"Professor, this is the public opinion monitoring for the past month. Please take a look!" In the internet era, public opinion monitoring has become an important task for major corporations, as many well-known large companies have suffered losses due to online public opinion.
This kind of issue is manageable until it erupts. Once it does, even major corporations can sustain significant damage.
However, later on, all large corporations learned their lesson and established their own public opinion monitoring departments. They constantly monitored relevant information online, and as soon as negative news related to their companies was discovered, they would find ways to completely suppress it, preventing public opinion from escalating.
It seems that scandals involving large corporations rarely appear on the internet in reality. It is said that these large corporations have no scandals because their public opinion monitoring departments are very effective, directly handling negative public opinion online before it has a chance to ferment.
The difficulty is not high; it only requires contacting the relevant departments to delete all negative posts while strictly monitoring the posters, preventing them from publishing any information through online channels.
Social media platforms like Twitter generate their largest revenue precisely from the fees associated with handling negative public opinion. For example, the opioid manufacturer mentioned earlier invests millions of dollars annually in advertising on Twitter. However, you will hardly see any advertisements for opioid drugs, as advertising for such medications is prohibited by law.
Is it that this manufacturer is brainless for spending money on advertising when it's not allowed?
Of course not. This is simply a reasonable protection fee. As long as this fee is paid, and they become a "sugar daddy" of Twitter, Twitter will assist them in deleting relevant negative tweets or even proactively manage negative sentiment.
Just like what Boss Huang did, it's not about deletion, but about making it impossible for others to see these tweets, allowing the entire incident to spread only within a very small scope.
To put it bluntly, about half of the advertising fees on major online platforms are actually protection fees, meant to safeguard one's own public opinion by having these online platforms control it.
Therefore, when Professor Parkinson saw that the self-narration video of that farmer, included in the latest month's public opinion monitoring, had been spreading for more than ten days without being blocked, he became curious.
"Which agency bought this land? How can their public opinion monitoring be so poor? Why haven't they quelled the public opinion yet?" Professor Parkinson shook his head and said dismissively.
He found such agencies to be utterly incompetent and disdained them.
"It's a small agency, likely with underdeveloped public opinion monitoring and response departments. Moreover, the incident this time is indeed significant, with over a dozen children dead. It must be difficult to suppress it," the secretary replied.
"Is this agency related to us?" Professor Parkinson asked.
"No, it's not related to us. On the contrary, it has some dealings with Rockefeller. That shouldn't be an agency under Rockefeller, it seems to be an organization established by two or three wealthy individuals working together," the secretary pondered for a moment before saying.
"Then it doesn't matter. The fire won't reach us anyway. Let them handle it," Professor Parkinson said indifferently.
So, although this matter involved the ultra-high-speed vacuum magnetic levitation railway, the problem did not arise from the railway itself, but from issues with the road. It certainly wouldn't affect their own business!
This was Professor Parkinson's thinking, so he did not have his subordinates intervene to resolve the problem, choosing instead to simply watch the spectacle.
While Goldman Sachs chose to watch, some people did not want to. However, their intention was not to help block the news, but to fan the flames.
This was because the three wealthy individuals behind this agency were essentially local magnates. Their assets might not be substantial, but their control over the local Oregon region was very strong. Without their approval, other agencies could not acquire land through which the pipelines would pass.
Therefore, both sides had to constantly compromise. In the end, the major Wall Street institutions ceded 40% of the shares to these three local magnates in exchange for ownership of the remaining 60% of the land.
However, it turned out that these three magnates were not only unreliable, but their methods were also too crude. And finally, they encountered such a hot-tempered fellow, making them utterly invincible.
After the incident, the major Wall Street institutions were not thinking about how to cover it up together, but rather how to seize the opportunity to profit and acquire the 40% stake held by the other party.
Thus, with the fanning of the flames by the major institutions, this news not only wasn't suppressed at the first opportunity but also led to a continuous stream of new reports.
This included more of the farmer's experiences. Although he appeared to own 400 hectares of land, he was actually heavily in debt due to lawsuits.
