五小時連環轟炸，臉書路在何方

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扎克伯格的臉書是如何失控的

原文作者：John Gapper

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In Walt Disney』s Fantasia, the apprentice Mickey Mouse bashfully hands back the sorcerer』s hat after failing to stop a troupe of magic broomsticks from causing a flood.

在華特·迪士尼的《幻想曲》中，魔法師的學徒「米老鼠」在未能阻止一群被施了魔法的掃把引發洪水後，扭捏地把魔法帽還給了魔法師。

Mark Zuckerberg made his own bow to the US Congress last Tuesday by apologising for the havoc that he has unleashed at Facebook.

上周二，馬克·扎克伯格在美國國會也為他在臉書造成的爛攤子道歉。

With greater effort and honesty, Facebook can fix the laxity with which it has handled personal data. The Cambridge Analytica scandal showed that it was far too loose in allowing people and organisations to plug into its 「social graph」 and extract data about millions of users. It has already tightened its data controls and must tighten them more, but the task is achievable.

通過採取更多措施和拿出更誠懇的態度，臉書可以解決它處理個人數據不嚴謹的問題。劍橋分析醜聞表明，臉書允許個人和機構接入臉書的「社交圖譜」並提取數以百萬計用戶的個人信息，是極其嚴重的疏漏。臉書已經收緊了對數據的控制，但還須加大力度，不過該任務是可以完成的。

Facebook is to try to make privacy settings clearer by creating a hub where users can examine the data they are sharing, in its latest move to address the scandal that has wiped billions of dollars off its market value.

臉書試圖通過創建一個用戶可以查看其共享數據的樞紐，使隱私設置更加清晰，這是該公司應對導致其巨額市值蒸發的數據泄露醜聞的最新舉措。

The world』s largest social network said the settings — including which third-party developers were permitted to access a users』 data — would be centralised, pulling together information that was at present distributed around 20 pages within the platform.

這個世界上最大的社交網路表示，這些設置（包括那些允許第三方開發者訪問用戶數據的設置）將被集中起來，把目前分布在平台內約20個頁面的信息彙集到一起。

Rob Sherman, deputy chief privacy officer for Facebook, said the changes to make privacy controls 「more prominent」 were being worked on before the revelations that the data of up to 50m users were leaked to Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis firm that worked for Donald Trump』s presidential campaign. He added: 「The thing that has been very clear over the past week is that we』ve lost trust and need to work on regaining it.」

臉書副首席隱私官羅布·謝爾曼表示，數據泄露消息爆出前，公司已經在著手進行調整，使隱私控制「佔據更加突出的地位」。之前媒體爆料稱，多達5000萬用戶的數據被泄露給唐納德·特朗普競選團隊所聘請的數據分析公司劍橋分析。他補充說：「過去一周非常明顯的一點是，我們失去了信任，需要努力重新贏得信任。」

Facebook will also make it easier for users to see all the data that the company holds on them, allowing individuals to explore them by category rather than via a data dump using its old download tool. The new tool could make it easier for users to take their data to a rival, a process that will be required under the EU』s General Data Protection Rules that come into force in May.

臉書允許個人按類別瀏覽數據，而不是通過舊的下載工具一下子下載大量數據，讓用戶更容易看到公司持有的有關他們的所有數據。新工具可能讓用戶更容易將他們的數據帶到競爭對手那裡，但這個過程是歐盟《一般數據保護條例》所要求的，該條例將於5月生效。

「It is one thing to read a data policy that explains general practices,」 Mr Sherman said. 「It is very different seeing your own data and being able to control it.」 Facebook is under pressure from politicians and regulators over data privacy. John Edwards, the New Zealand privacy commissioner, yesterday became the latest to criticise the company, saying it had breached the country』s privacy laws. Facebook has denied the claim.

「閱讀一份解釋一般性做法的數據隱私保護政策是一回事，」 謝爾曼說，「看到你自己的數據並能夠控制它，又是非常不同的另一回事。」在數據隱私問題上，臉書面臨政界人士和監管機構的壓力。紐西蘭隱私專員約翰·愛德華茲昨日成為最新一位批評該公司的人，他表示，臉書違反了該國的隱私權法。然而臉書對此予以否認。

The crisis has pushed some Facebook users, including Mr Edwards, to delete their accounts. Others have downloaded their data to understand exactly what the company knows about them. Yesterday』s announcement follows changes announced by Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive, which largely focused on reducing the amount of data that third-party apps could collect.

這場危機促使包括愛德華茲在內的一些臉書用戶刪除了他們的賬戶。還有一些人下載了他們的數據，以了解公司究竟掌握了他們的多少信息。昨日聲明發布之前，首席執行官馬克·扎克伯格宣布了一些調整，重點是減少第三方軟體可以收集的數據量。

Some privacy experts said Facebook would need to go much further. Jonathan Kewley of law firm Clifford Chance』s technology group said: 「There will need to be further steps and more radical steps. New ways will have to be considered beyond a platform which aggregates all the information they control.」

一些隱私專家表示臉書將需要走得更遠。高偉紳律師事務所科技業務部門的律師喬納森·科利表示：「需要採取進一步且更加到位的措施。必須考慮新的方式，而不只是一個把他們控制的所有信息都彙集起來的平台。

But other things cannot be fixed because they are beyond Mr Zuckerberg』s control, lost in myriad encounters among Facebook』s 2bn users. The technical term is emergence, the powerful and unpredictable outcome of millions of users interacting freely with others. Anything from joke videos to fake news can spread like a virus, changing how people feel and act.

