【紐約書評】臉書新聞的打「假」時代

作者：Sue Halpern

譯者：王樂穎

校對：文詩韻

策劃：文詩韻

Facebook"s Fake News Fix

臉書新聞打「假」

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When Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared with his (then) 101,545,240 followers that his New Year』s resolution for 2018 was 「to fix」 Facebook, one might have asked, 「Fix it for whom?」 It is a question with a number of possible answers: for its shareholders, who saw growth level off in the last year and young people turning to other social media platforms; for its users, who saw their personal information appropriated by political operatives and sometimes used against them in insidious ways; or for the public more generally, which is living with the consequences of that appropriation and with the proliferation of propaganda, camouflaged as legitimate news, not only in the United States, but in countries such as Burma and South Sudan, where Facebook-generated 「fake news」 has been used to instigate ethnic violence.

臉書網創始人兼CEO馬克·扎克伯格和（當時）101,545,240名粉絲分享自己2018的新年願望：整改臉書網。看到這條狀態的時候，人們可能會想：「整改服務的對象是誰？」這個問題有著許多可能的答案。股東們看到的是去年增長率降低，年輕用戶轉向其他社交媒體平台；用戶則發現他們的個人信息被挪用作政治操縱，並且有時，被卑鄙陰險地用來對付他們自己；或者更廣義地，就大眾的立場來看：他們承受著個人信息被挪用以及披著合法新聞外衣的政治宣傳四處泛濫所帶來的後果。這種情況不僅出現在美國，臉書網上產生的「假新聞」在緬甸、南蘇丹等國家已經成為挑起種族暴力的武器。

camouflage [ "k?muflɑ:? ] n. the disguising especially of military equipment or installations with paint, nets, or foliage; also : the disguise so applied. 偽裝，掩飾

Let』s be cynical for a moment. Coming just weeks after a contentious hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—where Senator Dianne Feinstein held the cudgel of regulation over the heads of representatives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter, telling them that if their companies did not 「do something」 about the manipulation of their platforms by foreign agents, 「we will」—Zuckerberg』s New Year』s resolution could also be interpreted as his personal response to Feinstein』s threat. After all, his company spent more than $8.4 million last year deploying a brigade of thirty-six lobbyists to walk the halls of Congress defending Facebook from government interference. A New Year』s resolution is a lot cheaper, and it gives its author 364 days to make good.

讓我們「憤世嫉俗」一會兒。參議院情報特別委員會幾周前剛剛舉行了一次頗具爭議的聽證會，參議員戴安·費恩斯坦對來自臉書、谷歌和推特的代表舉起了法規的殺威棒。她告訴他們，如果這些公司不對外國勢力操縱自家平台的行為『採取行動』，『聯邦政府會。』扎克伯格發表的新年願望也可解讀為可能是他個人對費恩斯坦威脅的回應。畢竟，臉書公司去年花了超過840萬美元雇請足足36名說客遊說專家在國會為臉書辯護，並阻止政府干涉臉書的行動。相比之下，新年計劃的性價比就高多了，還能給表決心的人再爭取364天的時間。

And it took only a week for Facebook to offer up its fix. It did not come from Zuckerberg directly, but from Adam Mosseri, the company』s Head of News Feed.

並且，臉書在短短一個星期內就提出了整改方案。這個方案不是由扎克伯格本人，而是由公司新聞推送主管亞當·莫賽里提出。

The Facebook news feed is not, as its name suggests, a compendium of topical stories from various news media. Rather, it is a collection of posts from one』s Facebook 「friends,」 from sites one has actively 「liked,」 from third-party sites that Facebook believes you』re interested in based on your previous online behavior, and from advertisers who have put you into a category that, theoretically, makes you predisposed toward buying what they are selling. None of this is random. Everything that appears in the news feed is there because Facebook』s proprietary algorithm has put it there. That algorithm sorts through and analyzes masses of digital signals, deciding which of your friends』 posts you』d most like to see and which silly cat videos and other material from greater Facebook will grab your attention. It then serves these up along with a slew of paid advertisements, delivering to two billion people a never-ending supply of individualized, targeted content.

臉書新聞推送內容和字面意思不同。它整合的不是來自各個新聞媒體的時事報道，而是用戶好友的狀態、頻繁點贊的界面、和臉書根據歷史上網行為判斷用戶會喜歡的第三方網站，還有那些把你列入潛在客戶範圍的廣告商們。所有這一切都不是隨機的。一切出現在新聞推送中的內容都是由臉書經獨家演算法後呈現的。這一演算法仔細挑選並分析大量數據信息，判定你最想要看到哪個朋友發的狀態、哪個搞笑貓咪視頻，還有其他臉書網上最可能吸引你的內容。隨後，演算法會把這些內容和大量付費廣告一起呈現給20億臉書用戶，為他們提供無窮無盡個性化、定位精準的內容。

proprietary[ pr?u"prai?t?ri ] adj. Protected by trademark or patent or copyright; made or produced or distributed by one having exclusive rights. 所有的, 私人擁有的.

