Chapter 87: If You Relinquish Freedom, Be Prepared to Bear the Cost Behind the Limits

We can’t control borderline content; every social media app has it. WeChat even has midnight lonely dating groups, all full. Do we need to give them a morality test to get an entry ticket for an app? Probably half of them would fail.

CEO Xing’s talks concluded entirely before the New Year. Out of the entire thirty-person team, ten people ultimately decided to go to Beijing. HR, legal, finance, and administration all stayed in Shanghai due to family reasons. Several content creators, including Monkey, all decided to follow CEO Xing to Beijing after the New Year. After signing as self-media, the signing fee became the first step in development. Yu Zhimei was about to go to Beijing after New Year’s Day with CEO Xing to find office space—she hadn’t officially made the decision to leave Shanghai yet.

Everyone planned to have a farewell dinner after Christmas. Half the people in the office were going to resign, and suddenly there was no more serious work being done. During afternoon tea, people even proactively chatted and reminisced, making the office unusually lively. Everyone joked that finance and administration were all married and had families, while all the content creators were unmarried. The “stability” that the older generation talked about might really make sense.

This atmosphere made Yu Zhimei feel a little choked up, so she slipped into the hallway to text Jian Zhaowen: “Busy man, want to grab dinner with you tonight?”

Jian Zhaowen, who hadn’t even had time to touch his phone, was seriously cleaning up a batch of registered accounts. He was originally just retrieving logs, but a colleague in charge of content suddenly sent him a bunch of screenshots. Several very young users were doing “welfare ji” (a term for girls selling sexually suggestive photos) on Day and Night. Their immature bodies weren’t showing their faces, but the blatant nudity made him dizzy.

“Welfare ji” is a term from Japan, referring to young men and women who take borderline pornographic photos and sell them to others. In Day and Night, the young people discussing these things weren’t just girls. After screening, some photos led to direct deletion and blacklisting of users, while some slipped through the net. After staying up all night investigating, Jian Zhaowen discovered that since reaching a million registrations, a small group had formed in his app, organized and premeditatedly training young girls to become welfare ji, and selling unwashed “original flavor” underwear, luring girls to apply for acting jobs and get plastic surgery... These morally corrupt people exchanged contact information of young men and women on WeChat, and Day and Night unknowingly became a stepping stone for facilitating crime.

Jian Zhaowen’s fingers cracked as he clenched them. He immediately blocked the user accounts and issued an announcement, then called the content director and gave him a severe dressing-down, his voice so loud that other companies could hear it. In the employees’ minds, Jian Zhaowen was much more emotionally stable than Lei Zheng and often stopped Lei Zheng from exploding during big meetings. This outburst immediately silenced the employees, who only typed furiously on their keyboards. Lei Zheng had always been responsible for content. When Jian Zhaowen threw the screenshots at Lei Zheng, the latter was in a meeting next door. When the colleague returned to his workstation, Jian Zhaowen dragged him to the meeting room and showed his phone to Lei Zheng: “Did you notice this before?”

Lei Zheng leaned over to look, still chewing on half a cold sandwich: “Oh, the head of review mentioned it to me during a meeting. I already turned off the chat room function when modifying the version before. I thought you knew.”

“You didn’t mention turning it off was because of this. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m responsible for content, you handle technology.”

“Did you see the chat content? The other person doesn’t care how old she is, they just buy photos from her. This girl’s background data shows her ID card is from 2007. I want to grab keywords and directly ban users with this tendency.”

“That’s going too far. You can grab a small range, but directly writing keywords will lead to banning users even if they casually mention something in the chat.” Lei Zheng hadn’t yet realized Jian Zhaowen’s soaring anger: “We can’t control this kind of thing. Every social media app has it. WeChat even has midnight lonely dating groups, all full. Do we need to give them a morality test to get an entry ticket for an app? Probably half of them would fail.”

