IN 1962 a British political scientist, Bernard Crick, published “In Defence of Politics”. He argued that the art of political horse-trading, far from being shabby, lets people of different beliefs live together in a peaceful, thriving society. In a liberal democracy, nobody gets exactly what he wants, but everyone broadly has the freedom to lead the life he chooses. However, without decent information, civility and conciliation, societies resolve their differences by resorting to coercion.
1962年，英国政治家伯纳德克里克（Bernard Crick）发表了一篇名为《保卫政治》的文章。他认为，政治交易的艺术并不卑劣，反而能让信仰不同的人民共同生活在繁荣和平的社会。在一个自由民主国家，人们也许不能想要什么就恰好得到什么，却拥有追求自己想要生活的自由。然而，没有恰当 信息传播，文明引导和调解，社会转而会采取胁迫的方式来处理分歧。
How Crick would have been dismayed by the falsehood and partisanship on display in this week’s Senate committee hearings in Washington. Not long ago social media held out the promise of a more enlightened politics, as accurate information and effortless communication helped good people drive out corruption, bigotry and lies. Yet Facebook acknowledged that before and after last year’s American election, between January 2015 and August this year, 146m users may have seen Russian misinformation on its platform. Google’s YouTube admitted to 1,108 Russian-linked videos and Twitter to 36,746 accounts. Far from bringing enlightenment, social media have been spreading poison.
本周在美国华盛顿举行参议院的听证会上，期间充斥的荒谬和党派偏见言论将会克里克大失所望。此前不久，社交媒体被认为会让人看到政治清流的光明前景，会有准确无误的信息和畅通的沟通，能让人们清除腐败，偏执和谎言。然而，Facebook承认，在去年美国大选前后，即从2015年2月到2016年8月期间，有1.46亿用户通过Facebook浏览了俄罗斯发布的不实信息。谷歌旗下的YouTube视频承认有1108个视频背后有俄罗斯的身影，而推特则表示有36726个账号获得了俄罗斯的支持。这一切表明，社交媒体传播的不是智慧之光，而是散播虚伪之毒。
Russia’s trouble-making is only the start. From South Africa to Spain, politics is getting uglier. Part of the reason is that, by spreading untruth and outrage, corroding voters’ judgment and aggravating partisanship, social media erode the conditions for the horse-trading that Crick thought fosters liberty.
俄罗斯制造的麻烦仅仅是开始。从南非到西班牙，政治变得越发丑陋。其中一个原因是通过传播谎言和愤怒情绪，瓦解选民的判断以及激化党派关系，社交媒体破坏了克里克认为有利于自由的政治交易所需要的前提条件。
A shorter attention spa…oh, look at that!
人们的注意力更加难以集中……哦，看看这是什么！
The use of social media does not cause division so much as amplify it. The financial crisis of 2007-08 stoked popular anger at a wealthy elite that had left everyone else behind. The culture wars have split voters by identity rather than class. Nor are social media alone in their power to polarise—just look at cable TV and talk radio. But, whereas Fox News is familiar, social-media platforms are new and still poorly understood. And, because of how they work, they wield extraordinary influence.
与其说社交媒体制造社会分裂，还不如说“放大”了社会分裂。2007年至2008年间的金融危机引发了大众对富有的社会精英财富的愤怒，因为这些精英群体根本不顾及别人。文化战争让选民的划分不按阶层而是按身份认同感。社交媒体并不是选民两极化的唯一罪魁祸首——有线电视和电台也都是帮凶。但是，虽然人们熟悉福克斯新闻，社交媒体是新鲜事物，对其不甚了解。因此，社交媒体反而能依靠其运行模式而对社会产生巨大影响力。
They make their money by putting photos, personal posts, news stories and ads in front of you. Because they can measure how you react, they know just how to get under your skin (see article). They collect data about you in order to have algorithms to determine what will catch your eye, in an “attention economy” that keeps users scrolling, clicking and sharing—again and again and again. Anyone setting out to shape opinion can produce dozens of ads, analyse them and see which is hardest to resist. The result is compelling: one study found that users in rich countries touch their phones 2,600 times a day.
社交媒体通过将照片、个人发表的信息、新闻和广告展现在用户的面前的方式获得收入。由于社交媒体能测算出你的反应，知道如何激怒你。社交媒体收集你的数据，通过算法筛选出最能吸引你眼球的内容，在“注意力经济”中，一而再，再而三地浏览、点击、分享信息。想要塑造人们想法的人可以炮制几十条广告，分析和判断难以抗拒的广告。结果让人震惊：有一项研究发现，富裕国家的用户每天要点击手机屏幕2600次。
It would be wonderful if such a system helped wisdom and truth rise to the surface. But, whatever Keats said, truth is not beauty so much as it is hard work—especially when you disagree with it. Everyone who has scrolled through Facebook knows how, instead of imparting wisdom, the system dishes out compulsive stuff that tends to reinforce people’s biases.
如果这样的社交平台能让智慧和真理浮出水面，那再好不过的了。可是，正中济慈所言，真理与其说是美丽，不如说是艰苦获得——特别是当你并认同意它时。每一位浏览过Facebok的用户都知道这个平台提供的并不是公正的智慧之光，而是加深偏见的强迫性东西。
This aggravates the politics of contempt that took hold, in the United States at least, in the 1990s. Because different sides see different facts, they share no empirical basis for reaching a compromise. Because each side hears time and again that the other lot are good for nothing but lying, bad faith and slander, the system has even less room for empathy. Because people are sucked into a maelstrom of pettiness, scandal and outrage, they lose sight of what matters for the society they share.
