脸书承认了！社交媒体不利于民主 [美国媒体]

Facebook’s ongoing attempt to reckon with its impact on civil life continued today with the company acknowledging that its platform is not always good for democracy.

脸书今天终于承认它这个平台并不总是有利于皿煮，而关于它对公民日常生活的影响的调查仍然一直在继续。

In a set of blog posts published as part of its “Hard Questions” series, Facebook execs and outside experts assess the company’s impact on elections, partisan politics, and fake news. As ever, Facebook tempers its self-criticism. For example, referring to “the damage that the internet can do to even a well-functioning democracy” (our emphasis), rather than damage caused by Facebook specifically. But, it does admit to a sliver more responsibility — taking the company one step further from CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s comments in 2016 that it was “crazy” to say Facebook influenced the US election.

在名为“难题”的一系列博文中，脸书的高管和外部专家发表了对 {脸书给选举，党派政治，假新闻带来的影响 }的评估。和往常一样，脸书试图缓和自身的责任。比如说，它会说“网络对皿煮甚至是成熟完善的皿煮带来的破坏”而不是“由脸书造成的破坏”。不过他也确实承认自身负的责任大一些——带领脸书向前更迈一步的CEO马克·扎克伯格在2016年表示“脸书影响了选举”这种说法是“疯狂”的。

As Facebook’s global politics and government outreach director Katie Harbath tells it, this was the moment the company began to recognize its influence on democracy, for better or for worse. “From the Arab Spring to robust elections around the globe, social media seemed like a positive,” writes Harbarth. “The last US presidential campaign changed that, with foreign interference that Facebook should have been quicker to identify to the rise of ‘fake news’ and echo chambers ”

如同脸书的全球政治和政府外联主任 Katie Harbath 所说，这是脸书公司意识到自身给皿煮带来的影响的时刻，无论这种影响是好是坏。“从阿拉伯之春到全球各种强有力的选举，社交媒体都在充当着积极的角色”Katie Harbath 写道，“只是上次美国大选改变了这种情况，有外国势力介入，而脸书本应该更快地识别出这些假新闻的增加。”

In another post, Facebook’s product manage for civic engagement, Samidh Chakrabarti, expands on these issues. He points out many positives — that the company helps keep people informed about politics, and that it’s a venue for debate — but cautions that the company will never be able to completely stamp out its problems. On the spread of fake news and misinformation on Facebook, he writes: “Even with all these countermeasures, the battle will never end.”

而在另一个岗位上的脸书的直销经理 Samidh Chakrabarti，对此进行了更进一步的阐述。他指出了脸书的很多优点——能帮助人们了解政治，而且它还是一个辩论的平台——但是他又提醒说脸书无法彻底解决他的全部难题。在关于{假新闻和误导脸书上的传播}的问题上，他写道：“即时采取了那些全部对策，与假新闻的对抗也不会就此终结。”

Since November 2016, Facebook has moved to address these issues in concrete ways. This month, the company started to reengineer the News Feed, demoting content from news outlets in favor of activity from friends. It’s also going to start polling users on which sources they trust. “We feel a responsibility to make sure our services aren’t just fun to use, but also good for people’s well-being,” said Zuckerberg.

从2016年11月开始，脸书已经开始用具体的方式解决这些问题。这个月，脸书开始重新设计动态消息功能，减少新闻推送，并以此来增强来自朋友的互动。他们还开展了用户关于“哪些新闻源头他们比较信任”的调查。扎克伯格说：“我们觉得自己不仅有义务确保用户玩得开心，还要确保用户的幸福生活。”

Arguably, though, these moves also exacerbate existing problems. If users get less news from news sources, they’re more likely to share , say reports. And if people are given the task of judging which outlets they find trustworthy, what’s to stop them simply voting in line with sites that support their worldview? This perpetuates the problem of polarization and “echo chamber” politics — which Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School, calls “a nightmare” in a blog post published today for Facebook.

不过，这些新措施也相应会带来新的问题。有研究称，如果用户从新闻来源处获得的新闻变少，那么他们更可能分享耸人听闻的故事。那么当人们进行评价新闻可信度调查的时候，该如何阻止他们只投支持他们世界观的新闻来源？支持者与反对者的对立的问题一直都存在——这一现象被哈佛大学法学院的一位教授在今天于脸书发表的博文里称之为恶梦。

It’s also important to note that although much of Facebook’s attention is focused on the US and the influence of Russia on the 2016 election, in other parts of the world the situation is more dire. A recent report from BuzzFeed in Cambodia illustrated Facebook’s problematic role in politics, with the country’s authoritarian prime minister Hun Sen (last year Sen banned the main opposition party) using the site to push pro-government messages while identifying, and often jailing, critics.

