硅谷在歐洲遭遇反彈 有嫌疑製造出迴音室

The other day Angela Merkel took a few hours out from the cacophony of day-to-day politics. Putting to one side migration, the eurozone, Russia and Ukraine, Brexit and the rest, the chancellor gave a speech about algorithms. Yes, algorithms.

幾天前，安格拉.默克爾(Angela Merkel)抽出幾小時暫別喧囂的日常政治。德國總理把移民、歐元區、俄羅斯和烏克蘭、英國退歐以及其他事宜擱置一邊，發表了關於算法的演講。沒錯，就是算法。

Her message to an audience in Munich was that the search engines that deliver news on websites such as Google and Facebook are creating distorting prisms. The closely guarded formulas, or algorithms, used by these companies to tailor the output to recorded personal preferences can create echo chambers. Citizens eventually may receive only the news that fits their prejudices — a gift to today’s populist proponents of post-truth politics. Healthy democracies depend on the wide exposure of conflicting ideas and interpretations.

她在慕尼黑向聽衆傳達的信息是，在谷歌(Google)和Facebook等網站發佈新聞的搜索引擎正在創造扭曲的棱鏡。這些公司根據記錄下來的個人偏好，運用高度保密的公式（即算法）來定製內容，這可能製造出“迴音室”。公民們最終只會看到符合他們偏見的新聞——這對當今“後真相政治”的民粹主義鼓吹者是一份大禮。健康的民主體制有賴於民衆全面接觸各種觀點和解讀的碰撞。

At the very least, Ms Merkel said, it was incumbent on the technology companies to be transparent about the way the algorithms are constructed, so viewers and readers understood they are being offered a strictly limited perspective on the world around them.

默克爾表示，科技公司至少有義務公開算法的構建方式，讓觀衆和讀者們明白自己獲得的世界視角是嚴格受限的。

A couple of days later an employment court in London ruled in favour of Uber drivers who had complained that their contracts wrongly denied them basic employment rights such as the minimum wage and paid holidays. Uber, the court said, could not pretend they were entirely independent contractors.

兩天後，倫敦一個僱傭法庭做出了支持優步(Uber)司機主張的判決，這些司機此前抱怨，他們的勞動合同錯誤地沒有給予他們最低工資和帶薪休假等基本僱傭權利。該法庭表示，優步不能假裝他們是完全獨立的承包商。

As striking as the court’s judgment was the robust language in which it was couched. The notion that the London operations of Uber, Judge Anthony Snelson remarked laconically, represented a mosaic of some 30,000 small businesses linked by Uber’s technology platform, was “faintly ridiculous”. The company had resorted to fictitious and twisted language and had even invented “brand new terminology” in the effort to hoodwink the court.

和法庭判決內容同樣引人注目的是判決書所用的有力措辭。安東尼.斯內爾森法官(Judge Anthony Snelson)精闢地說道，有關優步倫敦業務代表着依靠其技術平臺連接起來的大約3萬家小企業的說法“有些可笑”。優步求助於虛構且不通的語言，甚至發明了“全新術語”來糊弄法庭。

Uber has said it will appeal against the decision. Many lawyers think it more likely the judgment will improve the working conditions of hundreds of thousands of people now employed in Britain’s casual, or “gig”, economy.

優步表示將提起上訴。許多律師認爲更有可能的情況是，該判決將會改善如今受僱於英國零工經濟的數十萬人的工作條件。

You would have to be a conspiracy theorist of Trumpian proportions to connect these two events in different European cities. And yet they tell much the same story. Ms Merkel’s speech and Mr Snelson’s ruling are straws in a wind that is changing the weather in Europe for the mainly American technology groups. Not so long ago the digital innovators and disrupters seemed set to sweep all before them. Now politicians and regulators are pushing back.

你得是特朗普那種水平的陰謀論者才能將發生於歐洲不同城市的這兩件事聯繫起來。然而它們在本質上確實是一回事。對以美國爲主的科技集團來說，默克爾的演講和斯內爾森法官的判決是歐洲風向改變的跡象。就在不久前，數字創新者和顛覆者似乎還勢不可擋。如今政客和監管機構正在反擊。

Of course, opposition to Uber and Airbnb, its rent-an-apartment equivalent, is not confined to one side of the Atlantic. The governor of New York has signed into law severe restrictions on Airbnb’s operations in the state and Uber has faced battles with its drivers in several US cities. But it is in Europe that you sense the deeper disquiet about the economic and societal effect of these technologies.

