open the pornographic content”, “view your own personal accounts and other features, including the “@Find Me app Weibo”.
The staff will contact the user and live stream the video remotely to verify the authenticity of the video online, and if it is authentic, the 10 million yuan prize money will go to that user. Simple and straightforward, no hanky panky.
Su Yang had also sent over the link to the app’s live feed, fully intending for hundred millions of Internet users to view the live feed.
After taking a closer look at the setup, Li Zijun realized that it also functioned as secondary verification to avoid any loopholes where users maliciously take screenshots, or edit fake videos just to get the prize money. But… That is not the point at all, right? Didn’t he know that “there is simply no app that isn’t free from pornographic content”?
How could a large user-generated content app, which may contain hundreds of thousands or millions of content a day, be vetted?
How could they vet through so many calligraphic words and pictures sent out by the masses in such a short period of time?
And even if there was no pornographic content in the app before this, wouldn’t a user who got wind of the prize money deliberately post some pornographic content and then record the video to claim the prize money?
As she was deep in thought, Li Zijun discovered that Su Yang had sent another advertising draft.
The gist of it was that Jiadian Information & Technology Ltd. had developed a mature artificial intelligence that had the ability to process hundreds and thousands of data in milliseconds. It was an artificial intelligence program comparable to AlphaGo.
The only difference from AlphaGO was that this AI was mainly used as a big data filtering information, and was capable of filtering 100% of the pornographic content on the app. Seeing this, Li Zijun’s mouth slowly gaped open. Did the company have such an AI? Why hadn’t she heard of this before?
However, if this was true, their plan might actually work! So, she finally calmed down, especially since she wasn’t the one responsible for paying the prize money anyway. She was just a worker. If that’s the boss’s arrangement, she would just follow his orders!
Wasn’t that the point of having a boss—to take care of everything when the sky comes crashing down? Su Yang gave her a budget of more than ten thousand yuan for publicity, for her to arrange the necessary articles and advertisements, and also to speed up the publicity of the event as quickly as possible.
After arranging everything, Su Yang weighed the second material, which was beeswax, while saying to the void, “Little Deeny, is your AI really ready to go?”
Little Deeny’s voice echoed in the living room, “Master, actually no, it’s still a prototype, a simple prototype. But it’s enough to filter out eighty percent of the pornographic content.”
“And coincidentally, I want to take a few days off, so the several cores that I was using can focus on handling all the pornographic content.”
“When you were talking to me the other day, I had already sifted through all the images, text, and links once. Whether it’s in transliteration, phonetic, anagrams, or image concealment, they’ve all been deleted.”
“All new information we added today can be handed over to the prototype of artificial intelligence for preliminary filtering. As soon as that’s done, I will screen through it twice, so it will definitely reach 100%.”
“However, master, today’s bandwidth and server usage may cost a bomb,”
Su Yang said casually, “For the sake of publicity and your research, it’s worth it. Just go ahead and do it.”
Little Deeny’s beautiful voice sounded in Su Yang’s ear, “Thank you, master!”
Su Yang laughed.
He had unconditional trust in Little Deeny.
Earlier, he changed his mind and dared to gamble so much with the prize money because Little Deeny had reported her AI stage results, and hoped that Su Yang could give her a chance to speed up the learning with her prototype AI.
That’s why he dared to take a huge gamble with it!
He took a pair of tweezers and gently squeezed a bit of beeswax onto the weighing tool, 1.2g! What luck! Success on the first try!
As the two of them were chatting, the information on the event hosted by Find Me app had made it’s way onto Weibo. Li Zijun had spent money to get a celebrity account to boost the publicity and upload the link to the app. It was official online!
This shocking event instantly exploded on Weibo and started trending like crazy!
[Ten million dollars to find one pornographic content! Were they trying to show off their net worth, or was their app truly clean from any pornographic content?!)
(A domestic AI comparable to AlphaGo? 100% screening rate?]
(Did it really have such high level caliber, or was it just bluster?!]
The news travelled far and wide. Other than the many users on Weibo, the rest of the industry players had also taken interest in the event.
After all, who didn’t want to get rich overnight? Who wouldn’t want 10 million just by finding a single pornographic content in the app?
Despite being a little skeptical about the credibility of the Find Me app company, many couldn’t resist taking part in the activity, especially since it didn’t cost them anything to join in the search!
In addition to that, the trending news that a large amount of pornographic content was available on the Find Me app fueled the fire. Hence, within half an hour of the announcement, it was all over the Internet! It quickly made its way to one of the top searches on Weibo!
Although it was only ranked fifty on the top searches list currently, it was rapidly gaining momentum.
And through Weibo, WeChat, and many other news and portals, the news also spread like a virus. More and more people learned about the news that the Find Me app was offering a reward of 10 million yuan to find a single piece of pornographic content on the app!
It was a working day, and 11 a.m. was just the right time for everyone to get a breather after a busy morning at work.
Hence, word started spreading like fire online and offline, by word of mouth. “Have you heard? The Find Me app offered a 10 million bonus to find any pornographic content on their app!”
“I’ve heard, and I’ve got that app. I’m looking for it now.”
“But how do you find it? You can’t go through the records one by one to find it, can you?”
“Go to the Find Me app via Weibo and look at it, it has all the instructions for the Find Me app, and you can find all the messages that everyone has posted on it.” “Oh. I’ll go and check it out.”
So, more and more people were attracted by the 10 million prize money to study the operation methods of the Find Me app, and how to download the Find Me app….
At the same time, in an office building in the Hangzhou Hi-Tech Zone, a guy got wind of this piece of news and… He was mad.
He wasn’t mad from anger, rather, he was mad from extreme happiness…