“We can’t put the cart before the horse. Isn’t the purpose of Day and Night to protect everyone’s ability to speak their true feelings? Is this the true feeling users want? Deceiving them into taking nude photos, buying cheap lingerie, saying if they don’t show their breasts they’re not sincerely looking for love—isn’t this the same as 1024? Then why look down on those who do borderline live streaming? Day and Night’s anonymous zone is even more convenient for committing crimes.”

“You can create a youth mode. But let me ask you, will young, borderline, transgressive girls actively choose youth mode? Have those who really have needs and hobbies broken the law? If you directly ban accounts and delete user information, aren’t you also destroying their freedom of speech?”

Jian Zhaowen remained noncommittal: “Our current user base is large enough to be called ‘official.’ Before they have the ability to judge, shouldn’t we first give them a correct environment?”

“Isn’t that the same as those who castrate others’ freedom? I can understand what you mean by protecting young users, but you need to know that many people have special needs. A one-size-fits-all castration will directly create a misconception for users—Day and Night, as a website for speaking true feelings, has the biggest characteristic of being unfree. If we can’t achieve precise targeting and mistakenly kill several rounds of users, our user experience will become very poor.” Lei Zheng threw the sandwich into the trash can, looking agitated: “Content and value aren’t generated by users, but guided by your so-called ‘official’ stance. It’s normal to relinquish freedom to users for commercial value. What you’re doing now is directly dissuading them. You think I don’t have humanity in my product development, but do you know I haven’t thought about these things?”

“If these gray industries appear on Day and Night, then our original intention has changed. I’ve persisted until now not to let these bad people succeed.”

“Desire is part of heterosexual social interaction; it’s the original sin of social products. Let me give you an example. A little girl taking photos, if she grew up in a cruel world, her parents are sick and urgently need money, and she reluctantly learned to take these photos. If we provide financial aid to prevent her from becoming a fallen girl, might she feel that you’re hindering her? Your well-intentioned forced removal of users may not necessarily lead to good results.”

“Is your circle particularly tolerant of these things? I won’t say more. I need the product PRD for the youth entrance and psychological aid entrance. I’ll finish it within three days.”

Lei Zheng’s face changed. He didn’t speak, turned around, opened the meeting room door, and walked out.

Jian Zhaowen sat in the meeting room, the smell of smoke lingering in the air, feeling somewhat suffocated. There were indifferent and cruel parts in Lei Zheng’s soul, occasionally emerging and leaving him unable to refute, reminding him that being a benevolent and righteous person came at a cost. Occasionally, this side of Lei Zheng was annoying, probably like what Yu Zhimei said, that kind of well-regulated, error-free soul was maddening. Lei Zheng, who quickly produced the youth entrance PRD, sent the file by email and then directly left the office building to go home and sleep, leaving a final message: “After it’s online for a week, pull some data and have a meeting with me to review how many users actively click on this entrance.”

Jian Zhaowen worked late into the night, assigning tasks to the R&D team. He went down to the Night Zone to search for anonymous help requests and gradually came back to his senses. Lei Zheng had long ago helped girls who privately engaged in compensated dating, but the girls disappeared after taking the money, and Lei Zheng’s anger in the chat logs was no less than his own. Where there is desire, there is industry; where there is demand, there will be oppression. Solving this social problem was beyond their capabilities. They only provided an environment for content and couldn’t determine the limits of freedom.

By the time he finished work in the early hours, Jian Zhaowen crawled into 301. Forget about showering, he couldn’t even climb to the attic, only wanting to quickly go to sleep. A selfish thought emerged: he hoped Yu Zhimei would contact him after he had slept for four full hours and not disturb his exhausted state.

He woke up at three in the afternoon. Getting up, he saw a message. Yu Zhimei had left breakfast in the refrigerator of 302. Jian Zhaowen showered, hungry enough to eat a cow. The breakfast left in the refrigerator was carried over to lunch: two boxes of xiaolongbao (steamed dumplings) and a bowl of shredded tofu skin and vermicelli soup. Filling his stomach with vinegar, Jian Zhaowen saw a note on the table: “No need to thank me or feel guilty. If there’s no cat food left, add some for me—no meat, no freeze-dried food. Lulu has soft stools recently and is taking medicine. Of course, feel free to bathe the cats again if you want.”

