原文
If Facebook will not fix itself, will Congress?
The light grilling the company’s boss received on Capitol Hill suggests not
Apr 11th 2018
“THEY ‘trust me’…dumb fucks,” Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, wrote in an instant message to a friend in 2004, after boasting that he had personal data, including photos, e-mails and addresses, of some 4,000 of his social network’s users. He offered to share whatever information his friend wanted to see. Mr Zuckerberg may use less profane language today, but many feel he has not yet outgrown his wilful disregard for users’ privacy. On April 11th he testified before testy politicians in Washington about the firm’s latest privacy controversy, first to a joint hearing of two Senate committees that lasted around four hours, and then again on April 12th to a House of Representatives committee. Not since the 1990s, when Microsoft was taken to task for its monopolistic behaviour, has there been such “intense public scrutiny” of a technology firm in Washington, as Orrin Hatch, a Republican senator, informed Mr Zuckerberg.
Some of his inquisitors appeared annoyed by Mr Zuckerberg’s rehearsed responses, but that did not stop many onlookers from being chuffed by his smooth, slightly robotic, performance. Facebook’s share price closed 5.7% higher after his two days on Capitol Hill. Investors may be betting that the worst of “Facegate” could be over, but it is too soon to count on it.
The immediate scandal is the most acute and far-reaching crisis in Facebook’s 14-year history. Last month it was revealed by Britain’s Observer and the New York Times that a researcher from Cambridge University, Aleksandr Kogan, had obtained information about some 300,000 Facebook users by encouraging them to download an app and take a survey in 2012. He then shared these data with Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, which reportedly made them available to others, including Donald Trump’s campaign. Some 87m Facebook users are affected, because Facebook’s policies at the time were so loose that people using a third-party’s app often shared details not only about themselves but also about their friends without their knowledge. Facebook changed its policies in 2014.
These revelations are especially damning because Facebook first learned about this problem in 2015 and did little to address it. In fact, instead of focusing on Cambridge Analytica’s bad behaviour, Facebook threatened to sue the Guardian Media Group, which owns the Observer, if it published the exposé. Only after a media backlash and public outcry did Facebook begin to take action. It has started making it easier for users to control their privacy settings, reduced the amount of data that are shared with third parties, and promised to audit suspicious third-party apps. But these are things that many of its users wrongly believed Facebook had long been doing anyway.
Politicians and users want to know more about how Facebook will adequately safeguard people’s privacy and offer enough transparency about how it operates. While encouraging its users to overshare minutiae from their own lives, the firm has been guarded in the past about sharing details of how its extensive data-collection machine works and what it tracks beyond the data users provide directly. The company’s business depends on observing users’ online behaviour and selling their attention to advertisers, who pay money to reach specific groups of users based on minute details gleaned about their identities, their interests and where they are. This requires a delicate balancing act between catering to users, whose attention Facebook must keep, and advertisers, who pay the bills. To date the firm has mostly favoured growth over careful checks that its “community”, as it calls its 2.1bn users, is being properly protected.
Sorry seems to be
Facebook’s corporate tradition of evasion was on display on Capitol Hill. When asked during the Senate hearing about whether Facebook tracks users who have logged out, Mr Zuckerberg said he did not know and would have to supply the answer at a later date (although many advertisers believe Facebook does exactly that). It has recently been revealed that Facebook collected Android users’ call logs and messages without most users’ knowledge, which offers another example of the firm’s disregard for people’s right to control and see their data. Even in Silicon Valley, which is known for producing eerily predictive algorithms, people find Facebook’s stealthy tracking and targeting of users creepy.
In addition to privacy, the Cambridge Analytica scandal points to two big concerns. One is the lack of transparency in political advertising. Corporate and political advertising are being “mushed together” as a single topic of discussion, but it is political micro-targeting that is most bothersome to consumers, says Karen Kornbluh, senior fellow for digital policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Users are probably willing to see advertisements from car companies, but it feels more sensitive and invasive to be targeted with ads based on what is known or presumed about their views on divisive political issues, such as immigration, race, religion and gay rights. The company has vowed to start showing who is behind political ads and verifying the buyer’s identity.