需要指出的是，虽然大多数脸书用户的注意力集中在2016美国大选及俄罗斯对其的影响，在世界的另一部分情况更糟。来自柬埔寨的BuzzFeed的一份报告表明了有问题的政治角色，里面包含柬埔寨独裁首脑洪森（去年他取缔了主要反对党）在经常逮捕关押人民的情况下宣传亲政府言论的信息。

As Facebook’s Chakrabarti writes: “If there’s one fundamental truth about social media’s impact on democracy it’s that it amplifies human intent — both good and bad [...] I wish I could  that the positives are destined to outweigh the negatives, but I can’t.”

如脸书的Chakrabarti 所写：“如果有一个关于社交媒体的事实，那一定是里面有好人也有坏人...我希望我能保证正义终将打败邪恶，但是我不能。”



blankballot
"This month, the company started to re-engineer the News Feed, demoting content from news outlets in favor of activity from friends. It’s also going to start polling users on which sources they trust. "We feel a responsibility to make sure our services aren’t just fun to use, but also good for people’s well-being," said Zuckerberg."
Facebook is the largest group of leftist ever assembled so the news they will mark as "trustworthy" will only be the news that reinforces their leftist ideas and since the only people they will be exchanging ideas with will be leftists,, all these two changes are going to do is make the "echo chamber effect" even louder.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 11:03 AM

这个月，脸书开始重新设计动态消息功能，减少新闻推送，并以此来增强来自朋友的互动。他们还开展了用户关于“哪些新闻源头是值得信赖的”的调查。扎克伯格说：“我们觉得自己不仅有义务确保用户玩得开心，还要确保用户的幸福生活。”       说得好听，脸书一直都是左派聚集的地方，他们所谓的“值得信赖的”新闻肯定是指那些能满足他们左派的新闻，这样，用户将被左派思想包围，潜移默化地在左派的路上越走越远。脸书的这几个改变都只会让支持者的声音越来越响。

Ryan Austin Dean
Similar to Google’s handling of the James Damore situation.
Their hiring practices aren’t based on real equality, but retribution.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 11:20 AM

没错，他们和谷歌处理James Damore（向上级发表了这样的观点：科技领域任职人数稀少并不是由于女性在职场受到歧视和压迫，而是由于性别自身所存在的生理和心理差距，如果       公司强行多元化，则对其他雇员不公平）的情况时一样，他们招人的原则不是能力，而是回报。

Alexander Beal
What really scares me is Facebook and other hyper-liberal organizations whitewashing all posts to present only their socialist side of every argument. We saw during the last presidential election how the press guarded and protected Clinton to the detriment of the country.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 12:00 PM

真正让我害怕的是脸书和其他自由组织一直洗白邮件门（这几句我不太懂，所以省略了一些内容），上次美国大选爆出邮件门后媒体对这个问题的报道是何等的谨慎，仿佛是簇拥在希拉里身旁保护她直到对这个国家来说最坏的情况出现（希拉里当选）

TheEveryman
Detriment meaning Trump’s victory, right?
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 12:04 PM

你说的最坏的情况指的是川普的胜选，是吗？

Cols714
Yeah, we never heard anything at all about her email practices.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 12:20 PM

没错，我们从来没听说过希拉里的邮件练习作品

jms1005
Or her health. Or Benghazi. Jeez, it was all over the news for years.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 1:46 PM

要么是她的健康，要么是班加西，天呐，这些东西盘踞新闻好多年。

Daniel M. Clark
Dude. She lost. You know that, right?
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 3:56 PM

吼吼，她落选了，你知道的，不是吗

TheEveryman
But her emails shall forever live on.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 5:09 PM

但是她的邮件永存

Evil13rt
All those people speaking freely, assembling without government permission… it shouldn’t be allowed. 
No ones ever shared rumors or won elections on false information before.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 1:58 PM

那些人说话肆无忌惮，没有经过政府批准就随意结众而行...这不应该被允许。之前没有人传播谣言甚至通过谣言赢得大选。

K7
What is even worse for democracy. To select a terrible candidate as your parties ticket, not listen constituents. Then blame everyone else for your loss.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 1:59 PM

还有什么比这对民主更不利？为了选出一个糟糕的候选人作为你们的候选人名单，不听选民的声音。然后让其他所有人为你的失败买单。

pallentx
That’s fairly harmless to democracy. As the loser, you have no power to do anything. Its pretty damaging to your party, however.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 2:09 PM

其实这对民主来说并没什么坏处，作为失败者，你根本没能力去做任何事，不过这对你的政党真的很不利。

Sl1mJ1m
The US is not and should not be a democracy. Read what James Madison said about democracy.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 4:07 PM

美国不是也不应该成为民主国家，读一读詹姆斯·麦迪逊的书看他是怎么看待民主的

Casin
A constitutional republic is just a representative democracy. Checks and balances won’t matter if people vote in ideologues to control the government using gerrymandered districts.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 5:37 PM

