一個(gè)巨頭興起磁浇，一個(gè)巨頭衰落钧大。這是最差的年代，這是最好的年代窍霞。
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The decline and fall of the Zuckerberg Empire

Illustration: Nicolas Ortega

上周紐約時(shí)報(bào)發(fā)表了一篇6000字的報(bào)道掀抹，通篇以羞辱性的細(xì)節(jié)披露了Facebook為了保護(hù)其主導(dǎo)地位和攻擊批評(píng)者所采取的措施。隨著各種關(guān)于仇恨言論心俗、錯(cuò)誤信息傲武、和數(shù)據(jù)隱私的各種連鎖危機(jī)的擴(kuò)大，高管們忽視了這些證據(jù)城榛，進(jìn)而將其保密谱轨。這些證據(jù)顯示，這個(gè)平臺(tái)已成為俄羅斯政府支持的網(wǎng)絡(luò)巨魔發(fā)起錯(cuò)誤信息活動(dòng)的載體吠谢。該公司發(fā)起了令人震驚的激進(jìn)的游說和公關(guān)活動(dòng)，包括發(fā)起和傳播親Facebook內(nèi)容的博客诗茎，這些帖子在功能上與Facebook承諾的從其平臺(tái)上刪除的“經(jīng)過協(xié)調(diào)的不真實(shí)內(nèi)容”（即假新聞）沒有區(qū)別工坊。一個(gè)特別令人難堪的例子是，F(xiàn)acebook雇傭了一家政治咨詢公司來傳播一種陰謀論敢订，指責(zé)喬治·索羅斯資助了反Facebook的抗議活動(dòng)王污。扎克伯格似乎采取了“一種非常嚴(yán)厲的方法”來建立數(shù)字世界的霸權(quán)。
A 6,000-word report published in the New York Times last week disclosed in humilating detail the lengths to which Facebook has gone to protect its dominance and attack its critics. As various interlocking crises concerning hate speech, misinformation, and data privacy widened, top executives ingnored, and then kept secret, evidence that the platform had become a vector for misinformation campaigns by government-backed Russian trolls. The company mounted a shocking aggressive lobbying and public-relations campaign, which included creating and circulating pro-Facebook blog posts that were functionally indistinguishable from the "coordinated inauthentic content" (that is, fake news) Facebook had pledged to eliminate from its platform. In one particularly galling example, the company hired a political consultancy that spread a conspiracy theory accusing George Soros of funding anti-Facebook protests. Zuckerberg, it seems, has taken the "really harsh approach" to establishing digital hegemony.

至少奧古斯都是一位富有魅力的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者和自信的統(tǒng)治者楚午。而在Facebook沒有人像時(shí)代周刊中所說那樣的大膽的思想家/有遠(yuǎn)見的人/領(lǐng)袖昭齐。既不是Joel Kaplan，F(xiàn)acebook的首席說客矾柜，他鼓勵(lì)公司壓制和隱瞞有關(guān)俄羅斯影響競選的調(diào)查結(jié)果阱驾，以免疏遠(yuǎn)共和黨。也不是Chuck Schumer, 他曾直面參議院對(duì)Facebook最嚴(yán)厲的批評(píng)者之一怪蔑，并告訴他要想辦法與Facebook合作里覆。（Chuck Schumer的女兒在Facebook工作。）也不是Sheryl Sandberg缆瓣，她是“房間里的成年人”首席運(yùn)營官喧枷，她主導(dǎo)了整個(gè)可疑和敵對(duì)的危機(jī)應(yīng)對(duì)。當(dāng)然也不是Zuckerberg，在處理有關(guān)Facebook的仇恨言論和錯(cuò)誤信息的關(guān)鍵會(huì)議上隧甚，他似乎一直缺席车荔，或者明顯的不感興趣。如果連出席道德綜合會(huì)議都懶得做戚扳，那就很難成為一個(gè)歷史上因做出道德綜合決策來維護(hù)穩(wěn)定而受到贊譽(yù)的思想家/有遠(yuǎn)見的人/領(lǐng)袖忧便。
Augstus, at least, was a charismatic leader and confident ruler. No one at Facebook comes across in the Times piece as a similarly bold visionary. Not Joel Kaplan, Facebook's top lobbyist, who encouraged the company to suppress and hold back findings Russian influence campaigns for fear of alienating Republicans. Not Chuck Schumer, who confronted one of the Senate's top Facebook critics and told him to figure out how to work with the company. (Schumer's daughter works for Facebook.) Not Sheryl Sandberg, the adult-in-the-room COO who presided over the entire suspicious and hostile crisis response. And certainly not Zuckerberg, who seems to have been consistently absent - or plainly uninterested - during key meetings about Facebook's handling of hate speech and misinformation. It's hard to be a historical visionary hailed for brokering stability by making morally complex decisions if you can't even be bothered to show up to the Morally Complex Decision meetings.