Mosseri began his message reiterating the company』s aspirational mantra.「Facebook was built to bring people closer together and build relationships,」 he wrote. 「One of the ways we do this is by connecting people to meaningful posts from their friends and family in News Feed.」 And then he described—in vague terms—how the company would be tweaking its algorithm so that 「people have more opportunities to interact with the people they care about.」 To accomplish this, he said, the algorithm will 「predict which posts you might want to interact with your friends about and show these posts higher in [the] feed.」 So what will fuel this prediction engine? According to Mosseri, 「posts that inspire back-and-forth discussion in the comments and posts that you might want to share and react to.」 He also said that the news feed would carry less public content, 「including videos and other posts from publishers.」

莫賽里開篇重申了公司的老一套願景：『臉書網創始的目的是讓人們更親密，增建關係，』他寫道。『我們採取的方法之一就是讓人們在新聞推送中更多地看到來自家人、朋友發表的重要狀態。』隨後他含混地描述了公司是如何利用演算法，讓人們『有更多機會和自己在乎的人互動』。為了達到這個目的，演算法會『預測你會和好友就哪條狀態進行互動，進而讓這些狀態在推送中的排位更靠前。』那麼這種預測的機制的動力是什麼？莫賽里說，是『能夠讓人在評論區熱烈討論的狀態和用戶可能會想要分享、做出回應的狀態。』他還說，新聞推送中的公共內容較少，『包括視頻和其他來自新聞媒體的文章。』

reiterate [ ri:"it?reit ] v. to say, state, or perform again. 重申；反覆地做

mantra [ "m?ntr? ] n. a commonly repeated word or phrase. 咒語，頌歌

In the days following, much was made of the impact this algorithm adjustment will have on third-party sites, especially news organizations, which have come to rely on Facebook for traffic (and, therefore, ad revenue). This is a legitimate worry, especially for legacy journalism, which struggled to adapt to the mobile digital world and found a workaround through Facebook. Then, a week later, Mark Zuckerberg announced a further fix, this one an attempt to limit the amount of 「fake news」: Facebook will survey its users, asking them to rank the 「trustworthiness」 of various news sources. Those with higher rankings will get priority in the news feed, while those with lower scores, presumably, will be shut out. As a consequence, Zuckerberg said, the amount of news on Facebook will decline by 20 percent.

之後的幾天，人們充分討論了演算法調整對第三方網站，尤其是新聞機構造成的影響。這些機構仰仗臉書網引流（因此也倚賴臉書網帶來營收）。這一擔憂不無道理，尤其是對那些掙扎著適應移動數據時代，終於在臉書上找到一條出路的老派新聞機構。一個星期之後，馬克·扎克伯格宣布了進一步的改進措施。這一措施的目標是改進減少「假新聞」的數量。臉書網會進行用戶調查，請他們對各種新聞來源的「可信度」進行評價。得分高的媒體會在新聞推送中具有優先順序，而那些得分低的媒體可能會被過濾。扎克伯格說，結果是臉書上的新聞量可能會減少20%。

There is no way to know, yet, if outsourcing discernment—if that』s what polling a random collection of two billion people is—will cut down on the amount of propaganda, lying, and deception on Facebook, or if such a survey will simply replicate existing ideological divisions. But it is also unclear where the more than 50 percent of Facebook users who get their news from the site will get it now, if anywhere, since there will be so much less of it. And maybe that is the point. This diminution of news might be a way for Facebook to walk away from the public sphere—or, at least, appear to walk away—at a time when it has been taken to task for its overweening influence there. As Slate』s chairman and editor-in-chief, Jacob Weisberg, told The New York Times, downgrading news content also benefits the company in those countries where independent journalism is outlawed.

我們現在無法得知通過20億人口的隨機調查而獲得的外包信息甄別，是否真能減少臉書上各種營銷、謊言和欺騙，或者這一舉措僅僅是單純複製現存的意識形態分歧。如果臉書上的新聞總量將大幅減少，我們也不確定過去以臉書作為主要新聞來源的用戶（這一群體比例超過50%）日後獲取的信息會出自何處。這可能就是問題所在。在臉書不得不應對它因為過分誇大的新聞引導而給公共領域帶來的影響時，減少新聞推送對它或許會是一個抽身的辦法，或者至少展現出了一種姿態。就像《批判》主席、主編雅各布·韋恩斯伯格在《紐約時報》所說的一樣，減少新聞內容對在那些獨立新聞運營違法的國家的公司有好處。

『Facebook is just desperate to get into China, and it will never do that unless it censors news—and this is actually a neat solution to that,』 Weisberg said. 『If you only have news on the platform shared by users, users who live under repressive regimes don』t have access to real news and can』t share it, because it』s legally prohibited.』 But even in the United States, where publishers were already tailoring content so it might rise to the top of the news feed, Facebook』s pivot to the personal may encourage more stories about the Instant Pot, for example, and fewer analyses of Middle East policy, since one is more likely than the other to be shared, promoted, and drive traffic. Call it censorship by a thousand clicks.