立宪共和制只是一种代议民主政治，如果人们用理想主义投票那么政府机关彼此之间的相互制衡就不起作用了。

NYC Babe
Yes, comrade. US must dissolve union. It make America stronger, better, comrade if dissolve. No need Constitution. It bad for us Americansky. It very bad.
Posted on Jan 23, 2018 | 12:00 AM

是的，同志。美国必须解散工会。这样会让美国变得更强更好更亲密。不需要宪法的存在。这对美国没啥好处，只有坏处。

delta4s
So what they are trying to say is that Facebook failed to get their supported candidate Hillary elected.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 6:20 PM

哦说了这么多其实就是脸书没能让他们支持的候选人当选呗

Flires Gilbert
People are relying too much on all media outlets and sources in general to make their own decisions. If you made your presidential voting decision based on some news clip on Facebook or anywhere else for that matter – we have a lot of problems as a nation. It’s not the Russians fault or Facebook’s that you believe everything you read. Cancel that Facebook account and read a book.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 8:14 PM

通常人们做决定的时候太依赖于新闻渠道和来源了，如果总统选举投票的时候根据一些脸书或者其他渠道获得的新闻来做决定，那就会有太多难题了。并不是俄罗斯的错也不是脸书的错，是你自己看到什么信什么。注销脸书账户读本书比什么都强。

NYC Babe
If you made your presidential voting decision based on some news clip on Facebook or anywhere else for that matter – we have a lot of problems as a nation. It’s not the Russians fault or Facebook’s that you believe everything you read.
Wow, you don’t know how deep the rabbit hole goes.
This situation goes far beyond, "I saw it on FaceBook, so I’m changing my vote."
This "fake news" thing plays like a game of telephone. Some people will read the fake news on FB, and then like a virus, spread the news to their friends and relatives (who don’t use FB), telling them, "You know what I heard on the news today? Clinton ate babies for dinner every night for a week." The person hearing this will say, "You heard that on the news?" not realizing that the "source" the news bearer is talking about is FB; they’re thinking local news, CNN, FOX, etc.
Other people would spread the fake news to hugely popular sites like Reddit, where the game of telephone picks up steam, aided and abetted by shills like Breitbart and Alex Jones, who further spread it.
The point I’m trying to make is that fake news on social media doesn’t just stay on social media; it gains traction outside of social media and then gets mainstreamed, so that—using the "game of telephone" analogy once again—someone who may never use social media at all "hears" from a friend or relative that it was reported "on the news" that such and such happened and then accepts it as gospel truth.
Another thing you’re not getting is how this fake news works. It’s not just drops to fake news blogs, websites, etc. It’s Russian trolls with fake accounts pretending to be Americans, subtly slipping in fake news into comments as if they were established fact. And multitudes of them will agree with each other, up vote each others’ posts and supplement each others’ comments with more misinformation to make it look like a bunch of "well informed American patriots" who are In the Know and you’re "out of the loop" not knowing what’s going on and need to "catch up." So this whole thing is a lot more sophisticated than you’re giving it credit for.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 11:58 PM

（太多了就只把大致意思翻译出来了）
回复楼上
你不知道这水有多深，这种情况已经超乎想象了“我在脸书上看到了，所以我改变了投票对象”
这种假新闻已经像是手机游戏一样了，一个人看到这些假新闻，接着就会像病毒一样传染给脸书好友和亲人（不用脸书的也会被传染），说什么：“你知道我在脸书上看到什么了吗，克林顿每个星期吃一次小孩当晚餐。”当被问到是在新闻上看到的吗，它们从不思考脸书是不是新闻渠道，只想着那些惊悚的事，直接认为是当地新闻上的，比如CNN,FOX等等。
这些人又通过一些用户极多的网站传给其他人，于是越传越多，越穿越多。

我说这些是想说假新闻并不只在社交媒体，还会在现实中传播，这样不用社交软件的也会从朋友亲戚那里得到这些假新闻，时间久了，假新闻就会像真的新闻一样，变成了所谓的事实。
还有个你不知道的是假新闻是如何运作的。不仅仅是从那些假新闻博客等等上传出来的，还有俄罗斯人假装自己是美国人然后传播假新闻，而且描述的绘声绘色好像他们真的看到了一样，然后他们彼此点赞推荐相互包庇，营造出大家都这样想的氛围，“不这样想的话你就与社会脱节，赶不上潮流了”，这样他们目的就达到了，我们还像个傻瓜一样沉浸在以上范围中。
（不看国籍的话我会以为是在说公知...哈哈哈）

onepunchrick
Maybe Democracy is bad for social media. Maybe there is a reason why try to keep the largest mob from making decisions and putting it off to single sources of blame such as representatives.
Posted on Jan 22, 2018 | 3:07 PM

也许是皿煮对社交媒体不利呢。为什么不试试阻止最大的暴徒做决定，并把责任推卸给单一的责任来源比如议员。(来自作者：不太懂网站怎么用，消息也不知道哪里看，希望审核大大能体谅)