至於嗎? 爲什麼應該擔心Facebook

Facebook’s quarterly earnings, released last month, have surpassed most market expectations, sending its stock price to an all-time high. They have also confirmed the company’s Teflon credentials: no public criticism ever seems to stick.

Facebook上月公佈的季度業績超出了市場中大多數人的預期，股價因此被推升至有史以來的最高點。這再次顯示，它好像給自己的招牌塗了一層“特氟龍”，任何公衆批評都沒法“粘”在上面。

Wall Street has already forgiven Facebook’s experiment on its users, in which some had more negative posts removed from their feeds while another group had more positive ones removed. This revealed that those exposed to positive posts feel happier and write more positive posts as a result. This, in turn, results in more clicks, which result in more advertising revenue.

華爾街也已原諒了Facebook對用戶所做的一個實驗。在那個實驗裏，在用戶不知情的情況下，Facebook在其中一些用戶的朋友動態中刪除了較多消極帖子，而在另一些用戶的朋友動態中刪除了較多積極的帖子。結果顯示，那些看到更多積極帖子的人感覺更快樂一些，於是他們會發出更多積極的帖子，這反過來增加了點擊量，從而能帶來更多廣告收入。

Troubling ethics notwithstanding, the experiment has revealed a deeper shift in Facebook’s business model: the company can make money even when it deigns to allow its users a modicum of privacy. It no longer needs to celebrate ubiquitous sharing – only ubiquitous clicking.

這次實驗帶來的道德問題暫且不談，它更揭示了Facebook商業模式的深層次變化：即便它屈尊賞賜用戶一點隱私權，依然能確保滾滾財源。這家公司所推崇的，不再是“無所不在的分享”，而是“無所不在的點擊”。

At the earnings call, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the company now aims to create “private spaces for people to share things and have interactions that they couldn’t have had elsewhere”. So Facebook has recently allowed users to see how they are being tracked, and even to fine tune such tracking in order to receive only those adverts they feel are relevant. The company, once a cheerleader for sharing, has even launched a nifty tool warning users against “oversharing”.

在發佈季報時的電話會議上，Facebook首席執行官馬克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)承認，Facebook現在的目標是“爲人們建立私人空間，讓他們可以分享信息，實現他們在其它環境中無法實現的互動”。基於這個目標，Facebook最近已允許用戶查看該網站如何跟蹤他們的數據，甚至還允許用戶對數據的使用方式進行微調，從而可以只收到他們感興趣的廣告。這家當初極力鼓勵用戶間分享的公司，甚至還推出了一種工具，能提醒用戶防止“過度分享”。

As usual with Facebook, this is not the whole story. For one, it has begun tracking users’ browsing history to identify their interests better. Its latest mobile app can identify songs and films playing nearby, nudging users to write about them. It has acquired the Moves app, which does something similar with physical activity, using sensors to recognise whether users are walking, driving or cycling.

和Facebook所做的其它事情一樣，這不是事情的全貌。首先，爲了更準確地瞭解用戶興趣所在，Facebook早已開始跟蹤用戶的瀏覽歷史。該公司最新推出的一款移動應用能分辨用戶附近播放的歌曲和電影，並鼓勵用戶對它們做出評價。同時，該公司還收購了Moves應用，這款應用能利用手機內的傳感器，跟蹤用戶的運動狀態，分辨他們是在走路、開車還是在騎自行車。

Still, if Facebook is so quick to embrace – and profit from – the language of privacy, should privacy advocates not fear they are the latest group to be “disrupted”? Yes, they should: as Facebook’s modus operandi mutates, their vocabulary ceases to match the magnitude of the task at hand. Fortunately, the “happiness” experiment also shows us where the true dangers lie.

但是，Facebook既然在一開始就熱情接受了“保護隱私”這種說法，並從中盈利，個人隱私的維護者們難道不該擔心，他們可能成爲又一個“被帶歪了的”團體？沒錯，他們確實應該感到擔心：隨着Facebook不斷改變做法，它所定義的“隱私”已與“保護隱私”這個真正目標相去甚遠。所幸的是，那個有關“幸福感”的實驗向我們展示了這其中真正的危險是什麼。

For example, many commentators have attacked Facebook’s experiment for making some users feel sadder; yet the company’s happiness fetish is just as troubling. Facebook’s “obligation to be happy” is the converse of the “right to be forgotten” that Google was accused of trampling over. Both rely on filters. But, while Google has begun to hide negative results because it has been told to do so by European authorities, Facebook hides negative results because it is good for business. Yet since unhappy people make the best dissidents in most dystopian novels, should we not also be concerned with all those happy, all too happy, users?