Another issue is foreign meddling, and the risk that hostile governments and non-state actors may harvest users’ data. Already Facebook has disclosed that Russians were responsible for targeting ads and content to Americans in the lead-up to the 2016 election. It is becoming clearer that foreign governments, including Russia and presumably China, may have obtained rich data sets about Facebook users from the likes of Cambridge Analytica or other groups. Christopher Wylie, the whistleblower who sounded the alarm about Cambridge Analytica, has said that the company may be storing its data in Russia, suggesting a close connection.
The easiest word
Mr Zuckerberg will have plenty to grapple with in the coming months. One risk is that Cambridge Analytica is just the first of many outfits that receive scrutiny and media attention. According to someone close to the firm, the social-networking giant is already aware that Cambridge Analytica is only one of many outside groups with political motivations that stealthily gained access to detailed data about Facebook users. More revelations will probably become public, especially if politicians and investigators press Facebook on this point. If one of Facebook’s employees decides to become a whistleblower in the vein of Mr Wylie from Cambridge Analytica, it could mean yet more apologies from Mr Zuckerberg and another summons for him to give congressional testimony.
Another risk to Facebook is action from American regulators. Bruce Mehlman, a lobbyist in Washington, says Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica data spill could be much like the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which brought public scrutiny and regulation to an industry that had previously operated without much oversight. Mr Zuckerberg insists that his firm is open to new laws, especially in areas that are sensitive, such as facial recognition. But it has been fighting state-level privacy laws, in California and elsewhere, that could restrict its normal course of business.
America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an investigation into Facebook for its privacy practices. This is not the first time. As part of a consent decree agreed to in 2011 after the FTC charged it with deceptive practices, Facebook promised to be more transparent with consumers about the data that were gathered and shared publicly. The Cambridge Analytica fiasco appears to have been in violation of what Facebook promised. According to one former FTC official, Facebook could be facing a fine of around $2bn or more, which could be the largest fine in history for violating an FTC order.
Some openly wonder whether America will eventually pass restrictions like those that will come into effect next month under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a European law that requires companies to obtain consent to gather and share users’ data. If principles like this spread and American users are required, for example, to opt in to Facebook’s tracking, it could dent Facebook’s revenues, although by how much is unclear.
While in the long term some sort of regulation is inevitable, it seems less likely in the near term. Laws take years and sometimes decades to come into effect for burgeoning industries: people started talking about regulating telecoms firms in the 1970s, but America did not pass a law to regulate them until 1996. Today Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, do not have much appetite for restricting business. Because of Republican opposition, a benign bill that would require disclosure of who pays for online political ads, called the Honest Ads Act, has not even been granted a hearing.
For Facebook to change in any meaningful way, Congress will have to change too. One of the most stunning revelations of the highly choreographed hearings was not anything Mr Zuckerberg said, but how little America’s politicians seemed to know about Facebook and the way the world of digital communications operates. There is little hope for smart regulation that will protect users’ privacy until the people who would draft laws understand the ecosystem they need to tame. The Cambridge Analytica scandal gave Mr Zuckerberg a crash course in political diplomacy, but the education of politicians about the opaque, labyrinthine world of digital data is only just beginning.