「臉書用盡一切辦法想打入中國市場，但如果不審查新聞，它的目標永遠不可能達成——新引進的演算法是一個非常棒的解決方法，」 維斯伯格說。 「如果平台上只有用戶分享的新聞，那用戶就無法接觸到被法律禁止的新聞，更無從分享。」但即使是在美國，報社也已經開始為在新聞推送量身打造首頁文章。打個比方，臉書對個人喜好的偏重會鼓勵更多和高壓鍋有關的文章，更少中東政策的分析，因為與後者相比，前者被分享、推廣從而拉動流量的可能性更高。這可以叫做「千次點擊審查制度」。

A few months ago, Facebook experimented with a similar algorithm modification in six countries, removing all professionally-produced journalism from the news feed and sequestering it in its own marginal tab called 「Explore.」 That tweak, like the one announced last week, prioritized posts from friends and family over other kinds of information. The result was disquieting. It made it more difficult for users to find trusted news sources on the platform, kept official announcements at bay, and, rather than eliminating fake news,in some instances exacerbated it.

幾個月前，，臉書在六個國家進行了類似演算法調整的實驗，把所有專業新聞報道從新聞推送中移除，把這些內容移到「探索」這個邊緣功能中。這個調整就和上周宣布的一樣，讓來自朋友和家人的狀態擁有比其他信息更高的優先順序。調整的結果令人不安。它讓用戶更難在平台上找到可信賴的新聞，讓官方公告無法傳播；這一演算法不但沒有消滅假新聞，還在某種情況下促進了其傳播。

at bay adj. forced to turn and face attackers. 陷入絕境

This should not have been difficult to predict. It stands to reason that giving priority to posts from friends that generate lots of back-and-forth will do nothing to curtail the proliferation of fake news. If I post something provocative and unsubstantiated that I heard from someone else, and many of my Facebook friends comment on it and pass it along to their friends and those users also comment on it, the new algorithm should be primed to make that information go viral. And if what I say to you, and you say to me, and our friends say to each other, makes it to the top of our news feeds by dint of this new 「engagement」 algorithm, then Facebook』s echo-chamber effect, where like-minded people talk only among themselves, will be more resonant, not less. Connections may be solidified and alliances cemented, but so will divisions and polarities. (On the other hand, if the new algorithm also prioritizes 「happy」 content—graduation announcements, birthday wishes, job promotions—over other kinds of exchanges, then the news feed will become the Internet equivalent of the Hallmark 1 card aisle in the supermarket, and Facebook will go the way of MySpace and AOL.)

這一情況其實不難預料。讓好友之間多次互動的狀態具有優先順序並不能減少假新聞的傳播。如果我發表了一條從別人那裡聽來、很有煽動性但毫無現實依據的內容，我的很多好友又對它進行了評論、轉發給他們的好友，而這些朋友的朋友也發表評論的話，新的演算法會讓這條消息在網路上病毒式傳播。又比如，我和你聊天的內容、你和我聊天的內容、我們的朋友彼此之間相互交談的內容被這個新的「互動」演算法推上了首頁，最後臉書的迴音壁現象（一群思想相近的人只和自己的群體交流）會越來越嚴重，而不是減輕。這可能會加強聯繫、鞏固感情，但也會加劇隔閡和分化。從另一個角度來說，如果新演算法同時讓諸如畢業宣言、生日願望和工作升職這一類「開心」時刻比其他類型的消息更具有優先順序，那麼新聞推送就變成了互聯網版的超市好碼客祝福卡專列，臉書也會步MySpace和AOL後塵，走上衰落的道路。

Hallmark Cards：美國最大的祝福卡片製造商

MySpace： 早期社交媒體網站之一，05-08年之間是世界上最大的社交媒體網站， 但經營不善，2008年被臉書超越

AOL（美國在線）：美國互聯網先驅之一，也曾是美國最著名的互聯網服務提供商

In the meantime, all this personal content, including our journalism preferences, may have another effect, that of delivering more of ourselves—our interests, desires, movements, passions, and emotions—to Facebook and the data brokers that, in turn, sell it to governments, credit agencies, political operatives, and marketers. Is there any doubt that connections are the currency of Facebook—or that they are in large part responsible for the company』s $500 billion valuations? And about those marketers: missing from Facebook』s 「fix」 is any mention of advertising. This is a fundamental omission, given that Facebook, despite its founder』s insistence that his company exists to connect the people of the world, does not just happen to run a side-hustle selling thing to fund his humanitarian project, but, rather, is the second largest advertising platform on the planet. All of the connecting that is done there is done in the service of all its advertising since Facebook users are both the customer (who buys things) and the product (who provides the raw data that enables advertisers to target users with such precision). That is the real genius of Facebook, and why the company is so valuable.

