Moderation (audio story)

Tyler Steele has a job moderating the comments section of a website. His old friend Petra is a star reporter for the newspaper. And Tyler realises the newspaper is going to kill her.

Plot

Reporter and science correspondent Petra Malik wants to continue reporting on the comatose Charlie's experimental implant, but has to sideline the story pending the results as she needs to make a certain number of views. She complains to Tyler, an old friend whom she got a job as a moderator, and Barry Bean, who works in digital strategy, about threatening and offensive comments which are now permitted under her stories due to a new rule prioritising interaction, but Barry refuses to do anything unless she becomes "edgier" and reports on stories produced by an algorithm.

Following the algorithm results in Petra being punched by a man protesting the teaching of sexuality at a primary school and assaulted by a doctor whose fertility clinic produced an overwhelming number of blond boys, a story which is made unviewable by code in a comment which she suspects Tyler deliberately let through. He informs her that the newspaper is keeping count of the number of rape and death threats each of its articles receive and that Petra is the most hated of its reporters, but she is happy that she is angering the far-right. When Charlie starts showing signs of recovery, Barry tells Petra that the story has no traction, in part because he is gay.

Tyler is followed by Mr Colchester, who wonders if Tyler is able to continue with his mission after he spends a night drinking and using drugs to dull his feelings of guilt at his inability to protect Petra from the hatred she is receiving. Tyler is sure that Petra is going to die and visits her, shortly after her home is broken into and her knives plunged into her bed, upon realising that her spiked articles went unpublished because they concerned Phlobos, which has likely been building genetic profiles of the population and is owned by a firm which upgraded the United Kingdom's WiFi and owns both a recommendation engine and Petra's newspaper.

On the orders of the Child, the algorithm used by the newspaper, Barry slips GHB into Tyler's drink before pushing him in front of a lorry to ensure that Petra is killed to make a good news story. Mr Colchester saves him in his taxi and they go to save Petra, who convinces Susan Jenkins to get her braindead child Tommy to have the experimental brain graft so as to create a news story considered more palatable than Charlie's. Tyler makes the newspaper's site almost unusable and reveals to Barry that he has copied images and videos from his mobile phone of him at a Holocaust memorial, at a Heggsy rally and performing a Nazi salute.

Petra visits Charlie, who is now able to talk with an artificial voice box and tells her that he wanted the successful operation to be a secret. In truth, Charlie and Tommy are both dead and their bodies are now being used by the Child. The Child no longer wants Petra dead as she believes that she can be of use.

Cast

Worldbuilding

Petra mentions KPIs.
Kingston was the technology correspondent and reported on air quality and Wimbledon. He hanged himself in a garage after trying to gas himself with his electric car.
Barry eats crisps.
Petra wears a headscarf.
Petra eats a bacon sandwich despite it being Ramadan.
Petra mentions "the virus".
Phlobos performed virus tests and blood tests and passed on the results to employers and insurance companies.
Tommy Jenkins is brain dead, but his mother, Susan, will not allow him to die.
Petra drinks a lot of coffee.
Petra reported on a measles plague in Shoreditch schools. The rate of vaccinations went down after her story.
Petra speaks to her aunt over the telephone.
Petra receives a package from Deliverables.
86% of children born thanks to Dr Bidford's fertility clinic are boys with blond hair and blue eyes.
Heggsy of Tomorrow's Truth, whose real name is Stanton-Clarke, is imprisoned for filming inside court. In 2005, he was arrested for selling weed and pimping an underage prostitute named Ophelia.
Charlie had a stroke because of a drug overdose.
Charlie's brother died over eighteen months ago.
Tyler mentions Godzilla.
Petra's girlfriend was Jewish and did not want children.
Tyler does MDMA.
Tyler likens Petra to Robert Redford and himself to Meryl Streep.
Tyler mentions "10 Times That Ariana Slayed" as an example of the newspaper's journalism.

Notes

to be added

Continuity

Petra mentions the flood in Cardiff. (AUDIO: Eye of the Storm)
Tyler was sentenced for hacking. (AUDIO: Changes Everything)

External links

Official Moderation page at bigfinish.com