IT IS THE biggest antitrust suit in two decades. On October 20th the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged that Google ties up phone-makers, networks and browsers in deals that make it the default search engine. The department says this harms consumers, who are deprived of alternatives. The arrangement is sustained by Google’s dominance of search which, because of a global market share of roughly 90%, generates the advertising profits that pay for the deals. The DOJ has not yet said what remedy it wants, but it could force Google and its parent, Alphabet, to change how they structure their business. Don’t hold your breath, though: Google dismisses the suit as nonsense, so the case could drag on for years.
這是二十年來最大的反壟斷訴訟案。10月20日，美國司法部指控谷歌與手機製造商、網絡公司和瀏覽器達成交易，使其成為默認搜尋引擎。美國司法部稱，該種商業行為損害了消費者利益，剝奪了消費者選擇權。這樣的安排得益於谷歌在搜索領域的主導地位，因為谷歌在全球市場的佔有率約為90%，因此而產生的廣告利潤又為上述交易提供了資金。美國司法部還沒有說明谷歌需要採取的整改措施，但它可能會迫使谷歌及其母公司Alphabet調整其業務架構。不過別緊張，因為谷歌認為這起訴訟就是無稽之談，此案可能會拖上好幾年。
Action against Google may seem far from the storm gathering against Facebook, Twitter and social media. One is laser-focused on a type of corporate contract, the other a category 5 hurricane of popular outrage buffeting unaccountable tech firms for supposedly destroying society. The left says that, from the conspiracy theories of QAnon to the incitement of white supremacists, social media are drowning users in hatred and falsehood. The right accuses the tech firms of censorship, including last week of a dubious article alleging corruption in the family of Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee. And yet the question of what to do about social media is best seen through the same four stages as the case against Google: harm, dominance, remedies and delay. At stake is who controls the rules of public speech.
相對於針對臉書（Facebook）和推特（Twitter）等社交媒體所掀起的波瀾相比，對谷歌提起的訴訟就是小打小鬧。後者只是聚焦於一種企業合同，而前者則是匯集了民眾憤怒的五級颶風，猛烈抨擊不負責任的科技企業可能要破壞社會。左派人士表示，從QAnon的陰謀論到白人至上主義者的煽風點火，社交媒體逐漸把用戶淹沒在仇恨和謊言之中。右派人士則對科技企業的審查大加指責，這其中上周發表的一篇可疑文章，指控民主黨總統候選人喬·拜登家族腐敗。然而，對於如何處理社交媒體這一問題，最好是以起訴谷歌案為鑑，從相同的四個階段來考慮：傷害、獨佔市場地位、處理措施和拖延。關鍵在於到底是誰控制著公共言論的規則。
A tenth of Americans think social media are beneficial; almost two-thirds that they cause harm. Since February YouTube has identified over 200,000 「dangerous or misleading」 videos on covid-19. Before the vote in 2016, 110m-130m adult Americans saw fake news. In Myanmar Facebook has been used to incite genocidal attacks against the Rohingyas, a Muslim minority. Last week Samuel Paty, a teacher in France who used cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to talk about free speech, was murdered after a social-media campaign against him. The killer tweeted an image of Mr Paty’s severed head, lying in the street.
一成的美國人認為社交媒體是有益的，而近三分之二的人認為社交媒體是有害的。自二月以來，YouTube上發現超過20萬個有關新冠肺炎的「危險或誤導」視頻。在2016年投票之前，有1.1億到1.3億成年美國人看到過假新聞。在緬甸，Facebook被用來煽動對穆斯林少數分支羅興亞人發動種族滅絕行動。法國，用先知穆罕默德的漫畫來談論言論自由的教師薩繆爾·帕蒂（Samuel Paty），在上周在經歷一聲聲討他的社交媒體運動後遭謀殺。帕蒂的頭被割下，丟在街上，兇手還在推特上發布現場照片。
The tech firms』 shifting attempts to sterilise this cesspool mean that a handful of unelected executives are setting the boundaries of free speech. True, radio and TV share the responsibility for misinformation and Republican claims of bias are unproven—right-wing sources often top lists of the most popular items on Facebook and Twitter. But pressure is growing on the tech firms to restrict ever more material. In America the right fears that, urged on by a Democratic White House, Congress and their own employees, the firms』 bosses will follow left-leaning definitions of what is acceptable. Contrast that with the First Amendment’s broad licence to cause offence.