这种情况激化了在20世纪90年代盛行“藐视政治”，至少在美国是这样。因为不同的立场看到看事实的角度不同，他们之间没有可达成共识的经验基础；因为每一方总是屡次三番地听到另一方说谎、虚伪和诽谤，整个制度没有同理心的空间。由于人们卷入了由琐事、丑闻和愤怒组成的风暴中，无法知道到底什么才是他们共有的社会最重要的。
This tends to discredit the compromises and subtleties of liberal democracy, and to boost the politicians who feed off conspiracy and nativism. Consider the probes into Russia’s election hack by Congress and the special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, who has just issued his first indictments. After Russia attacked America, Americans ended up attacking each other (see article). Because the framers of the constitution wanted to hold back tyrants and mobs, social media aggravate Washington gridlock. In Hungary and Poland, without such constraints, they help sustain an illiberal, winner-takes-all style of democracy. In Myanmar, where Facebook is the main source of news for many, it has deepened the hatred of the Rohingya, victims of ethnic cleansing.
这就会让自由式民主所需的妥协和细腻失去了信任，而散播阴谋论和本土论的政治家反而得到推崇。试想美国议会调查俄罗斯对大选入侵以及刚刚提交第一份起诉书的特别检察官罗伯特·米勒(Robert Mueller)。在俄国对美国发动攻击后，美国人开始互相抨击。因为宪法制定者想抑制独裁和暴民，社交平台打破了这份制约。在匈牙利和波兰，由于不受约束，社交网络助长了赢家通吃的民主；在缅甸，很 多人将Facebook用作信息的主要来源，而Facebok平台却加深了族清洗运动受害者罗辛亚人(Rohingya)的愤怒。
Social media, social responsibility
社交媒体，社会责任
What is to be done? People will adapt, as they always do. A survey this week found that only 37% of Americans trust what they get from social media, half the share that trust printed newspapers and magazines. Yet in the time it takes to adapt, bad governments with bad politics could do a lot of harm.
那么，人们要怎么做呢？人们渐渐适应了，人们总是如此。据本周的一项调查报告显示，只有37%的美国人信任社交网站上的信息，几乎是相信报纸和杂志的美国人的一半。在适应的的过程中，恶劣的政府以及恶劣的政治环境造成的危害也很大。
Society has created devices, such as libel, and ownership laws, to rein in old media. Some are calling for social-media companies, like publishers, to be similarly accountable for what appears on their platforms; to be more transparent; and to be treated as monopolies that need breaking up. All these ideas have merit, but they come with trade-offs. When Facebook farms out items to independent outfits for fact-checking, the evidence that it moderates behaviour is mixed. Moreover, politics is not like other kinds of speech; it is dangerous to ask a handful of big firms to deem what is healthy for society. Congress wants transparency about who pays for political ads, but a lot of malign influence comes through people carelessly sharing barely credible news posts. Breaking up social-media giants might make sense in antitrust terms, but it would not help with political speech—indeed, by multiplying the number of platforms, it could make the industry harder to manage.
社会曾采取了一些措施来管理传统媒体，比如出台诽谤法以及物权法。一些人在建议，比如用管理出版商的方式来管理社交平台，让他们对平台上出现的信息负责；要求更透明的运行机制；将其视为可拆分的垄断集团。这些建议各有优点，但需要各方妥协才能实施。就算Facebook把平台信息外包给独立检测机构以验证信息真伪，能用来管理言行的依据也难以厘清。此外，政治不不像其他言论；由几个大企业来决定什么是对社会有利的，这是很危险的。美国国会希望社交平台能公开付费刊登政治性广告的人，然而如果人们随意分享不可靠的信息，这种行为可能会造成恶劣影响。从垄断的角度来看，拆分社交平台巨头可能是个好主意，但这对政治言论毫无帮助——其实，增多社交平台的数量会让这个行业更难管理。
There are other remedies. The social-media companies should adjust their sites to make clearer if a post comes from a friend or a trusted source. They could accompany the sharing of posts with reminders of the harm from misinformation. Bots are often used to amplify political messages. Twitter could disallow the worst—or mark them as such. Most powerfully, they could adapt their algorithms to put clickbait lower down the feed. Because these changes cut against a business-model designed to monopolise attention, they may well have to be imposed by law or by a regulator.
还有其他补救措施，比如社交媒体公司应加以调整，清晰地显示信息是来自朋友，还是来自可靠的信息源。可以在用户转发的信息中传播虚假信息的危害。自动程序经常用作传播政治性信息，推特可屏蔽掉其中最偏激的言论，或加以标注。最为有效的手段是，社交媒体公司修改算法，将标题党内容的位置靠后放。由于这些改革措施与旨在操控人们注意力的商业模式相悖，最好是依靠法律或监管机构来实施。
Social media are being abused. But, with a will, society can harness them and revive that early dream of enlightenment. The stakes for liberal democracy could hardly be higher.
社交媒体正在得到滥用，但是，若是决心管理，社会可以管控社交媒体，并使其回归提供启发民智的初心。没有谁比社交媒体更能主宰自由式民主的命运。
编译：一个活生生的青椒
审校：Catherin0502
编辑：翻吧君
来源：经济学人
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