双语阅读｜Facebook面临的挑战不只是俄罗斯插手大选
IN ITS early days Facebook embraced the motto “move fast and break things” to describe its engineers’ strategy of rapid innovation. “Move slowly, and try not to break anything else” seems to be its new creed. In the last year Facebook has contended with several controversies, including charges that it helped spread false news, unwittingly facilitated Russian meddling in the 2016 election and fanned political polarisation (see Briefing). After denials of responsibility and little action, Mark Zuckerberg, its boss, has talked of “fixing” Facebook in 2018. It will be a huge task.
在早期，Facebook的座右铭是“快速反应，打破规则”，这是他们的工程师快速创新的策略。如今“反应缓慢，不打破规则”似乎成了新信条。去年，Facebook就身陷几次争议之中，其中包括指责Facebook传播虚假新闻，无意间促使了俄罗斯干涉2016年的美国大选，煽动了政治分化。Facebook否认，同时几乎无动于衷，CEO马克·扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg）曾表示要在2018年“修复”Fackbook。这将会是一项大工程。
Russia’s alleged manipulation of Facebook users will harm the company. On February 16th special counsel Robert Mueller filed conspiracy and fraud charges against 13 Russians for interfering in America’s 2016 election; Facebook was mentioned no fewer than 35 times as a place where Russian trolls swayed Americans through targeted political advertising and curated posts.
俄罗斯涉嫌操控Facebook用户，这会打击Facebook。2月16日，特别检察官罗伯特·米勒（Robert Mueller）就阴谋和欺诈为由指控13名俄罗斯人干涉美国2016年大选；同时，不止35次地提到Facebook成为俄罗斯摆弄美国人的地方，传播有针对性的政治性广告和精心撰写的帖子。
The indictment is also evidence that Facebook was not transparent in reporting the extent of activities that occurred on its platform. Last autumn it said it had determined Russian content reached around 130m Americans, and that Russian trolls had spent a mere $100,000 on ads during the 2016 election. Those figures seem too low. The Russian troll farm described in Mr Mueller’s indictment probably had an annual budget of around $70m and would have spent heavily on Facebook ads and content. American politicians may press the social-media firm for more information and also haul executives before Congress again to give testimony, especially as concerns mount about foreign interference in upcoming elections in 2018 and 2020—big distractions for a firm contending with several other significant challenges.
该控诉同时也是证据，即Facebook在举报在其平台上的各类活动内容范围界定不清。去年秋天，Facebook称其确定俄罗斯人发布的内容涵盖约1.3亿美国人，而俄魔在2016年大选期间仅花了10万美元广告费，这一费用似乎不多。穆勒的指控称或许年每看的预算约有7000万美元，已大量地花费在Facebook广告和内容方面上。美国政界人士对Facebook施加压力，要求提供更多信息，并还要求高管前往国会作证，尤其是对于外国势力是插手即将到来的2018年和2020年的大选的担忧越来越多——身处几大挑战中的企业而言，这也是一大干扰。
Controversies around Russian meddling, fake news and hateful speech on social media have not yet dented Facebook’s advertising revenues. But it seems likely that shrill and angry posts on the site, and bad press about social media, are playing a part in chilling usage of the core Facebook platform. Mr Zuckerberg’s approach to fixing it has been to tweak what posts users see, prioritising “meaningful interaction” over “meaningful content”, which has resulted in people seeing more of their friends’ updates and fewer news stories. But that does not go nearly far enough, says John Battelle of NewCo, a digital publisher.
