是谁在控制着"热搜”？
Social Media: the Attention Economy
社交媒体：注意力经济
问题：是谁在控制着热搜，是否给我们带来高质量的信息缺失？
来源： Scientific American
要点
何为 眼球经济（attention economy）？
形容 「流量变现/广告套现」
哪个动词比较地道？
网络常用语「热搜」、「标题党」等英文表达
「信息茧房」是什么原理？
带着问题去精读
1
精读原文
信息过载：
The glut of information has generated intense competition for people’s attention. As Nobel Prize–winning economist and psychologist Herbert A. Simon noted,“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.” One of the first consequences of the so-called attention economy is the loss of high-quality information.
信息泛滥时代，一场针对人们注意力的争夺战已如火如荼。正如诺贝尔经济奖得主、心理学家赫伯特•A•西蒙（Herbert A. Simon）所言：“显而易见，信息所收割的正是信息接受者的注意力。”所谓注意力经济（attention economy）带来的首要后果便是高质量信息的丧失。
📒 精读解析：
glut: a situation in which there is more of sth than is needed or can be used，供应过剩/供过于求
形容信息过载：the glut/proliferation of information, information overload
attention economy: an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity and applies economic theory to solve various information management problems. 注意力经济/ “眼球经济”
[拓展]：Information fatigue syndrome (IFS) 信息疲劳综合征
2
精读原文
In fact, programmers who design the algorithms for ranking memes on social media assume that the “wisdom of crowds” will quickly identify high-quality items; they use popularity as a proxy for quality. Our analysis of vast amounts of anonymous data about clicks shows that all platforms—social media, search engines and news sites—preferentially serve up information from a narrow subset of popular sources.
事实上，程序员在设计算法来评估社交媒体上的热点新闻（注：例如，使系统自动生成热搜或推荐）时，已经假定了“公众智慧”能快速分辨出高质量内容。他们用热度代替了新闻的质量。我们对大量匿名点击数据的分析表明，包括社交媒体、搜索引擎和新闻网站在内的几乎所有平台，都会为用户优先提供一小部分从流行新闻资源中挑选出的信息。
📒精读解析：
meme: 网上疯传的（搞笑）梗，热点
(an Internet meme is a type of idea, behaviour, or style that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms and especially for humorous purposes, it has recently become an umbrella term referring to any piece of quickly-consumed comedic or relatable content. )
[拓展]the top-trending hashtag 热搜顶位
[表达]use popularity as a proxy for quality: 用热度代替质量, 一处非常精辟的表达，生动再现了当前互联网信息生态的一大特征：争抢热点 忽视质量
类似表达：Social networks reward not veracity but virality.
3
精读原文
信息茧房/回音室：
Most of us do not believe we follow the herd. But our confirmation bias leads us to follow others who are like us, a dynamic that is sometimes referred to as homophily—a tendency for like-minded people to connect with one another. Social media amplifies homophily by allowing users to alter their social network structures through following, unfriending, and so on. The result is that people become segregated into large, dense and increasingly misinformed communities commonly described as echo chambers.
大多数人不认为自己会随大流。但是，信息确认偏差会引导我们寻找和关注同类。这一过程有时被称为同质性（homophily），即意见趋同的人会越走越近。社交媒体会放大这种同质性——通过关注、删除好友等形式让用户调整自己的社交网络结构。这会导致人们受困于充斥着大量密集的误导性信息的群体，从而越来越固执己见，这通常也被称作信息茧房（echo chambers）现象。
📒精读解析：
follow the herd 随大流
[拓展]：
* thundering herd 惊群效应
例：Telecommunications companies overinvested like a thundering herd in the 1990s, and a lot of them went bust in unison as a result.（Bloomberg Businessweek 2021-06-14）20世纪90年代，电信公司一窝蜂地过度投资，结果许多公司扎堆倒闭。
* herd immunity 群体免疫
* bandwagon effect 从众效应
jump/climb on the ... bandwagon: (尤指政客) 赶时髦，追随潮流
（if someone, especially a politician, jumps or climbs on the bandwagon, they become involved in an activity or movement because it is fashionable or likely to succeed and not because they are really interested in it.）
例：In recent months many conservative politicians have jumped on the anti-immigrant bandwagon. 最近几个月，许多保守党政客赶上了反移民的浪头。
homophily 同质性
*注意与homophile（同性恋者/同性恋权力支持者）区分。
[拓展]：homogenization 同质化
类似表达：Social groups create a pressure toward conformity so powerful that it can overcome individual preferences. 社交团体会创造强大的压力来促成一致性，并压制个人喜好。
unfriend 删除好友/（微博）“互双”
[拓展]：
send sb “friend” request
发送加好友请求
silently stalk others’ digital lives
“视奸”
unfollow
取关
echo chamber回音室（国内常称“信息茧房”）
[拓展]：
Chamber Music / Musique de chambre 室内乐
chamber of commerce 商会
Dream of the Red Chamber（H. Bencraft Joly译）《红楼梦》
“信息茧房”的另一种表达：filter bubble
(The social-media giant is being criticized for the way its algorithms conspire to cocoon each user inside a “filter bubble”(使用户困入信息茧房中), surrounding people with content that rarely challenges their worldview, including too many false news reports that often fail to get debunked.)