译文
如果脸书不能自我修正，那么国会能修正它吗？
在国会山上聚焦于扎克伯格的灯光表明希望不大
2018.04.11
“他们‘信任’我……傻X。”2004年，脸书创始人扎克伯格在给朋友的短信中这样说道，炫耀自己拥有其社交网络用户中4000人的个人数据，包括照片，E-mail和住址。随后他分享了朋友想要的一切信息。扎克伯格如今是不会再说这样的脏话了，但许多人认为他还没成熟到不再肆意漠视用户隐私的程度。首先4月11日他在两个参议员委员会的联合听证会上就公司最近的与用户隐私有关的争议向华盛顿咄咄逼人的政客们进行了作证，这场听证会持续了约四个小时。随后他将在4月12日再次向一个众议员委员会作证。正如共和党议员Orrin Hatch提醒扎克伯格的那样，上一次华盛顿方面对科技公司进行如此紧张的公共监督，还要追溯到1990年代微软公司被认定存在垄断行为的时候。
一些调查官似乎恼怒于扎克伯格早已排练好的回答，但这并不能阻止许多旁观者对他流畅乃至有些机械的表现感到兴奋。在他两天的国会山行程后脸书的股价以5.7%的上涨收盘。投资者可能押宝于脸书门的危机已经结束，但此时言胜还为时尚早。
眼下的丑闻是脸书在其14年的历史中最具针对性且影响最为深远的危机。上月英国观察报和纽约时报披露，一位来自剑桥大学的研究员，Aleksandr Kogan，在2012年通过诱导下载APP以完成调查的方式获取了约300,000脸书用户的信息。随后，他将这些信息分享给了一家名叫剑桥分析的政治顾问公司。据传，剑桥分析又将数据向包括唐纳德·特朗普竞选团队在内的客户开放。当时脸书的条款非常松散，以至于使用第三方App的人在不知情的情况下不仅会泄露自己的信息，还会将朋友的信息一并泄露。而这导致了约有8700万脸书用户受到上述事件影响，脸书后来在2014年更改了条款。
这些被披露的事尤其令人恼火的地方在于脸书在2015年首次了解到了这个问题，却没有去重视它。事实上脸书并没有去关注剑桥分析的出格行为，而是对掌管着观察家报的卫报传媒集团进行了威胁，如果此事见报，就要将其告上法庭。在媒体反弹公众大哗的时候，脸书才开始采取行动，开始简化用户控制隐私设置的方式，减少与第三方分享的数据量，并承诺对可疑的第三方应用进行审核，而这些正是许多脸书用户误以为脸书长久以来一直在做的事。
政客和用户更想知道的是脸书将会如何充分保障用户隐私，又如何提高隐私保障运行的透明性。脸书在鼓励用户尽情分享生活的每一个细节的同时却对其附加的数据收集器的工作机制和对用户所提供的数据之外的追踪内容讳莫如深。脸书的业务依赖于观察用户的网络行为后，将用户的注意点售卖给广告商，广告商基于收集到的关于用户的身份、兴趣、地理位置等琐碎信息，付费将广告投放至特定的用户群体。这种业务模式要求脸书具备在必须抓住其眼球的客户和付费的广告主之间左右逢源的细致平衡力。迄今为止，脸书主要通过仔细检查来支持其业务增长，因为它自称其21亿用户的“社区”正在处于适当的保护之下。
似是而非的道歉
脸书公司的逃避传统在国会山上演了。当在参议员委员会的听证会上被询问脸书是否会追踪已经下线的用户时，扎克伯格回答“不清楚，会在之后进行解答”，而许多广告商坚信脸书会这么做。近日又有披露称脸书不经询问用户便收集安卓用户的通话记录和短信，这正是脸书为了控制和查看用户数据而无视用户隐私权的另一个例子。即使是在以产生各种稀奇古怪的预测性算法而闻名的硅谷，脸书这种偷偷摸摸锁定追踪用户的行为仍令人心惊胆战。
除了隐私方面的隐患之外，围绕剑桥分析的丑闻更是指明了另外两大值得忧虑之处。首先是政治性宣传的透明度的缺乏。尽管企业广告与政治广告目前被混淆在这场讨论的同一个子话题之下，但外交关系委员会数字政策高级研究员Karen Kornbluh说，政治性广告的精准投放才更令用户恼怒。用户有可能愿意看到汽车公司的广告，但若自己看到的广告是脸书在熟知或预测用户对立场鲜明的政治性问题（比如移民问题，种族问题，宗教问题和同性恋问题等）的观点的情况下投放的，用户就会更敏感，更易产生被侵入感。对此脸书已承诺，将着手将政治广告的投放方显示出来，并会验证广告买主的身份。
其次则是外国势力插手本国事务的问题和敌对政府、非国家行为体随意获取用户数据的风险。脸书已经披露俄罗斯在2016年大选之前曾向美国人精准投放广告和其它内容。外国政府，包括俄罗斯，应该还有中国，他们已经通过剑桥分析或其他团体获得大量脸书用户数据的事情变得越来越没有疑义。为剑桥分析敲响了丧钟的爆料人Christopher Wylie称剑桥分析可能正将其数据储存于俄罗斯，正说明了两者之间的暧昧关系。
最简单的词