比如，許多評論人士批評Facebook的實驗加劇了部分用戶的悲傷情緒。但是，Facebook對幸福感的過度推崇其實同樣有問題。Facebook暗示人們“有快樂的義務”，它的反面即是人們“有被遺忘的權力”（谷歌此前就被批評無視人們這種權力）。這兩者都依賴對信息的過濾。不過，雖然谷歌開始隱藏負面搜索結果，是出於歐盟當局的壓力，Facebook隱藏負面帖子，卻是因爲這對它的業務有好處。不過，既然在多數反烏托邦小說中，最好的異見者都是那些不快樂的人，難道我們不該提防那些整天樂呵呵的，甚至太過快樂的用戶？

The happiness experiment confirms that Facebook does not hesitate to tinker with its algorithms if it suits its business or social agenda. Consider how on May 1 2012 it altered its settings to allow users to express their organ donor status, complete with a link to their state’s donor registry. A later study found this led to more than 13,000 registrations on the first day of the initiative alone. Whatever the public benefits, discoveries of this kind could clearly be useful both for companies and politicians. Alas, few nudging initiatives are as ethically unambiguous as organ donation.

那個幸福感實驗證明，Facebook會毫不猶豫地修改算法，只要此舉符合它的商業或社會利益。回想一下，2012年5月1日，Facebook曾更改其設定，允許用戶表達對器官捐贈問題的立場，同時還附上了用戶所在國器官捐獻登記網站的鏈接。後來的一個研究發現，僅僅在倡議提出當天，這種做法就導致逾1.3萬人登記捐獻器官。不論公衆從中獲得了什麼好處，這一發現顯然對企業和政客都很有用。但是，很少有其他倡議像器官捐贈一樣在道德上沒有爭議。

The reason to fear Facebook and its ilk is not that they violate our privacy. It is that they define the parameters of the grey and mostly invisible technological infrastructure that shapes our identity. They do not yet have the power to make us happy or sad but they will readily make us happier or sadder if it helps their earnings.

我們擔心Facebook及其同類，原因不在於它們會侵犯我們的隱私，而在於它們是規則制定者——它們可以定義灰色地帶的邊界，也掌握着那些決定我們以怎樣的面目示人的最隱祕的計算方法。他們雖然還沒有力量讓我們感到快樂或者悲傷，卻很樂意加強我們的快樂感，或悲傷感，如果這樣做能讓他們更賺錢的話。

The privacy debate, incapacitated by misplaced pragmatism, defines privacy as individual control over information flows. This treats users as if they exist in a world free of data-hungry insurance companies, banks, advertisers or government nudgers. Can we continue feigning such innocence?

錯位的實用主義對圍繞隱私權的爭論產生了有害影響，人們在爭論中將隱私權定義爲個人對於信息流的控制權。在這樣的語境下，用戶彷彿存在於這樣一個世界：在這個世界裏，那些渴望得到個人數據的保險公司、銀行、廣告商或政府引導人員彷彿都不存在。對此，我們還能繼續掩耳盜鈴麼？

A robust privacy debate should ask who needs our data and why, while proposing institutional arrangements for resisting the path offered by Silicon Valley. Instead of bickering over interpretations of Facebook’s privacy policy as if it were the US constitution, why not ask how our sense of who we are is shaped by algorithms, databases and apps, which extend political, commercial and state efforts to make us – as the dystopian Radiohead song has it – “fitter, happier, more productive”?

如果要圍繞隱私權展開更有益的辯論，就需要問一問：是誰需要我們的數據？爲什麼？與此同時，應該提出制度化的方案，而不是一味接受硅谷企業給出的方案。與其把Facebook的隱私政策推崇得像美國憲法一樣，圍繞如何解釋它爭吵不休，我們爲什麼不問一句：那些算法、數據庫和應用是如何影響我們的自我認知的？事實上，這些程序正在做的，是讓我們像那首Radiohead樂隊的反烏托邦歌曲中唱的那樣——“更健康、更快樂、更高效”，而這其實正是政界、商界及政府希望看到的。

This question stands outside the privacy debate, which, in the hands of legal academics, is disconnected from broader political and economic issues. The intellectual ping pong over privacy between corporate counsels and legal academics moonlighting as radicals always avoids the most basic question: why build the “private spaces” celebrated by Mr Zuckerberg if our freedom to behave there as we wish – and not as companies or states nudge us to – is so limited?

如今，這個真正的問題卻遊離於隱私權保護的爭論之外。法學家們把持着這場爭論，切斷了隱私保護與更大範圍的政治經濟問題間的聯繫。那些企業法律顧問和“兼職”激進分子的法學家們在圍繞隱私權你來我往地開展爭論之際，總是迴避一個最基本的問題：既然我們按照自己的意願行動（而不是被企業和國家推動着行動）的自由如此有限，我們爲何還需要扎克伯格推崇的那種“私人空間”？