要求CEO退位，或至少辭去董事長一職的呼聲越來越高咖城。但是扎克伯格控制Facebook 60%的投票權(quán)茬腿，辭職的可能性并不比奧古斯都大。據(jù)華爾街日?qǐng)?bào)報(bào)道宜雀，今年早些時(shí)候切平，他告訴公司高管Facebook正處于戰(zhàn)爭狀態(tài)。問題是可能已經(jīng)輸?shù)袅诉@場(chǎng)戰(zhàn)爭辐董。受增長停滯悴品，員工士氣低落，股價(jià)跳水简烘，公共關(guān)系緊張苔严，以及兩黨在政府內(nèi)敵對(duì)的影響，1-2年前的那個(gè)不斷擴(kuò)張孤澎、無視政府届氢，征服世界的Facebook已經(jīng)不復(fù)存在。
Demands for the CEO abdicate, or to at lease step down from his role as chairman of the board, has increased, but Zuckerberg -- who controls 60 percent of Facebook's voting shares -- is no more likely to resign than Augustus would have been. As the Wall Street Journal reports, he told company executives earlier this year that Facebook is at war. The trouble is that the war may have already been lost. Beset by stagnant growth, low employee morale, plummeting stock, public outrage, and a bipartisan group of enemies in government, the old Facebook, the ever-expanding, government-ignoring, world-conquering company of only a year or two ago, is gone.

Facebook內(nèi)部的調(diào)查也證實(shí)了這一點(diǎn)：Facebook曾經(jīng)因?yàn)閱T工的狂熱奉獻(xiàn)而聞名覆旭，由于員工拒絕泄露公司任何信息退子，所以對(duì)公司的采訪幾乎不可能。但員工對(duì)Facebook未來的信心降至52%型将，比去年同期下降了32個(gè)百分點(diǎn)寂祥。這和華爾街日?qǐng)?bào)報(bào)道的內(nèi)部調(diào)如出一轍。大約同等數(shù)量的Facebook員工認(rèn)為公司正在讓世界變的更美好七兜，這個(gè)數(shù)字比去年同期下降了19個(gè)百分點(diǎn)丸凭。員工也表示他們計(jì)劃更早的離開Facebook尋找新的工作。對(duì)Facebook來說腕铸，更可怕的是惜犀，它可能不再是最受計(jì)算機(jī)科學(xué)和工程專業(yè)畢業(yè)生歡迎的雇主。
Its own internal surveys bear this out: Facebook was once legendary for the cultish dedication of its employees - reporting on the company was nearly impossible because workers refuse to leak - but employee confidence in Facebook's future, as judged by internal surveys reported on by the Journal, is down 32 percentage points over the past year, to 52 percent. Around the same number of Facebook employees think the company is making the world a better place, down 19 points from this time last year, and employees report that they plan to leave Facebook for new jobs earlier than they had in the past. Scarier even for Facebook is the possibility, for which there is some anecdotal evidence, that it’s no longer a sought-after employer for top computer-science and engineering graduates.

