Thursday, 22nd of April 2027
FACESCAN DISCONTINUED BY SOCIAL HACKTIVISTS, MICROSOFT TECHNICIANS AT A LOSS AT HOW TO PROCEED
After being in the market for only two short months, FaceScan was discontinued by what appears to be a group of famous social hacktivists. The program became a fever shortly after its launch in February 2027, and its sales surpassed all expectations.
FaceScan is the new device developed by Microsoft that has become a must for all young people of this generation. The small chip, which can be inserted on any device, is capable of running through facial recognition anyone you come in contact with, instantly loading to your device all relevant information about the person for quick access. As stated by its creators, FaceScan was made to facilitate connections between people, accelerating the sometimes nerve-racking process of getting to know someone knew. The device not only tracks a person’s activity online, but analyzes through psychometrics their digital trace in order to come up with an extremely accurate description of the person’s personality, interests and even character. With an array of different settings, FaceScan is able to identify in seconds if people are a good match, which made it very attractive to young people on the dating scene. The immediacy of FaceScan takes away the hardships of finding out if someone isn’t a good fit for you after months together, since it can instantly calculate through complex algorithms the outcome of any relationship, saving youngsters looking for love some crucial time.
However appealing, FaceScan has faced a lot of resistance from activist groups who believe the device is responsible for the further artificialization of interpersonal relationships. Some have argued the immediacy offered by Microsoft’s new device is taking away from the relevant human experience of succeeding and failing at relationships. FaceScan is taking upon itself the task of predicting outcomes of relationships, and gathering information about people instantly, stopping people from experiencing the raw emotions of working through stages of a relationship and getting to know someone through old-fashion conversations.
The discussion of whether or not the services provided by FaceScan are positive or not have become of primal importance after a group of well known hacktivists discontinued its use on the morning of Monday, 19th. On a move that has left Microsoft technicians awestruck, members of the famous hacktivist group Lizard Squad orchestrated a blackout of the new device. Only two short months after its release, FaceScan has swooped the nation, causing this blackout to have astronomic consequences. Many teenagers and young adults, the biggest target audience of the device, have voiced desperation faced with the blackout of FaceScan. On the short span of time it has been in use, FaceScan already succeeded in making the people who use it dependent on it. A 20 year-old girl interviewed my this Newspaper, who asked to remain anonymous, said she doesn’t know how to interact with people without the help of FaceScan, and its forced discontinuance made by the Lizard Squad has led her to several anxiety attacks.
Microsoft’s best technicians have been working tirelessly since Monday morning to revert the blackout caused by the Lizard Squad, without success. Although it is just a matter of time until FaceScan is back in use, the hacktivists responsible for this strike definitely had their voices heard. The widespread panic with which the public faced the break of this new device shows just how dependent we’ve become on technology as a society. And since this dependence is rooted so deep, what happens when we can’t rely on technology? Apparently, we break down.
Thankfully, on the short span of three days without FaceScan, groups of young people have been trying to meet and interact without the help of technology. Trying to meet people on the old-fashioned way has been showing to be more successful than expected. Even though those young people have been showing some signs of anxiety and nervousness due to the unpredictability that comes with this method, they have also shown a newfound excitement by having the future remain a mystery. FaceScan had taken away almost any doubt or mystery for the future of relationships, and it seems as if the opinion of many young users of FaceScan has been that this predictability isn’t really comforting, but boring.
It seems clear that the hacktivists on the Lizard Squad had the goal to remind people of a time where technology wasn’t the only means to interact with others, and point out that our dependency on it can be disabling. Now the real question is, will this few days without FaceScan really make a difference after the device comes back in use? We will continue to investigate as Microsoft technicians advance on putting their loved device back in use.
