扎克伯格帝国的没落

一个巨头兴起，一个巨头衰落。这是最差的年代，这是最好的年代。
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The decline and fall of the Zuckerberg Empire

Illustration: Nicolas Ortega
马可·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)并非人类历史上第一个从罗马帝国创始人奥古斯都·凯撒（Augustus Caesar)身上汲取灵感的人，但他是少数几个从奥古斯都的统治中汲取到具体的/切实有效快速实施的人之一。毕竟，两人都是在33岁之前建立自己的国际帝国。“基本上，他通过一种严厉的方法建立了200年的世界和平，”扎克伯格在今年早些时候对一名《纽约客》记者说。“这样做有什么利弊呢？”扎克伯格解释说，奥古斯都“不得不做一些事情”来确保他帝国的稳定。显然，Facebook也是如此。
Mark Zuckerberg isn't the first person in human history to draw inspiration from Augustus Caesar, the founder of Roman Empire, but he's one of a very few people for whom the lessons of Augustus' reign have a concrete urgency. Two men, after all, built international empires before the age of 33. "Basically, through a really harsh approach, he established 200 years or world peace," Zuckerberg explained to a New Yorker reporter earlier this year. “What are the trade-offs in that?" Augustus, Zuckerberg explained, "had to do certain things" to ensure the stability of his empire. So too, apparently, does Facebook.

上周纽约时报发表了一篇6000字的报道，通篇以羞辱性的细节披露了Facebook为了保护其主导地位和攻击批评者所采取的措施。随着各种关于仇恨言论、错误信息、和数据隐私的各种连锁危机的扩大，高管们忽视了这些证据，进而将其保密。这些证据显示，这个平台已成为俄罗斯政府支持的网络巨魔发起错误信息活动的载体。该公司发起了令人震惊的激进的游说和公关活动，包括发起和传播亲Facebook内容的博客，这些帖子在功能上与Facebook承诺的从其平台上删除的“经过协调的不真实内容”（即假新闻）没有区别。一个特别令人难堪的例子是，Facebook雇佣了一家政治咨询公司来传播一种阴谋论，指责乔治·索罗斯资助了反Facebook的抗议活动。扎克伯格似乎采取了“一种非常严厉的方法”来建立数字世界的霸权。
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.

至少奥古斯都是一位富有魅力的领导者和自信的统治者。而在Facebook没有人像时代周刊中所说那样的大胆的思想家/有远见的人/领袖。既不是Joel Kaplan，Facebook的首席说客，他鼓励公司压制和隐瞒有关俄罗斯影响竞选的调查结果，以免疏远共和党。也不是Chuck Schumer, 他曾直面参议院对Facebook最严厉的批评者之一，并告诉他要想办法与Facebook合作。（Chuck Schumer的女儿在Facebook工作。）也不是Sheryl Sandberg，她是“房间里的成年人”首席运营官，她主导了整个可疑和敌对的危机应对。当然也不是Zuckerberg，在处理有关Facebook的仇恨言论和错误信息的关键会议上，他似乎一直缺席，或者明显的不感兴趣。如果连出席道德综合会议都懒得做，那就很难成为一个历史上因做出道德综合决策来维护稳定而受到赞誉的思想家/有远见的人/领袖。
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，或至少辞去董事长一职的呼声越来越高。但是扎克伯格控制Facebook 60%的投票权，辞职的可能性并不比奥古斯都大。据华尔街日报报道，今年早些时候，他告诉公司高管Facebook正处于战争状态。问题是可能已经输掉了这场战争。受增长停滞，员工士气低落，股价跳水，公共关系紧张，以及两党在政府内敌对的影响，1-2年前的那个不断扩张、无视政府，征服世界的Facebook已经不复存在。
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内部的调查也证实了这一点：Facebook曾经因为员工的狂热奉献而闻名，由于员工拒绝泄露公司任何信息，所以对公司的采访几乎不可能。但员工对Facebook未来的信心降至52%，比去年同期下降了32个百分点。这和华尔街日报报道的内部调如出一辙。大约同等数量的Facebook员工认为公司正在让世界变的更美好，这个数字比去年同期下降了19个百分点。员工也表示他们计划更早的离开Facebook寻找新的工作。对Facebook来说，更可怕的是，它可能不再是最受计算机科学和工程专业毕业生欢迎的雇主。
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.

已经有足够的证据显示Facebook正在数去对用户的控制。在Facebook盈利能力最强的市场，用户要么像北美一样停滞不涨，要么像欧洲一样缩减。该公司或许可以让自己重拾信心，它全资拥有的子公司Instgram仍在不断迅猛扩张。但是，Instgram的成功并没有阻止Facebook在股市上收到的惩罚。
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将欧洲用户数字的缩减归咎于欧盟激进的隐私法GDPR，而非其岌岌可危的公众形象。而这恰恰带给Facebook一种更加令人不安的可能性：它的持续成功依赖于不再可能从政府获取的宽松管理。纽约时报披露对扎克伯格帝国最危险的时刻在于有政治意愿挑战其主导地位的时刻。Facebook的垮台可能不会在经历长期下滑后出现，而是通过外力出现——巨额罚款和昂贵的调查，受到新监管制度的惩罚和削弱。“Facebook不可能自我监管，”罗德岛众议院David Cicilline上周在twitter上表示说。David Cicilline很可能智障众议院反垄断司法小组委员会。
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.

在参议院，对科技巨头的怀疑足以给两党对数据保护和用户隐私达成一致的一个空间。共和党参议员John Kennedy在今年早些时候表示：“我不打算把（扎克伯格）监管到半死不活但我可以告诉你:这个问题不会消失。”确实一些共和党批评者并不怎么关心Facebook的压倒性力量，而关心保守派受质疑的言论在此平台上受到压制。但是，这是共和党人对控制Facebook真正关心的地方。反对大型科技公司的行动受到Steve Bannon及其在GOP的羽翼喜爱。当然，川普本人，对Facebook没有任何特殊感情。
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.

事实上，特朗普的司法部可能是Facebook最大的威胁。反垄断部门负责人Makan Delrahim一直赞扬司法部（DOJ）对微软提起的著名反垄断诉讼。正如美国联邦贸易委员会前顾问、《大诅咒：镀金时代的反垄断》一书的作者吴天明（Tim Wu）所言，”不管谁带头分拆Facebook，都会受到政治风向和公众的支持。”一项新的Axios民调支持了这种评估。在过去几年里，美国人民转变了他们对社交媒体的观念，并且政治圈里的大多数美国人认为社交媒体伤害了民主，而且政府在监管层面做的不到位。
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最应该担心的是众怒。其他科技巨头已设法摆脱针对Facebook的指责，因为他们有明显很有用的服务。亚马逊送货上门。谷歌提供在线查找服务。苹果卖实体物品。Facebook...帮你打架？帮你老同学向你传达他的政治观点？
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?

在过去一年里，我花了很多时间试图戒掉对大型科技平台的以来，但基本没有成功。尽管我不断抱怨，谷歌的搜索仍然是我网上浏览的最佳方式；亚马逊的便捷依然令人难以置信，一想到要退出它，我就筋疲力尽。但是，我一年多前就退出了Facebook，从那以后我仅登陆过10来次。曾经，登陆Facebook是我的每日习惯，但是它并没有改善我的生活，也没有让我觉得它很有必要。没有多少罗马民众会这样评价罗马和平。一些帝国的没落是因为外部入侵，或者内部腐朽。扎克伯格的社交网站可能是历史上第一个仅仅因用户登出而倒塌的。
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.
原文链接：http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-zuckerberg-empire.html