4
精读原文
网络机器人/水军:
Information quality is further impaired by social bots, which can exploit all our cognitive loopholes. Bots are easy to create. Social media platforms provide so-called application programming interfaces that make it fairly trivial for a single actor to set up and control thousands of bots.
网络机器人会利用人类现有的认知漏洞，进一步损害信息的整体质量。而且它们可以批量生产——社交平台提供了所谓的应用程序接口，这使得个人能够轻易地设置和操控上千个机器人帐号。
📒精读解析：
bot: （计算机）自动程序
（an autonomous program on a network (especially the Internet) which can interact with computer systems or users, especially one designed to respond or behave like a player in an adventure game.）
[水军有关网络用语拓展]：
an army of Twitter/Weibo bots 推特/微博“水军”
a cavalcade of bots 大批水军
paid Internet trolls（雇佣）网络水军
fake followers “僵尸粉”
sockpuppet accounts小号/马甲
impair 损害/削弱, 还有weaken, cripple, undermine, erode等近义词。
interface: an electrical connection that joins one device/system to another 接口
（the way a computer program presents information to a user or receives information from a user, in particular the layout of the screen and the menus （人机）界面）
the user interface 用户界面
set up and control thousands of bots
指批量注册和运营帐号（为自己造势/以达到某种舆论目的）的行为
5
精读原文
Bots influence us by pretending to represent people from our in-group. A bot only has to follow, like and retweet someone in an online community to quickly infiltrate it. OSoMe researcher Xiaodan Lou developed a model in which some of the agents are bots that infiltrate a social network and share deceptively engaging low-quality content—think of clickbait. Our simulations show that these bots can effectively suppress the entire ecosystem’s information quality by infiltrating only a small fraction of the network.
机器人帐号会潜入社交圈内部，伪装成熟人，进而来影响我们。一个机器人只需关注、点赞或者转发一个线上社区中某个人的推特，就可以迅速融入该社区。OSoMe的研究者卢晓丹开发了一个模型——其中一些代理程序是能够潜入社交网络的机器人。它们会散播一些迷惑性的低质量内容，类似所谓的标题党。模拟显示，这些机器人一旦渗入一小部分网络，就会有效降低整个系统的信息质量。
📒精读解析：
in-group: 小圈子（类似clique，区别在于clique有“派系/私党”的含义，而in-group较中性）
（a small group of people in an organization or a society whose members share the same interests, language, etc. and try to keep other people out）
the out-group 圈外人士
clickbait 标题党
[拓展]：
click farm: a form of click fraud, where a large group of low-paid workers are hired to click on paid advertising links for the click fraudster.
低薪雇水军刷赞 / 刷好评 / 制造虚假点击的行为
troll “引战/钓鱼”
OSoMe: Observatory on Social Media (OSoMe, pronounced“awesome”) 社交媒体观测站
engaging（形容人）迷人的 /（形容事物）有吸引力的，引人入胜的，类似表达riveting, engrossing, intriguing, tempting
6
精读原文
Some manipulators play both sides of a divide through separate fake news sites and bots, driving political polarization or monetization by ads. Such operations amplify content that preys on confirmation biases and accelerate the formation of polarized echo chambers.