有关俄罗斯在社交媒体上干涉选举，传播虚假新闻和发表仇恨言论的争议地区却没有减少Facebook的广告收入。但是，Facebook网站上尖锐骂娘帖和对社交媒体的负面报道似乎在一定程度上减少了Facebook主要平台的使用。扎克伯格的修复方式也就是调整用户看到的帖子，优先呈现“有意义的互动”而不是“有意义的内容”。这就使得人们更多是看到自己朋友的最新动态，新闻报道就更少了。但是，数字媒体Newco的约翰·巴特利表示，如此修复远远不够。
Last month when Facebook reported earnings, it announced a decline in daily active users in America and Canada for the first time and estimated that, globally, users were spending around 50m fewer hours per day on Facebook. Such a drop translates into users worldwide spending around 15% less time on Facebook year over year, reckons Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group, an equity-research firm.
在Facebook上月公布的财报里，宣布美国和加拿大日活用户首度减少，并估计全球用户每天登录Facebook的时间不到5000万小时。股市研究机构匹维托的分析师布莱恩·韦瑟估计，同比去年，如此下跌意味着全球用户登录Facebook的时间少了15%左右。
In America, Facebook is steadily losing users under the age of 25 (see chart). Youngsters are spending more time on other apps such as Snapchat, and Facebook-owned photo-sharing app Instagram, where their parents and grandparents are less likely to lurk. While Instagram and the two messaging apps that Facebook owns, Messenger and WhatsApp, help insulate the firm, “core” Facebook still accounts for at least 85% of the firm’s revenue. Americans and Canadians are by far its most valuable audience, with an average revenue per user of $86, four times more than the global average. If users continue to engage less with Facebook’s core network, it could cause advertisers to leave over time.
在美国，Facebook在持续流失25岁以下用户（见表）。这些年轻人更多时间是用来玩Snapchat这类应用和Facebook旗下的图片分享应用Instagram，因为他们家里的长辈不大可能会出现在这类应用里。Instagram与Facebook旗下的Messaging和WhatsApp两大通讯应用让在隔离Facebook的同时，作为“核心”的Facebook的收入仍然占了总收入的85%。美国和加拿大两国人民是Facebook目前最有价值的用户，每位用户平均贡献了86美元收入，是全球用户平均收入贡献的四倍。如果用户继续减少使用Facebook的核心社交平台，广告主将随之流失。
Yet most analysts and investors are still exuberant about future prospects for Facebook, which with a market value of $521bn is the world’s sixth biggest publicly traded firm. They may be underestimating some of the risks the firm faces. One challenge, which has been highlighted by the Russia controversy, is its sloppiness. For a company whose sales pitch to advertisers is that it offers precision, targeting and transparency superior to traditional media, including television, it is remarkable that it has struggled to track the movement of ad dollars and content on its properties.
然而，很多分析师和投资人仍然对Facebook的发展前景充满信心，毕竟Facebook市值达到5210亿美元，是全球第六大上市企业家。他们或许低估了Facebook所面临的一些风险挑战。其中一个挑战——俄罗斯的争议强调过了——是Facebook自身的不稳定性。对于一家定位向广告主进行销售，要比传媒媒体提供更为准确、精准和]透明的信息的企业来说，它想方设法地在其平台上追踪过其广告收入和广告内容的流向，是很不得的事。
Either its algorithms have become so complex and opaque that executives have failed to keep up with them, or they have deliberately chosen to “slow walk” their audit of foreign spending on Facebook. Neither explanation is flattering. The company this summer will introduce a feature to allow users to see who is behind a political ad and also to view every ad a particular buyer has purchased. But that is around nine months after it was proposed.
要么是Facebook的算法复杂难懂，高管们无法了解，要么是高管故意选择“慢腾腾”地审核外国资金在Facebook上的花费。这两种说法不过分。Facebook今年夏天将新添一项功能，用户利用这个功能可以看到政治广告背后的金主，也可以看到一位特定买家购买的所有广告。但是，提出这一功能到实现这一功能也是差不多九个月以后的事了。
A second challenge is that Facebook’s costs are growing significantly. In 2018 expenses are expected to rise by around half, to $23bn, while gross revenue will grow by about a third, to $54bn, according to BMO Capital Markets, an investment bank. Today Facebook has around 14,000 workers overseeing security, safety, compliance and community operations, twice as many as a year earlier, and that figure is likely to rise as more countries require it to find and remove objectionable content.