If he could receive $200,000, he would be able to clear his debts. However, the reality was that he had nothing to do with this $200,000, and it was likely that he couldn't hold on any longer, ultimately deciding to take everyone down with him.
More coincidentally, the reason the farmer got into lawsuits was that he also owned a car repair shop, but this shop went bankrupt due to competition from another large chain enterprise, resulting in a significant financial loss.
This competition was not normal commercial competition. Instead, the other party had bribed their way through the road department, causing the road department to directly block the road in front of the farmer's repair shop under the guise of sewer pipe repairs. This closure lasted for a year and a half, making it impossible for customers to visit, and ultimately forcing the shop to close twice.
The owner of this large chain enterprise was an enterprise under one of the three local magnates. Therefore, journalists boldly predicted that the farmer, upon realizing he had been set up twice, became enraged and decided to take innocent people down with him.
Under deliberate guidance, one of the magnates immediately fell into the rage of the entire American populace. In this situation, the local government departments had no choice but to initiate various investigations.
And as is well known, when magnates like these are thoroughly investigated, it is guaranteed to uncover a mountain of dirty secrets. Not a single one of these bosses would escape.
So, these magnates became anxious and started looking for solutions. According to the calculations of the major Wall Street institutions, the best solution would naturally be for these magnates to compromise with them, willingly hand over the territories they controlled, and then Wall Street institutions would help them resolve the investigation issues.
As long as the investigation was withdrawn, the problem would essentially be solved. As for public opinion, it would naturally disappear with time; this is an unchanging truth.
However, there was a small unexpected occurrence. This magnate did not intend to compromise with Wall Street. Instead, he dug up another common method for resolving public opinion issues: shifting the focus of public opinion.
Soon, a mysterious user broke the news online, saying that instead of worrying about the magnates encroaching on land, shouldn't they be more concerned about the fact that land acquisition started three years ago, but the new pipeline construction has not even begun yet?
After all, according to the plans of the United States Ultra-High-Speed Vacuum Pipeline Railway Company, the entire Oregon pipeline should have been completed by 2010. But now it is 2013, and why has the pipeline, merely 60 kilometers from the starting point, not been built?
Moreover, Chinese pipelines had already reached Gansu Province and the capital city earlier this year. It is estimated that within two to three more years, both the northern and southern lines will be fully connected. So why hasn't their pipeline even reached 60 kilometers?
Also, why did it cost as much as $200,000 for just 4 acres of land? The local land price for five acres is less than 5,000 units. The price has increased fortyfold. Could there be something fishy here!
At this moment, the outraged American public was easily ignited.
And now, there was a new problem. All American netizens naturally began to research this issue, and the more they researched, the more surprised they were.
This was because the United States Ultra-High-Speed Vacuum Pipeline Railway Company had already spent an unimaginable amount to pay compensation for the land along the pipeline route.
And the price of $200,000 for 4 acres of land was considered cheap, as these 400 acres of land were all farmland, and some were forested areas, which were the cheapest among all the land.
The truly expensive ones were various commercially developed lands.
Some enthusiastic netizens at the time, by collecting and consolidating financial reports released by various publicly listed companies in the United States, as well as the most crucial annual financial report released by the United States Ultra-High-Speed Vacuum Pipeline Railway Company itself.
Within these articles and data, filled with all sorts of professional jargon that no normal person would want to look at, they painstakingly extracted all the land acquisition data.
Over a total of three years, the United States Ultra-High-Speed Vacuum Pipeline Railway Company had acquired 9620 acres of land through payment for the construction of the entire pipeline.
The total cost for this amounted to five trillion US dollars, averaging a purchase price of $52,000 per acre. The current average land purchase price in the United States is $800 per acre, meaning it was 65 times more expensive.
The land with the highest unit price was located in California, as this was land in the core business district of California. Therefore, the final compensation price per acre reached an astonishing $463.2 million.
However, this price was considered quite reasonable. Compared to the average price difference of 65 times, this price was only about 6 times more expensive, which was incredibly reasonable!