No one called it the Internet anymore. It was The Net of Trust - a name the government said sounded "friendlier".
Every citizen had a TrustScore beside their username: a number decorated in red, white and blue for loyal "patriots"; deep red for anything it decided was subversive.
Post the wrong thing, read an article even hinting at opposition to state-sanctioned news or linger too long on a flagged video - and your score could slip. If it drops too low, your privileges - shopping, travel, emails, banking or more - could be locked behind a TrustScore message.
They used forced compliance at first but the severe measures sparked backlash. Over time, control shifted to groupthink: a quieter kind of power. People learned to self-censor in order to keep "their" government from imposing harsh, criminally unconstitutional measures.
It had started in plain sight, disguised as corporate responsibility. The biggest tech companies - Corpsearch, PatriotOS, iComply and InYourFace Social - signed "cooperation declarations" with the Department of National Harmony.
Those agreements soon evolved into federally mandated enforcement frameworks, transforming every platform into an extension of the state's will.
Then came the new mandates: every user required to submit federally recognized identification. The new algorithms followed quickly. Every word analyzed, every image scanned, every message parsed for tone - even sarcasm carried a risk rating - and every encrypted service had its own backdoor.
Maya worked as a content auditor, one of many hundreds of thousands reviewing flagged material across platforms, all tied to government oversight. Most of her job was confirming the system's judgments. "Violation of trust" the report would say, and she'd click Approve.
But one evening she stumbled across her brother's profile - marked with a warning after he shared an encrypted link.
The link led to a gateway that routed Maya to The Free Web. Secure, decentralized, uncensorable.
Anonymous posts, open code, voices without authorization. It was messy, chaotic, alive. Most of all, it was empowering.
For the first time in years, Maya felt human again.
The next morning, the system prompted her to verify her identity. Her TrustScore number had lowered. "Non-compliant data access detected," the screen warned.
She considered the warning for a few moments, then - with a defiant smile - accessed the portal again. Her TrustScore might dip again, her account reviewed - but she didn't care.
The screen flickered once, then held steady. A message appeared, addressed to her:
> You are not alone.
License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
attribution: 640kb.neocities.org
Date: 07 oct 2025