一些舆论操纵者借助不同的假新闻网站和大量机器人程序，来操纵立场不同的人，以推动ZZ分化或者通过广告套现。这些操作会放大那些利用了信息确认偏差的内容，进而加速极端化信息茧房的形成。
📒 精读解析：
manipulator（在文中含义为）舆论操纵者，尤指刻意挑拨对立的营销号/大V
[拓展]：
conspiracy-monger 阴谋论鼓吹者；
sow discord 挑拨离间；
“杠精/喷子”可以用 troll, naysayer.
monetization by ads 指一些有影响力的帐号接广告/帮推广以达到变现的目的
monetize 变现，套现
the monetization of clicks and “shares”—— known as the “attention economy”
[类似表达]：With each click, they got a small slice of the pie from the ads running along the side.
prey on 以...为食
content that preys on confirmation biases
指利用/刻意强化一些本身含有信息确认偏差的内容
[拓展]：fall prey to... 深受...之害
7
精读原文
对策:
Understanding our cognitive biases and how algorithms and bots exploit them allows us to better guard against manipulation. Institutional changes are necessary to curb the proliferation of fake news. Education can help, although it is unlikely to encompass all the topics on which people are misled. Some governments and social media platforms are also trying to clamp down on online manipulation and fake news.
对我们而言，了解自身的认知偏差，以及算法和机器人程序如何利用这些偏差，有助于更好防范网络操纵。此外，制度改革也是应对信息良莠不齐状况的必经之路。科普亦有效，即使它不太可能涵盖所有误导性的新闻主题。一些ZF和社交媒体平台也在努力遏制网络操纵和假新闻的传播。
📒精读解析：
防范 prevent, take precaution, guard against
遏制 contain, restrain, refrain, curb, rein in
打击 clamp/crack down on, get tough with
8
精读原文
One of the best ideas may be to make it more difficult to create and share low-quality information. This could involve adding friction by forcing people to pay to share or receive information. Payment could be in the form of time, mental work such as puzzles, or microscopic fees for subscriptions or usage. Automated posting should be treated like advertising. Some platforms are already using friction in the form of CAPTCHAs and phone confirmation to access accounts. Twitter has placed limits on automated posting. These efforts could be expanded to gradually shift online sharing incentives toward information that is valuable to consumers.
还有一个更佳的方案：增加生产和分享低质量信息的难度。比如，给平台信息的浏览和分享设置门槛：要求用户打卡、玩智力游戏通关、支付少量费用进行订阅/使用。自动发布应被系统判定为打广告。一些平台已在使用验证码或通过手机确认登录的形式，来加大信息发布的难度。推特已经设置了对自动发布的限制。这些策略可以继续推进，使人们逐渐抽离出随时随地的分享欲，投入到真正有价值的信息创造。
📒精读解析：
microscopic fees for subscriptions or usage
指一些网站或app推出付费订阅/使用的服务，以提高信息获取的门槛
microscopic fees少量费用
[拓展]：形容金额微薄可以用meagre, scanty, pittance
captcha验证码
[拓展]：QR code二维码，Transport code乘车码
9
精读原文
Free communication is not free. By decreasing the cost of information, we have decreased its value and invited its adulteration. To restore the health of our information ecosystem, we must understand the vulnerabilities of our overwhelmed minds and how the economics of information can be leveraged to protect us from being misled.
正如天下无免费的午餐。随着信息获取成本的下降，信息也正经历着一轮贬值，质量也堪称泥沙俱下。因此，为了恢复信息生态系统的健康，我们必须明白：大脑无法一次性消化海量的信息，此外，我们还需了解如何利用信息经济学来避免被误导。
📒精读解析：
adulteration 掺假 → adulterate（给食物、饮料）掺假
[类似表达]：lace 在（食物、饮料）中添加
例：She laced his food with sleeping pills. 她在他的食物里加了安眠药。
the economics of information 信息经济学
[拓展]：the economics of beauty/good looking “颜值经济”
leverage: the ability to influence situations or people. 影响力
例：His position as mayor gives him leverage to get things done. 他的市长身份使他有能力办成一些事情。
to leverage a company：举债经营，means to use borrowed money in order to buy it or pay for it.
例：He might feel that leveraging the company at a time when he sees tremendous growth opportunities would be a mistake. 他可能感觉到在看到巨大的发展机会时举债经营公司是一个错误。
[拓展]：
“利用”的几种表达: leverage, take advantage of, make use of, utilize
形容“不择手段地利用” 用: exploit.
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