但仍然有很多其他問題無法解決，因為這些問題已經不在扎克伯格可控制的範圍內，而是散落於臉書的20億用戶無數的交集中。準確地說是「自然生長」，即無數用戶自由互動所帶來的強大而不可預測的後果。無論是搞笑視頻、還是虛假新聞，一切都可能像病毒一樣傳播，改變著人們的想法和行動。

Mr Zuckerberg has been subdued by witnessing his creation cause chaos. Facebook was tapped by anti-Rohingya Buddhists in Myanmar and Russian fake news factories. No higher authority holds the solution. The EU and the US may impose stricter rules on social networks, but politicians and regulators have no deeper insight into Facebook』s workings than its founder.

扎克伯格目睹了他的作品所造成的混亂卻束手無策。臉書被反羅興亞人的緬甸佛教徒和俄羅斯的假新聞製造廠所利用。當局也沒有解決方案。歐盟和美國可能會對社交網路執行更嚴格的監管規則，但政客和監管者對臉書運作方式的了解並不比其創始人更深。

Facebook increasingly talks of trying to limit the amount of passive consumption by users, from reading news (fake and otherwise) to watching videos. Instead, it wants to nudge them back to the kind of interactions with which it started — 「to stay connected to the people they love, make their voices heard, and build communities and businesses」, Mr Zuckerberg says.

臉書開始越來越多地討論起試圖限制用戶的被動攝入——從閱讀新聞（假新聞以及真新聞）到觀看視頻。相反，它希望促使用戶重新像臉書創建之初那樣互動——「與他們喜歡的人保持聯繫，發出自己的聲音，並建立社區和企業，」扎克伯格表示。

That may be prudent, but it does not get to the heart of the matter: Facebook grew by intentionally mixing up what Mark Granovetter, the US sociologist, called 「strong ties」 with weak ones. The former are close relationships among families, friends and colleagues; the latter are links to distant acquaintances and people in other communities. On Facebook, all 「friends」 are equal.

這可能是經過深思熟慮之舉，但它並沒有觸及問題的核心：臉書過去的發展是通過有意識地把美國社會學家馬克·格拉諾維特所說的「強紐帶」與弱紐帶混在一起實現的。前者是家人、朋友和同事之間親近的關係；後者是與一般熟人和其他社區的人之間的聯繫。在臉書上，所有的「朋友」都是平等的。

Facebook』s size makes it more weakly tied than social networks that focus on smaller communities. One analysis of 957,000 Facebook users and 59m connections (gathered before it limited data scraping) found that 「most connections are weak?.?.?.?with few contacts and infrequent interactions」. That made it 「a powerful way to transfer information across large social distances and to wide segments」.

臉書的規模使得它比其他專註於中小型社區的社交網路更加偏向於弱紐帶。一項研究了95.7萬用戶及其5900萬個聯繫人（在臉書限制數據抓取之前收集的數據）的分析發現，「大多數聯繫人屬於弱紐帶?……聯繫很少、互動也不頻繁」。這使得臉書成為了「跨越廣闊社會距離和向大量領域傳遞信息的有力方式」。

Hundreds of millions of weak ties also make it a powerful way to wield influence. Studies show that people』s mood, behaviour, and even weight are affected by others who are fairly weakly connected in a social network — Profs Christakis and Fowler refer to the 「three degrees of influence」 that friends of friends of friends can invisibly exert.

大量的弱紐帶也使臉書成為了施展影響力的有力途徑。多項研究表明，人們的情緒、行為、甚至體重都會受到社交網路中聯繫相對較弱的熟人的影響——克里斯塔基斯和福勒教授提到你的朋友的朋友的朋友可以在無形中發揮的「三維度影響力」。

This is the trouble with Facebook』s elision of families and acquaintances, of strong and weak ties. The latter can make users happy or depressed; can help them to lose weight or gain it; can deliver insight or misinformation. Good and ill both multiply across its emergent, disobedient network.

這是臉書把強紐帶的家人和弱紐帶的一般熟人混在一起所面臨的問題。後者可以影響用戶的心情、可以促使他們減肥或者增重、可以向他們傳遞真知灼見或錯誤信息。在臉書自然生長且不服管理的龐大網路中，善意和惡意的效果都被數倍放大。

The sorcerer cleaned up Mickey』s mess but Mr Zuckerberg has not yet handed in his wizard』s hat. 「It』s not enough to connect people, we have to make sure those connections are positive,」 he told members of Congress on Tuesday. That is a fine pledge, but it would take magic to fulfil it.

魔法師收拾了米老鼠的爛攤子，但扎克伯格目前還沒有交出他的魔法帽。周二，他對國會議員說：「僅僅把用戶連接起來還不夠，我們必須確保這些連接發揮積極作用。」誓言雖然美好，但他得有魔法才能實現。