Recalling the terrifying experience of catching the cats, Jian Zhaowen shook his head vigorously. Lulu was squatting on the dining table, looking at him, her eyes lazily blinking in response. The kitten Wenwen was still innocent, biting the cat teaser in the room and swinging it around. Since getting the name Wenwen, Jian Zhaowen always felt the cat’s face was getting bigger and bigger.

The youth mode would be relatively simple, filtering out all adult topics and gray information. Blacklisted users couldn’t send any invitations. Two entrances were added to both the Day side and the Night side. Although Lei Zheng was unwilling, he still placed the help entrance in the bottom right corner icon of the square. After posting recruitment information for psychological counseling volunteers and professional counselors on Weibo, Jian Zhaowen left the content director’s email address. He estimated there would be thousands of applications the next day. Even if he handed it over to his subordinates, it would probably take a full three days to screen and interview—every day was a tough battle.

There was also a troubling matter recently. Day and Night directly lost 2 million due to a DDoS attack, adding an extra layer of difficulty to achieving a profit of 5 million. With seven months left until the one-year anniversary of financing, Lei Zheng placed advertisement banners in the square and on the homepage, generating a fixed monthly income, and was also in contact with companies in soft furnishings and adult products for cooperation. The essence of everything on the internet is actually advertising. With traffic comes income, it’s just a matter of how ugly the eating habits are.

But even with advertising revenue, reaching full profit within six months wasn’t easy. The monthly advertising income couldn’t keep up with the bandwidth needed for user growth and the company’s operating costs. To increase net income, they either had to increase revenue or lower costs, and costs would only continue to grow. The investors left a meaningful suggestion: “Get rid of lovedate. That app uses a similar algorithm to yours. They’ve reported you before, keeping them around is too lenient—show us your real strength.”

Lei Zheng held a meeting with his team, focused and engaged in the large conference room. When explaining the product, he was meticulous and unconditionally shared his experience with everyone. Although he couldn’t help but secretly curse at Jian Zhaowen after each meeting, he still had a heart that liked to share. Lei Zheng came out of the conference room without even looking at Jian Zhaowen, his anger clearly hadn’t subsided. Jian Zhaowen considered asking Xiaoxi and Lei Zheng out for a meal to clear the air and sent a message to Yu Zhimei. Yu Zhimei replied quickly: “You really know how to pick your moments. Xiaoxi is going abroad for a competition again next month.”

“Then, could you please help me book a restaurant? I don’t even know what Lei Zheng likes to eat.”

“What’s wrong with you two? You sound like a bickering couple.”

“Who’s a couple with him? It’s work stuff. I seem to have hit a nerve with him, questioning him during a meeting about deliberately condoning borderline content. I was too angry that day. There are many scammers in the app now, targeting young girls. Do you know what ‘welfare ji’ and ‘kepao’ mean?”

“No.”

“There are many such words. They’re terms young people use, but they’re not good metaphors. I’ll explain in detail when I have time. Although I need to apologize to Lei Zheng, I still want to stabilize him by having dinner with him and get him to put more effort into the product.”

While chatting on the computer, Lei Zheng entered Jian Zhaowen’s office and threw a schedule at him. Yu Zhimei’s message was still popping up in the top right corner: “Having dinner and talking about work? You two just had a fight. You and Lei Zheng have egos as high as mountains.”

Lei Zheng glanced at the screen, pretended not to see it, and walked away. The schedule was full of tasks, giving Jian Zhaowen a headache just looking at it. The petty and vengeful Lei Zheng was forcing Jian Zhaowen to revise the requirements within a week, something impossible to finish even with all-nighters, let alone having dinner. In the moment their eyes met, both held back anger but also had their own worries.