扎克伯格在接下来的一段时间里注定焦头烂额，因为有一个潜在的风险：剑桥分析很可能只是受到政府审查和媒体监督的第一家组织。据知情人的说法，脸书这个社交网络巨头已经意识到剑桥分析只是因政治目的窃取脸书用户详细信息的众多外部组织之一。如果政客们与调查者在此时对脸书施压，更多的详情很可能会公之于众。只要任何一名脸书雇员愿意效仿剑桥分析的Wylie先生成为举报人，那么等待扎克伯格的极可能是更多要做的道歉声明和更多前往国会作证的传票。
脸书还存有的一个潜在风险来自美国监管机构。华盛顿的一个说客Bruce Mehlman说，剑桥分析数据泄露事件与埃克森瓦尔迪兹石油泄露事件十分类似，而后者的发生将公共监督和监管带到了一个之前没有多少监管的行业。扎克伯格坚称脸书对新法律抱有开放态度，特别是像面部识别之类的敏感领域。但脸书一直在与加州及其它一些地方的州级隐私法规进行斗争，这可能会限制它的正常业务。
美国联邦贸易委员会（FTC）已经就隐私信息的使用行为对脸书发起了一项调查，而这并不是第一次。2011年在FTC指控脸书存在欺诈行为后，脸书与FTC签订了一份同意协定，其中有部分内容就是脸书承诺对用户信息的收集和公开分享会更加透明。而剑桥分析的惨状说明脸书违反了它的承诺。据一位前FTC官员称，脸书可能会面临20亿美元左右的罚款，这也许是史上因违反FTC命令而被罚的最大一笔罚金。
通行数据保护条例（GDPR）是一项将于下月在欧洲生效的法律，它要求企业在收集和分享用户数据时要获得用户同意。有些人大胆猜想美国最终是否会通过像GDPR一样的条例。若这种条例普及开来，会使脸书在追踪用户数据时要征求用户的同意，这样就会减少脸书的财政收入，但减少的程度如何尚不清楚。
尽管长期来看，一些条例的通过的不可避免的，但短期而言这还不太可能。对于新兴行业来说，法律的变动需要数年乃至数十年才能实行。比如人们在1970年代就对规范通信行业议论纷纷，但美国在1996年才通过监管通信行业的法律。今天正控制着国会两院的共和党对约束商业行为并不感兴趣。正由于共和党的反对，一项要求公开网络政治广告、被称作“诚实广告法案”的良性法案甚至连召开听证会的机会都没有。
想要脸书做出有实质意义的改变的话，国会也必须跟着变化。这场经过精心策划的听证会带给人们的最惊异的启示之一不是扎克伯格说了什么话，而是美国政客们脸书及数字社交世界运行方式的无知。足够保护用户隐私的智能监管几无希望，除非起草法律的人们能够理解他们所要进行规范的这个生态系统。剑桥分析丑闻给扎克伯格在政治外交领域上了一堂速成课，但政客们对曲折无光的数字世界的学习才刚刚开始。
翻译疑点
1.outgrown意为“发展到超越（某物）的时候”，我译为“成熟到不再……的程度”，不知道算不算准确
2.being chuffed译为“感到兴奋”，我觉得不大准确，但找不到更准确的词
3.Facebook’s share price closed 5.7% higher after his two days on Capitol Hil
这里很奇怪，这篇新闻是4月11日写的，但这里提到扎克伯格结束两日行程后股价上涨，应该是在12日后发生的。作者用的是过去时，我有点理解不来
4.To date the firm has mostly favoured growth over careful checks that its
“community”, as it calls its 2.1bn users, is being properly protected.
这句我觉得我可能译错了，希望有人能够指正。主要是the firm has favoured growth over careful checks that its community理解不了
5.which offers another example of the firm’s disregard for people’s right to control and see their data.
这句的结构看不明白，control and see their data这个动作应该是脸书在做，这个不定式不知道是修饰谁的，我只好按照我理解的上下文意思强行翻了下去
6.the likes of Cambridge Analytica or other groups
the likes of sth是个什么用法？没学过
7.最简单的词，我不明白这个小标题的意思。翻译完我也不知道这个词是哪个词。
8.which brought public scrutiny and regulation to an industry that had previously operated without much oversight
that had previously operated without much oversight的意思感觉和我翻译的恰恰相反……我按照我理解的上下文意思来了
PS
这篇新闻真是太长了……断断续续地花了好多天