第二个挑战是Facebook的运营成本在大幅增加。投资银行蒙特利尔银行资本市场表示，预计Facebook在2018年的成本会增加50%，达到230亿美元，而总收入只增长却上涨三分之一，达到540亿美元。如今，Facebook有近14,000名员工在监控安保安全、规则遵守和社区运营情况。这一人数是一年前的两倍，且随着更多国家要求找出并移除令人反感的内容，这一人数还有可能增加。
Facebook is banking that future growth will come from luring more advertising spending away from television, but this will require investment in video content to the tune of billions of dollars. Meanwhile growth rates for digital advertising are bound to slow. This is particularly true in America, where digital’s share of total ad spending—which today stands at 44%—outstrips the percentage of time people spend on digital versus traditional media.
Facebook期望未来的收入增长能来自更多的广告收入，诱使电视广告客户不投广告，但是，这就要求对视频内容的投资达几十亿美元。同时，数字广告增长率一定是很慢的，这点在美国体现的尤为明显。美国数字广告支出在全部广告支出中所占份额——现在是44%——超过人们花在数字媒体相对于传统媒体上的时间比。
A third risk, and the biggest, is new regulation. Politicians have hardened their attitudes toward Facebook. It has swallowed up smaller rivals and has few friends among the political elite. Regulators could scuttle new deals, impose new restrictions on data-sharing between Facebook’s various apps, or fine it for anticompetitive behaviour and privacy violations. This is especially likely in Europe, but even at home watchdogs may get fiercer.
第三个挑战，也是最大的挑战是新的监管法规。政界人物对Facebook的态度强硬了起来。Facebook吞并了规模较小的竞争对手，在政界精英中没有任何朋友。监管机构可以阻挠新交易，对Facebook的各应用之间的数据分享施加新限制，或对反竞争行为和侵犯隐私进行罚款处理。如此新规在欧洲实施的可能性极大，但是即便在美国国内，监管机构也会严格实行。
In the meantime Facebook will have to grapple with regulations that limit its ability to track consumers. In May a new data privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, comes into effect in Europe requiring firms to gain explicit consent from users to follow them around the web and share their information. The regulation could slow growth in digital advertising in Europe overall. It could also threaten some of Facebook’s ad products, such as a tool that lets advertisers find their own customers on the social network.
与此同时，Facebook也必须要努力应对限制其追踪消费用户的法规。5月一项新的数据隐私法《通用数据保护条例》将在欧洲生效，该法要求各公司获得用户的明确同意后方可在网上对他们进行追踪，并分享用户信息。此法能减缓欧洲整个范围内的数字广告费用增长，也将威胁到Facebook某些广告产品，如某种工具让广告客户在社交网络上找到他们的目标客户。
Facebook has faced adversity before. Many doubted if Mr Zuckerberg could even build a business early on, and then whether he could manage the transition from desktop computers to mobile phones. He proved the naysayers wrong.
Facebook此前也遭遇过困难。当时很多人怀疑扎克伯格还能不能尽早开创业务，怀疑他能否成功地从台式电脑制作转型到手机制作。最后，他都一一否定了他们的怀疑。
These days analysts and investors appear to have suspended doubts about his company. Support from the market may offer reassurance. Facebook’s shares have fallen by only 8% from their peak at the start of February. But too many cheerleaders will not help it confront its biggest challenge, that of reinventing its core product, and repairing its reputation.
这些天来，市场分析师和投资人似乎停止了对Facebook的怀疑。来自市场的支持或让人们放心：2月初，Facebook的股价仅从最高点下降了8%。然而，太多的旁观者并不能帮助Facebook直面其最大挑战，即重塑核心品牌，恢复公司声誉。</p>
编译：彭展峰
编辑：翻吧君
来源：经济学人（2018.02.27）