科技企業變著法子試圖淨化社交媒體，這就意味著少數未經選舉產生的高管正在設置言論自由的界限。的確，廣播和電視都應該對錯誤信息的傳播負責；共和黨的偏見言論也並未得到證實，其實右翼的消息來源通常是Facebook和Twitter上最受歡迎的內容。但科技企業面臨的壓力越來越大，要對更多的內容進行限制。在美國，右翼人士擔心，這些科技企業的老闆會在民主黨總統、國會及其員工的敦促之下，遵循左派對於可接受內容的定義。這與第一修正案對引發侵犯言論自由罪行的寬泛定義形成了鮮明對比。
Elsewhere, governments have also used social media companies to go beyond the law, often without public debate. In London the Metropolitan Police requests that they take down legal, but troubling, posts. In June France’s Constitutional Council struck down a deal between the government and the tech companies because it curbed free speech—an initiative that is sure to be revisited after Mr Paty’s murder. Citing Western precedents, more authoritarian governments in countries such as Singapore expect the tech firms to restrict 「fake news」—potentially including irksome criticism from opponents.
在世界其他地方，一些政府也會利用社交媒體企業打法律的擦邊球，而且往往不經過公開討論。在倫敦，倫敦警察廳會要求這些社交媒體企業撤下合法但會引發爭議的內容。6月，法國憲法委員會否決了政府與科技科技公司之間的一項協議，理由是該協議遏制了言論自由——這個協議在帕蒂遭謀殺後肯定會得到重新考慮。以西方國家的做法為先例，新加坡等國更為強勢的政府希望科技企業限制「假新聞」——其中有可能包含反對派人士惱人的批評。
This might not matter were the networks less dominant. If people could switch as easily as they change breakfast cereal, they could avoid rules they dislike. But switching is like giving up your mobile-phone number: it cuts you off from your friends. Social networks have also become so central to distributing news and opinion that they are, says Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, a 「town square」. If you want to be part of the conversation you have no choice but to be there, soapbox in hand.
但如果這些社交網絡的獨佔性沒那麼強，這一切可能就無所謂了。如果人們能夠像更換早餐麥片一樣輕鬆地換掉社交媒體，他們就可以避免他們不喜歡的規則。但這就和放棄你的手機號碼一樣：換掉社交媒體會切斷你與朋友的聯繫。Facebook的創始人馬克 扎克伯格說，社交網絡在傳播新聞和觀點方面也是至關重要的，稱得上是一個 「城市廣場」。如果你想成為大家談話的一部分，那麼你別無選擇，請在社交網絡上暢所欲言。
This hold over users has one further dismal implication for truth and decency. In order to sell more ads, the tech companies』 algorithms send you news and posts that they think will grab your attention. Political cynics, con artists and extremists take advantage of this bias towards virality to spread lies and hatred. Bots and deep fakes, realistic posts of public figures doing or saying things that never happened, make their job cheaper and easier. They are rapidly becoming more sophisticated.
這種對用戶的控制會對真相和社會風氣產生更不良的影響。為了賣出更多的廣告，這些科技企業會根據算法向人們推送認為能吸睛的新聞和帖子。政治噴子、騙子和極端分子則利用這種對病毒性傳播的偏見來傳播謊言和仇恨。機器人、以假亂真的騙子以及憑空捏造公眾人物行為或言論真實帖子降低了科技企業的工作成本和工作難度。很快它們就變得熟門熟路了。
The purest remedy for this would be to change the tech firms』 business model and introduce more competition. That is already working well in other areas of tech, like the cloud. One idea is for people to own their data individually or collectively. The social networks would become utilities paid a flat fee, while people or collectives earned the rent from advertisers and set the parameters for what was served up to them. At a stroke that would align the gains from advertising with the burden upon the people being advertised to. If users could port their data to another network, the tech firms would have to compete to provide a good service.