當然，反對優步和公寓租賃服務網站Airbnb的不僅僅侷限於大西洋的一邊。紐約州州長簽署法令嚴格限制Airbnb在該州的運營，而優步在美國多個城市遭遇其司機的抗爭。但在歐洲，你感覺人們對這些技術帶來的經濟和社會影響的擔憂更爲深切。

Another manifestation came in the summer with the European Commission’s imposition of a EURO13bn fine on Apple. The company’s aggressive tax avoidance — framed, it should be said, in collusion with a previous Irish government — ran foul of competition laws. The Brussels commission has few admirers these days in EU member states but applause for the fine echoed across the continent’s capitals.

今夏歐盟委員會(European Commission)對蘋果(Apple)罰款130億歐元是另一個明證。該公司激進的避稅手法——應該指出是與之前的愛爾蘭政府聯手炮製的——違反了反壟斷法。如今歐盟成員國幾乎沒有人對歐盟委員會抱有好感，但這一罰單在各國首都贏得讚賞。

Apple is not alone. The commission is investigating Amazon’s tax affairs and has launched a probe into whether Google has broken antitrust rules. Facebook has bowed to pressure and agreed to book more of its sales in the UK rather than the Republic of Ireland, which has a lower corporate tax rate.

蘋果並非個例。歐盟委員會正在調查亞馬遜(Amazon)的稅務安排，並對谷歌(Google)是否違反了反壟斷規則展開調查。Facebook屈從於壓力，同意在英國（而非愛爾蘭）申報更多的銷售收入——愛爾蘭的企業稅率更低一些。

Google, which has had its offices in Paris and Madrid raided by tax inspectors, may do something similar.

谷歌在巴黎和馬德里的辦公室遭到稅務機關的突擊搜查，該公司可能也會屈服。

There is a suspicion in Washington that all this is part of a protectionist plot. Europeans are simply unhappy with the way US companies dominate the marketplace. And there is something to that charge. It is probably no accident that German media businesses are among the sharpest critics of the mysteries of search engine algorithms.

華盛頓有人懷疑，所有這些都是保護主義陰謀的一部分。歐洲人只是對美國企業主導市場的格局感到不快。這種懷疑有一定道理。德國媒體界躋身於最猛烈抨擊搜索引擎神祕算法的行列，很可能並非偶然。

There is also something else: a collision between Silicon Valley’s “government get out of the way” disdain for anything that might dent its profits and a growing awareness among politicians of the public policy implications of the new technologies. It matters to Europe’s political leaders if voters are exposed only to views they agree with, or if workers are denied decent wages and social safety nets in the so-called sharing economy.

也有其他因素：硅谷對任何可能影響其利潤的事情都採取“讓政府走開”的不屑態度，而政客們日益意識到新技術對公共政策的潛在影響，兩者存在衝突。如果選民只能獲得他們認可的觀點，如果勞動者在所謂的共享經濟中無法獲得體面的薪資和社會安全網，歐洲政治領導人不想管也得管。

Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, often sounds as if he believes his company should be free to decide how much it pays in taxes. Mr Cook thinks it is for Apple rather than elected politicians to decide where to strike the balance between personal privacy and national security in the use of encryption. He does not seem to have noticed that these are tough political times or that governments are no longer dazzled by all the technological hype.

蘋果首席執行官蒂姆.庫克(Tim Cook)往往給人的印象是，他相信自己的公司應該自由決定交多少稅。庫克認爲，在加密技術的使用上，應該由蘋果（而非民選產生的政客）決定個人隱私與國家安全之間的恰當平衡。他似乎沒有注意到，當今的政治形勢十分嚴峻，同時各國政府也不再對所有的技術炒作覺得了不起。

What is happening, I think, is that these businesses are being “socialised” — albeit slowly and with some kicking and screaming. The direction is as it should be. Technology companies cannot opt out of the responsibilities borne by other businesses. A rebalancing of the relationship between private profit and public welfare is overdue. Mr Cook would do best to stick with the clever gadgets.

我認爲，現在發生的情況是，這些企業正在被“社會化”，儘管這個過程緩慢而且存在抵制。從大方向說，理應如此。科技公司不能逃避其他企業承擔的責任。早就應該再平衡私人利潤與公共福利之間的關係了。庫克最好專注於推出智能設備。