如何理解Facebook的政治影響力

What to make of Facebook’s revelations that “inauthentic” Russian actors bought $100,000 worth of advertisements on the social media platform over the past two years, amid allegations that Russia swayed the US election results? While the ads did not contain specific messages about the candidates or the election, they did focus on policy issues from gun rights to race issues that were hugely important in the campaign.

怎麼理解Facebook的爆料呢？就在俄羅斯被指影響了美國大選結果之際，該公司稱，過去兩年，“虛假”的俄羅斯賬號在該社交媒體平臺購買了價值10萬美元的廣告。儘管這些廣告不含有有關候選人或大選的具體信息，但它們確實聚焦於選舉中非常重要的政策問題，從持有槍支權到種族問題。

All this only provides more proof that Facebook, which along with Google controls 85 per cent of the digital advertising market, is not only an economic powerhouse, but a major political influencer as well.

這些只是提供了更多證據，表明Facebook不僅是一個經濟發動機，而且還是一個重要的政治影響者。該公司與谷歌(Google)控制着數字廣告市場85%的份額。

Already, the announcement has drawn criticism. “I’m sceptical that this is a ‘robust’ response,” says Jonathan Taplin, the author of Move Fast and Break Things and Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California.

Facebook的爆料已招致批評。南加州大學(University of Southern California) 安嫩伯格創新實驗室(Annenberg Innovation Lab)榮譽董事喬納森?塔普林(Jonathan Taplin)表示：“我對於這是否是一種‘穩健’的迴應持懷疑態度。”塔普林著有《行動敏捷，打破傳統》(Move Fast and Break Things)一書。

Taplin points out that Facebook has not published the Russian ads, and notes that the company has knowingly done things with perhaps even more political impact, like embedding employees in the Trump-Cambridge Analytica war room in Texas to help support the campaign, as Trump spent $80m on Facebook ads.

塔普林指出，Facebook沒有公佈這些俄羅斯廣告，他還指出，該公司故意做出了一些可能具有更大政治影響的事情，例如向支持特朗普的劍橋分析(Cambridge Analytica)在德州的情報室派出員工，以幫助其競選。特朗普在Facebook上支付了8000萬美元的廣告費用。

A Facebook spokesperson says: “Our data policy and federal law limit our ability to share user data and content.” This is the reason given for failing to release the ads. Facebook was, of course, an equal-opportunity monetiser in the 2016 election, putting employees in Hillary Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters too. Many publishers and advertising firms might do the same thing. But therein lies the key point — how different is Facebook from any other kind of company?

Facebook發言人表示：“我們的數據政策和聯邦法律限制了我們共享用戶數據和內容的能力。”這是該公司就未能公佈這些廣告給出的理由。當然，Facebook是2016年大選中兩邊下注的套現者，在希拉里?克林頓(Hillary Clinton)在布魯克林的競選總部中也派出了員工。很多出版商和廣告公司可能會做同樣的事情。因此，關鍵是Facebook與其他公司有何不同？

Facebook, along with Google and many other large platform companies, have been under fire for some time now about not taking responsibility for what happens on their websites; indeed, a little-known legal loophole, section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act, allows them to avoid, with a few small exceptions, “intermediary liability” for what anyone does or says on their sites. That same loophole also allows them to police their own sites for problematic behaviours, acting as “good Samaritans” without incurring liability.

與谷歌和其他很多大型平臺公司一樣，一段時間以來，Facebook一直因不對其網站內容承擔責任而受到批評；實際上，根據《傳播淨化法案》(Communications Decency Act) 230條款，它們可以不對用戶在其網站上的任何言行承擔“中介責任”，只有少數例外。這是一個不爲人知的法律漏洞。這個漏洞還讓它們有權監督處置自己網站上有問題的行爲，在不承擔責任的情況下充當“正義之士”。

Facebook’s investigation into its own role in the 2016 election would seem to fall into this category of self-regulation. And yet, the results of this investigation also make it more and more clear that the platforms’ business models have changed so dramatically that they no longer deserve the sort of blanket exemptions for liabilities that companies in every other industry incur as a cost of doing business.

Facebook針對自己在2016年總統大選中所扮演角色的調查，似乎要歸爲自我監管這一類。然而，調查的結果越來越明確地顯示，這些平臺的業務模式已發生巨大變化，因此它們不配再享受那種責任完全豁免的權利，其他所有行業的公司都要承擔這些責任，這是一項經商成本。

Platforms are no longer the “town square”, but run advertising businesses that monetise both fake and real news (and data of all sorts) in ways that mimic traditional publishers and retailers — yet with a precision and lack of legal accountability unknown to those businesses (Frank Pasquale, a University of Maryland professor who is an outspoken critic of Big Tech, covers the issue well in this video).

如今平臺不再是“城鎮廣場”，而是在經營廣告業務，它們用仿效傳統出版商和零售商的方式把真實和虛假新聞（以及各種數據）變現，但其精確性和法律責任的缺失是傳統出版商和零售商聞所未聞的（馬里蘭大學(University of Maryland)教授弗蘭克?帕斯奎爾(Frank Pasquale)是一位出言直率、對科技巨擘持批評態度的人，他在這則視頻中詳細講述了這個問題）。

The company’s investigations into the Russian fake news scandal, as well as those of the Federal Election Commission, continue. Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of senators have introduced legislation that could challenge the CDA230 loophole — and Big Tech’s business model. Watch this space.

Facebook針對俄羅斯假新聞醜聞的調查以及聯邦選舉委員會(Federal Election Commission)的調查將繼續。與此同時，兩黨參議員已引入立法，可能會挑戰《傳播淨化法案》230條款這一漏洞以及科技巨擘們的業務模式。讓我們拭目以待。