最直接的解救措施是改變科技企業的商業模式，引入更多競爭，這在科技的其它領域（如雲計算）已有成效。一種設想是讓人們以個人或集體的形式擁有他們的數據。社交網絡將變成只需支付固定費用的公用事業，個人或集體則從廣告商賺取租金，並為服務對象設定參數。這樣一來，廣告的收益就會和廣告受眾的負擔相稱。如果用戶可以將他們的數據傳輸到另一網絡上，那麼技術企業就必須為了提供良好的服務而競爭。
The obstacles to this are immense. The tech firms』 value would tumble by hundreds of billions of dollars. It is not clear you own the data about your online connections. You could not migrate to a new network without losing the friends who stayed behind unless the platforms were interoperable, as mobile-phone networks are. Perhaps the authorities could impose less sweeping remedies, such as giving users the right to choose feeds set by a neutral rule, not an attention-grabbing algorithm.
這種作法會遇到巨大的阻礙，科技企業的市值也可能會暴跌數千億美元。現在還不清楚人們擁有其網絡聯繫的相關數據情況；大家不可能在換到新網絡的同時與仍使用舊網絡的朋友保持聯繫，除非這些平臺像行動電話網絡一樣是可以互相操作的。也許當局可以實施不那麼一刀切的解救措施，比如讓用戶有權選擇中立規則下的消息來源，而非博人眼球的算法。
The keys to the hype house
社交媒體的出路
Such ideas cannot be implemented quickly, but societies need solutions today. Inevitably, governments will want to set the basic rules at the national level, just as they do for speech. They should define a framework covering obscenity, incitement and defamation and leave judgments about individual posts to others. International human-rights law is a good starting-point, because it leans towards free speech and requires restrictions to be relevant and proportionate, but allows local carve-outs.
這些設想不可能很快實施，但當今社會亟需解決辦法。各國政府必然會在國家層面制定基本規則，就像處理言論問題一樣。它們應該確定一個涵蓋淫穢、煽動和誹謗的框架，並將個別帖子交給其他的方式來判斷。《國際人權法》是一個很好的起點，因為它傾向於言論自由，並要求限制行為具有相關性和相稱性，但也允許地方性的例外。
Social-media firms should take those standards as their basis. If they want to go further, attaching warnings to or limiting content that is legal, the lodestars should be predictability and transparency. As guardians of the town square, they ought to open their processes to scrutiny and particular decisions to appeal. Ad hoc rule changes by top executives, as with the recent Biden decision, are wrong because they seem arbitrary and political. Hard cases, like kicking opponents of Bashar al-Assad in Syria off a platform for mentioning terrorists, should be open to review by representative non-statutory boards with more power than the one Facebook has created. Independent researchers need much freer access to anonymised data so that they can see how platforms work and recommend reform. Such rule-making should be open to scrutiny. In America politicians can use removing the protection from prosecution granted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as a lever to bring about change.
社交媒體公司應以上述標準為基礎。如果它們想進一步對合法的內容予以警告或加以限制，就應該以可預測性和透明度為基礎。作為社交網絡這一「城市廣場」 的守護者，它們應該公開其程序以接受審查，並公開特定提起訴訟的決定。就像最近拜登的決定一樣，高層管理人員臨時改變規則的行為是錯誤的，因為這些改變看起來武斷且政治化。一些棘手的案例，比如將敘利亞巴沙爾·阿薩德的反對者從提及恐怖分子的平臺上除名，應該公開接受具有代表性的非法定委員會的審查，因為這些委員會的權力比Facebook的委員會權力要大。獨立研究人員需要更自由地訪問匿名數據，這樣他們才能看到平臺的運作過程，並提出改革建議。這類規則的制定應該公開接受審查。在美國，政治家取消《通信規範案》第230條規定的免於起訴的保護，藉此作為實現變革的槓桿。
This will be messy, especially in politics. When societies are divided and the boundary between private and political speech is blurred, decisions to intervene are certain to cause controversy. The tech firms may want to flag abuses, including in post-election presidential tweets, but they should resist getting dragged into every debate. Short of incitement to violence, they should not block political speech. Politicians』 flaws are better exposed by noisy argument than enforced silence.
混亂是不可避免的，尤其是在政治方面。當社會分裂，私人言論和政治言論的界限變得模糊時，決定進行幹預就一定會引起爭議。科技企業可能想要濫用職權，包括在大選後的總統推文中，但他們其實應該避免捲入爭論的漩渦。除了煽動暴力，他們不應該阻止其他政治言論。與保持沉默相比，政治家們的漏洞更容易通過七嘴八舌的爭論暴露出來。
編譯：楊曉旋
編輯：翻吧君
來源：經濟學人（2020.10.22）
翻吧·與你一起學翻譯
微信號：translationtips