已經(jīng)有足夠的證據(jù)顯示Facebook正在數(shù)去對(duì)用戶的控制恬惯。在Facebook盈利能力最強(qiáng)的市場(chǎng)向拆，用戶要么像北美一樣停滯不漲，要么像歐洲一樣縮減酪耳。該公司或許可以讓自己重拾信心浓恳，它全資擁有的子公司Instgram仍在不斷迅猛擴(kuò)張刹缝。但是，Instgram的成功并沒有阻止Facebook在股市上收到的懲罰颈将。
There's already ample evidence that Facebook is losing its hold on users. In the In the markets where Facebook is most profitable, its user base is either stagnant, as in North America, or actually shrinking, as in Europe. The company might be able to reassure itself that Instagram — which it wholly owns — is still expanding impressively, but the success of Instagram hasn’t stopped Facebook from getting punished on the stock market.

Facebook將歐洲用戶數(shù)字的縮減歸咎于歐盟激進(jìn)的隱私法GDPR梢夯，而非其岌岌可危的公眾形象。而這恰恰帶給Facebook一種更加令人不安的可能性：它的持續(xù)成功依賴于不再可能從政府獲取的寬松管理晴圾。紐約時(shí)報(bào)披露對(duì)扎克伯格帝國最危險(xiǎn)的時(shí)刻在于有政治意愿挑戰(zhàn)其主導(dǎo)地位的時(shí)刻颂砸。Facebook的垮臺(tái)可能不會(huì)在經(jīng)歷長期下滑后出現(xiàn)，而是通過外力出現(xiàn)——巨額罰款和昂貴的調(diào)查死姚，受到新監(jiān)管制度的懲罰和削弱人乓。“Facebook不可能自我監(jiān)管都毒，”羅德島眾議院David Cicilline上周在twitter上表示說色罚。David Cicilline很可能智障眾議院反壟斷司法小組委員會(huì)。
Facebook blames its attenuating European-user figures not on its faltering public image but on the European Union’s aggressive new privacy law, GDPR. But this raises a more troubling possibility for Facebook: that its continued success is dependent on a soft regulatory touch it can no longer expect from governments. What makes the Times revelations particularly dangerous to Zuckerberg’s empire is that they arrive at a moment when there is actually the political will to challenge its dominance. The fall of Facebook may not come after a long decline but through outside action — slapped with major fines and expensive investigations, chastened and disempowered by a new regulatory regime. “Facebook cannot be trusted to regulate itself,” Rhode Island representative David Cicilline — who will likely run the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust issues — tweeted last week.

在參議院账劲，對(duì)科技巨頭的懷疑足以給兩黨對(duì)數(shù)據(jù)保護(hù)和用戶隱私達(dá)成一致的一個(gè)空間戳护。共和黨參議員John Kennedy在今年早些時(shí)候表示：“我不打算把（扎克伯格）監(jiān)管到半死不活但我可以告訴你:這個(gè)問題不會(huì)消失∑俳梗”確實(shí)一些共和黨批評(píng)者并不怎么關(guān)心Facebook的壓倒性力量腌且，而關(guān)心保守派受質(zhì)疑的言論在此平臺(tái)上受到壓制。但是榛瓮，這是共和黨人對(duì)控制Facebook真正關(guān)心的地方铺董。反對(duì)大型科技公司的行動(dòng)受到Steve Bannon及其在GOP的羽翼喜愛。當(dāng)然禀晓，川普本人柄粹，對(duì)Facebook沒有任何特殊感情。
In the Senate, skepticism regarding tech giants is enough of a bipartisan issue that there appears to be room for an agreement on data protection and user privacy. “I’m not looking to regulate [Zuckerberg] half to death,” Republican senator John Kennedy said earlier this year, “but I can tell you this: The issue isn’t going away.” It’s true that some Republican critics seem less concerned about Facebook’s overwhelming power than about the spurious claims of conservatives that their views are being suppressed on the platform, but there is genuine Republican interest in reining in Facebook. Action against big tech companies is a beloved topic of Steve Bannon and his wing of the GOP, and Trump himself, of course, has no particular affection for the company.