This subtle move by the investors was leading towards a choice—was Day and Night going to focus on operating as a niche social platform against loneliness, or become a mass emotional platform with high traffic and user acquisition? Jian Zhaowen looked back at the past year and vaguely felt this was an unavoidable dilemma. The earliest user profile of Day and Night was young people in first-tier cities, seeking self-worth and sharing their true feelings. The target user base itself might only be a million. Urbanites were highly educated, had a need to resist “consensus,” and also wanted to express secret emotions. Day and Night happened to provide the freedom to reveal their true feelings. But when the content was expressing private views and inherent desires, and the user base expanded with age differences, it would inevitably be difficult to pass the review stage, and review inevitably required money. For money, they had to pursue user growth and daily active users. The surge in users would inevitably no longer be limited to highly educated people in first-tier cities, which would then bring about a larger review workload... After several cycles, becoming a mass emotional platform seemed inevitable, consistent with Lei Zheng’s long-standing prediction.

Lei Zheng’s unwillingness to talk to him was probably because he didn’t want to argue about this issue either. His original intention for investing in Day and Night was definitely not to make it a mass-market software. The current development wasn’t the result they both wanted, but it pointed towards worldly success. He couldn’t help but recall what Zheng Zeyan had said: before fully developing, don’t define a social software.

There were many ways to compete for users with lovedate. Lei Zheng, with his vicious heart, chose to market in the other’s territory. Although advertising was direct, it burned money. Lei Zheng bought the headlines of emotional marketing accounts on Weibo and WeChat at a package price, releasing them successively within half a month. He also invited media professionals to write tech commentary and timely press releases: “How did Day and Night become favored by all emotional bloggers for a whole month?”, “The App that guides everyone to open up about secret emotions, we talked to the founder,” “WeChat, the traffic king, and Weibo, the communication hegemon, are they truly the end of demand?”... After a round of exaggerated publicity, Lei Zheng bought a wave of fake followers to post on lovedate, and even had lovedate’s top streamers personally release videos to drive traffic, posting on Day and Night’s Day side and highly praising the Night side—the total cost was 1.2 million. In the era of the traffic economy, Jian Zhaowen didn’t know how Lei Zheng managed to be so cost-effective. Phillip certainly knew what was going on, but compared to directly reporting to the regulators, Lei Zheng’s actions weren’t large enough to cause public outrage. Moreover, the Series A funding Phillip received was almost used up, and he hadn’t secured Series B funding yet, so he was unwilling to allocate budget to buy fake followers. His Weibo with seven thousand followers wasn’t enough to accuse Jian Zhaowen—Lei Zheng was a villain who knew how to cleverly exploit others’ weaknesses.

Yu Zhimei’s call came: “Don’t ask Lei Zheng out for dinner, invite them over to our place.”

“Forget it, what can your and my cooking skills do? You know how picky Lei Zheng is.”

“It’s Sister He. She wants to invite everyone to celebrate Christmas together. It’s been a long time since we last met.”

“Oh, the dessert shop.” Jian Zhaowen closed his computer: “Lei Zheng, who runs his own bar, might be picky about Miaolin.”

Yu Zhimei sighed on the phone, and after a few seconds, she spoke: “Sister He just told me that Gao Yuan has to pay back taxes. The dessert shop is their joint property, and the film and television company was opened after their marriage, so it’s also joint debt...”

Recalling the dual contracts they had avoided like the plague in autumn, Jian Zhaowen’s heart sank: “So, to pay back the taxes, they have to sell the dessert shop?”

“Yeah.” Yu Zhimei was also a little unhappy: “I was shocked when Sister He told me. After all, the back taxes are a huge hole. For the sake of divorce... she has no choice.”

Hanging up the phone, Jian Zhaowen saw a message pushed by Lei Zheng—not only that, but various sections of tech and internet media were also pushing: lovedate suspected of spreading obscene content in live streams, and the existence of an offline sex trade industry involving streamers and tipping users, including many minors. It had been removed from app stores and ordered to rectify, and relevant personnel were under investigation.

Only a desk lamp was on in the office. Jian Zhaowen stared at the news, twirling his pen, and slowly walked to the window. The late night was silent. Lei Zheng passed by the office on his way back to the company to work overtime. The two exchanged a glance, as if trying to probe the unknowable future in each other’s eyes.