My 2027: Scrubr Causes Chaos

“Download Scrubr today!” blares the commercial. I mute my phone. Commercials are always popping up on this website, and they seem to get louder the longer you are active on the site. I feel a movement next to me on the bed.

“Sorry to wake you, sis.” I whisper. “I was just trying to get started on my research while you were still asleep.”

“It’s fine.” She replies groggily, “I needed to get up anyway.” She rolls over to face me and then smiles. “When do you think they’ll finally get rid of pop up ads?”

“Not soon enough. I’m tired of seeing this scrubr ad. Everyone knows what it is. It’s been in the news constantly. You’d think they would invest money into fixing the problems instead of advertising.”

“What even is Scrubr anyway? I’m too bad at technology to really understand any of that.” She gestures to my pile of chargers and electronics.

“Do you mean what was its original purpose or what is wrong with it?” I ask. I wonder how she continues through life this uninformed.

“Well, I knew that it was originally used to do deep cleans of people’s online history. It would find all of your embarrassing things you did that could hurt you or your chance of getting hired somewhere. It was the most competitive software of its kind because it could fine very instance of an embarrassing picture and remove it. But why has it suddenly been in the news so much? Everyone is always saying ‘ I can’t believe I used that horrible product.’ But I’m always too shy to ask why it’s horrible. “

“You’re right that it started that way. Then the updates started to get… interesting. The first one allowed you to see the IP of every computer that had posted the photos you no longer wanted online. Originally this was innocent enough. You can figure out their email and email them and ask them to delete the picture. Some will, some wont but it’s no big deal. Then someone, nobody knows who, got the bright idea to go to the person’s house and physically delete the images or coerce the other person into deleting them. Which quickly spiraled into people literally killing to delete these pictures. Who knew a job could drive people to such great lengths?”

“That all just came from the first update?” She seems unable to comprehend what it is that I have just told her. I chuckle.

“Yeah, but trust me. It gets worse. Scrubr decided to streamline the algorithm so it was much more accurate and also made it so the pictures didn’t have to be yours for you to delete them. They were trying to curtail the murder problem but they really just made it worse. The algorithm was so accurate that you could find anything. An exes compromising photo of you, or someone’s blackmail, or even posts from a social movement you didn’t like. You could delete, without a trace effectively anything on the internet you didn’t like.”

“I don’t really see the problem with that. An internet that is just cat videos doesn’t seem that bad.”

“Well it isn’t until you remember that most social movements plan online now. First the whole site that was basically Neo-Nazi HQ got taken down. Then the Radical left wing groups, Communists and Socialists and the like. They kept taking down more and more moderate websites. This is still going on, and were already pretty censored. You can’t post an opinion without someone going in and taking it down. You can’t even post art without someone finding it a little offensive and taking it down.”

“But if this is being used like this why hasn’t Scrubr changed anything? It started out as a very helpful tool for those of us who used the internet like idiots when we were kids. Why would they let it get like this?”

“Scrubr is still a paid subscription service for one. And they are making a lot of money off of this. Secondly, at this point it is like a hydra head. Kill Scrubr and 2 more just like it will take its place. I don’t know that there’s really a way to stop it at this point.”

“That seems like a very big thing. How can I have missed that?” My sister gets out of bed and stretches.

“I mean it only happened over the past two months. Plus, what would you need me for if you were capable of being informed.” I laughed and threw a pillow at her.