事實(shí)上匆绣，特朗普的司法部可能是Facebook最大的威脅。反壟斷部門負(fù)責(zé)人Makan Delrahim一直贊揚(yáng)司法部（DOJ）對(duì)微軟提起的著名反壟斷訴訟什黑。正如美國聯(lián)邦貿(mào)易委員會(huì)前顧問崎淳、《大詛咒：鍍金時(shí)代的反壟斷》一書的作者吳天明（Tim Wu）所言，”不管誰帶頭分拆Facebook愕把，都會(huì)受到政治風(fēng)向和公眾的支持拣凹。”一項(xiàng)新的Axios民調(diào)支持了這種評(píng)估恨豁。在過去幾年里嚣镜，美國人民轉(zhuǎn)變了他們對(duì)社交媒體的觀念，并且政治圈里的大多數(shù)美國人認(rèn)為社交媒體傷害了民主橘蜜，而且政府在監(jiān)管層面做的不到位菊匿。
Trump’s Department of Justice, in fact, might represent Facebook’s biggest threat. The head of the Antitrust Division, Makan Delrahim, has been singing the praises of the famous DOJ Microsoft antitrust lawsuit. As Tim Wu, a former FTC adviser and the author of The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the Gilded Age*, *puts it, “whoever leads the case to break up Facebook will have the political winds and the public at his back.” A new Axios poll supports this assessment. Americans have reversed their opinions about social media over the past year, and a majority of Americans across the political spectrum now believe that social media hurts democracy and that the government isn’t doing enough to regulate it.

Facebook最應(yīng)該擔(dān)心的是眾怒付呕。其他科技巨頭已設(shè)法擺脫針對(duì)Facebook的指責(zé)，因?yàn)樗麄冇忻黠@很有用的服務(wù)跌捆。亞馬遜送貨上門徽职。谷歌提供在線查找服務(wù)。蘋果賣實(shí)體物品佩厚。Facebook...幫你打架姆钉？幫你老同學(xué)向你傳達(dá)他的政治觀點(diǎn)？
It's the public outrage that should be most worrying to Facebook. Other tech giants have managed to escape the opprobrium directed at Facebook because they have obviouslt useful service. Amazon delivers things to your house. Google helps you find things online. Apple sells actual objects. Facebook...helps you get into fights? Delivers your old classmates' political opinions to your brain?

在過去一年里抄瓦，我花了很多時(shí)間試圖戒掉對(duì)大型科技平臺(tái)的以來潮瓶，但基本沒有成功。盡管我不斷抱怨钙姊，谷歌的搜索仍然是我網(wǎng)上瀏覽的最佳方式毯辅；亞馬遜的便捷依然令人難以置信，一想到要退出它摸恍，我就筋疲力盡悉罕。但是，我一年多前就退出了Facebook立镶，從那以后我僅登陸過10來次壁袄。曾經(jīng)，登陸Facebook是我的每日習(xí)慣媚媒，但是它并沒有改善我的生活嗜逻，也沒有讓我覺得它很有必要。沒有多少羅馬民眾會(huì)這樣評(píng)價(jià)羅馬和平缭召。一些帝國的沒落是因?yàn)橥獠咳肭终磺辏蛘邇?nèi)部腐朽。扎克伯格的社交網(wǎng)站可能是歷史上第一個(gè)僅僅因用戶登出而倒塌的嵌巷。
Over the past year, I've spent time trying to wean myself off tech mega-platforms, but with little success. Google's search, for all my complaints, is still the best way for me to navigate the internet; Amazon is still so unbelievably convenient that the thought of quitting it exhausts me. But I looged out of Facebook more than a year ago and have logged back in fewer than a dozen time since. Checking Facebook had been a daily habit, but it also hadn't improved my life or made itself necessary. Not many Roman plebes would have said that about the Pax Romana. Some empires fall because they're invaded from the outside or rot from within. Zuckerberg's would be the first in history to collapse simply because its citizens logged out.

*This article appears in the November 26, 2018, issue of New York Magazine.
原文鏈接：http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-zuckerberg-empire.html