同時，所有這些個人信息（其中包括對新聞的偏好）可能有其他的作用：它會更多地披露我們自身。無論是興趣、慾望、行動、愛好還是情緒，對臉書和數據商來說，都可以販賣給政府、信用卡機構、政界及商界人士。有人懷疑「連結」就是臉書網硬通貨，或者「連結」功能貢獻了臉書5000億估值的絕大部分嗎？還有那些市場人員：臉書的「調整」獨獨沒有提到廣告。這是一種原則性忽略。雖然創始人堅持說臉書存在的目的是連結世界各地的人，但臉書是世界上第二大廣告平台，用販賣商品的副業資助自己的人文項目絕不是偶然。臉書上的一切連結都是為了服務於廣告，因為臉書網用戶即是消費者（他們會購買商品）也是產品（他們會提供能讓廣告商精準定位客戶的初始數據）。這是臉書網真正聰明的地方，也是這個公司如此值錢的原因。

連結：臉書網2010年推出的一項功能，如果用戶點贊某一內容、喜歡某個頁面、標記電影、餐廳或者和臉書有合作關係的第三方網站，那就會創立「連結」。

As we were reminded during the last election, Facebook is used to sell ideas as well as products. As Brad Parscale, the head of digital media for Donald Trump』s election campaign, pointed out, Facebook』s marketing tools are just as useful for selling a candidate as they are for selling a blender. One of those tools was Facebook』s so-called 「dark posts,」 which enabled Parscale and his team to send certain African-American voters incendiary messages about Hillary Clinton that only they could see, in an effort to drive them away from the polls. Other tools enabled Cambridge Analytica to parse data on millions of Americans, much of it unlawfully obtained from unsuspecting Facebook users, to create ads designed to trigger voters』 fears and anxieties. Facebook employees were even embedded with the Trump team, helping them deploy these tools. Reporters from the journalism nonprofit ProPublica, though, needed no such help when they bought $30 worth of Facebook』s promoted posts and sent them to users who self-identified as 「Jew hater,」 or who had expressed interest in 「How to burn jews,」 and 「why jews ruin the world,」 all of which were algorithmically-derived categories available for purchase on the site. In an earlier experiment, ProPublica was also able to use Facebook to place a housing ad that explicitly prevented it from being shown to African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. It took just minutes for Facebook』s artificial 「intelligence」 to approve these ad buys.

就像我們在上次大選中看到的那樣，臉書網不止被用於推銷產品，還被用於推銷觀點。就像特朗票競選活動數字媒體主管布拉德·帕斯卡爾說的那樣，臉書的市場營銷工具在推銷攪拌機和推廣候選人方面一樣管用。其中一個工具是臉書所謂的「黑人專用狀態」，它讓帕斯卡爾及其團隊向特定的非裔美國選民發送了關於希拉里的煽動性信息，只有這些選民才能看到。其他工具讓劍橋研究（Cambridge Analytica）分析了數百萬美國人的數據，其中大部分是從臉書網上非法獲取的。它利用這些數據拍攝了專門用於引起選民恐懼和焦慮的廣告。臉書網工作人員甚至進駐特朗普團隊，幫助他們使用這些工具。儘管沒有類似需求，但新聞報道非營利組織專業公民（ProPublica）的記者花了30美金購買了臉書推廣，並把這些內容發送給了自我定位是「猶太人憎恨者」的人，或者是那些曾經對「如何燒死猶太人」、「猶太人為什麼毀滅世界」表示過興趣的用戶。所有這些人都被臉書演算法分了類，方便廣告購買。更早的一個實驗中，專業公民也成功在臉書上發布了一個屏蔽非裔美國人、拉丁美洲人和亞裔美國人的房產廣告。臉書的人工「智能」只花幾分鐘就批准了這些廣告購買。

In his New Year』s Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg wrote that 「Facebook has a lot of work to do—whether it』s protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent.」 By offering remedies that can accomplish none of these, his resolution, like most New Year』s resolutions, was broken almost as soon as it was made.

在自己的新年計劃里，馬克·扎克伯格寫到：『臉書有很多工作要做—無論是保護我們的社區不受網路暴力或者仇恨的影響、對抗民族國家的干涉、還是確保瀏覽臉書網時的質量。』扎克伯格提供的解決方案不能實現以上任何一個目標，他的新年願望和大部分新年願望一樣，許願的那一瞬間就失敗了。

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