作者：David Uberti

編譯：朱弘川

原文網址：http://www.cjr.org/innovations/in_at_least_one_respect.php

The social network’s response to Gizmodo’s story on its “trending” section was telling in this regard. On Tuesday morning, VP of Search Tom Stocky wrote a post denying the allegations of political bias, adding that Facebook’s team of news curators merely shepherd topics already identified by its algorithm. The supposed impartiality of this algorithm acts as a smokescreen to the other charges. Wrote Stocky:

基於這個前提，對於「熱門話題」所引起的風波，臉書搜尋部門副總Tom Stocky否認了有關外界對臉書政治立場偏頗的指控，強調工作團隊僅負責監看演算法的機制，彷彿藉由維護演算法的中立性來回應外界的指控。Stocky這麼說：

We have in place strict guidelines for our trending topic reviewers as they audit topics surfaced algorithmically: reviewers are required to accept topics that reflect real world events, and are instructed to disregard junk or duplicate topics, hoaxes, or subjects with insufficient sources…

審核「熱門話題」的工作人員遵照嚴格的指導方針，除了接受反映現實世界的文章外，還能無視高重覆性文章，或是來源不可信的主題……

We do not insert stories artificially into trending topics, and do not instruct our reviewers to do so. Our guidelines do permit reviewers to take steps to make topics more coherent….

我們不會隨意加入任何文章到熱門話題，也不會要求員工這麼做。我們只允許讓版面更符合一致性……

We will also keep looking into any questions about Trending Topics to ensure that people are matched with the stories that are predicted to be the most interesting to them, and to be sure that our methods are as neutral and effective as possible.

我們將研究「熱門話題」所引發的問題，確保人們能接觸到最符合自身興趣的文章，也儘可能使我們保持「中立和有效」的做法。

To be fair to Facebook, Gizmodo’s report is based on interviews with anonymous and disgruntled former employees. (The same outlet reported last week that Facebook wouldn’t even invite these contractors to company happy hours. The horror!)

的確，Gizmodo網站的報導，是來自於匿名和心生不滿的前員工專訪（其實上星期還傳出臉書不願意邀請這些雇員前來同樂的新聞，怪怪）。

But a few key words and phrases from Stocky’s statement stand out, as Zeynep Tufekci, a University of North Carolina professor who often writes about technology and society, highlighted on Twitter Tuesday. What makes a “hoax” or a source “insufficient”? What, exactly, is “neutral and effective”?

但我們仍可以從Stocky的聲明裡發現一些端倪，就像長期關注科技和社會議題的北卡大學（University of North Carolina）教授Tufekci在推特上說的：這場風波起因是什麼？是消息來源的「不可信」嗎？臉書所謂的「中立又有效」的做法，究竟指得是什麼？

-------------------------------------

Zeynep Tufekci

?@zeynep

I don't mean "neutral" and "effective" don't work for Facebook. It doesn't work for human affairs. Welcome to your business model, Facebook.

我不認為「中立或有效」作法對臉書沒幫助，但它不適用在人際事務上。坦誠面對你的行銷模式吧，臉書！

Zeynep Tufekci

?@zeynep

I am not saying why isn't Facebook neutral, surfacing non-hoax news only from sufficient sources. I'm saying that will always be contested.

臉書的中立與否，不是我討論的重點，畢竟可信的新聞，還是得仰賴可靠的消息來源。我要強調的是爭議仍會不斷發生。

 
Zeynep Tufekci

?@zeynep

The point isn't the past was some unbiased paradise and the future is horrible, but we've entered a new regime with new concentrated powers.

我不認為過去沒發生過類似的問題，只是我們面臨的是一個權力日趨集中的社會。

Zeynep Tufekci

?@zeynep

Facebook feed algorithm sold as "what you want" but it structures the experience. FB trending is sold as algorithm but is FB's preferences

 
臉書的演算法像是提供了我們想要的，但也控制了消費者的體驗。臉書推銷的其實是它的喜好......。

-------------------------------------------

Of course, such questions speak to a larger issue: While Facebook has become the public’s primary conduit for digital content, its business imperative is to maximize engagement, not objectivity. The algorithms designed to do that are human-made and therefore biased by nature. But we can only guess as to how they’re constructed.

當然，一個更大的問題等著我們：臉書，儼然已成為公眾獲取數位內容最普遍的管道，其商業考量必須是最大化的公眾參與，而不是客觀與否的問題。演算法出自於人類之手，也當然會有偏見，這是再自然也不過的事情。但我們只能猜測，它們是如何被創造的。

The obvious danger of the situation is that free societies have little knowledge of the systems funneling information into their newsfeeds. The sad irony is that the news organizations with the wherewithal to find out are the very same outfits that increasingly depend on Facebook for their survival.

自由社會對於這套系統如何過濾資訊仍一知半解，是目前最大的危機。悲哀的是，新聞機構苦思求生之計的同時，已擺脫不了對臉書的日漸依賴。

作者：David Uberti

編譯：朱弘川

原文網址：http://www.cjr.org/innovations/in_at_least_one_respect.php

IN SOME RESPECTS, Facebook isn’t so different from the publishers that rely on it. A report from Gizmodo this week suggests that a team of “news curators” subjectively selected stories for the objective-sounding “trending” section of the Facebook homepage. One former contractor alleged that the team suppressed conservative news—and conservative outlets—that the social network’s almighty algorithm surfaced. The obvious analogy is to left-leaning journalists picking stories for a newspaper’s front page. Facebook, however, reaches audiences no newspaper could imagine.

就某方面來說，臉書和那些仰賴它的新聞出版商並沒有什麼不同。根據Gizmodo最近的一篇報導，看似客觀的臉書「熱門話題」（trending）服務，其實先由臉書的工作團隊篩擇新聞題材後，再推送到臉書的首頁上。一位離職員工指出，這個團隊抑制保守派的新聞和觀點（臉書強大的演算法所企圖掩飾），就好比立場左傾的記者挑選報導，做為報紙頭條的作法一樣。然而臉書的影響力，可不是任何報紙能比擬的。

The allegations have stoked fears that social platforms may be pressing their thumbs on the ideological scale. The Senate Commerce Committee even requested a fuller explanation of “trending” selection in a letter sent to Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday. In a statement to Brian Stelter later on Tuesday, Facebook said it’s looking forward to answering questions about the process.

這也引發了社交平台可能控制人們思想的疑慮。美國參議院商務委員會（The Senate Commerce Committee）稍早已要求臉書創辦人Mark Zuckerberg，就「熱門話題」的篩選機制，提出詳細的說明。同一天，稍晚給CNN記者Brian Stelter的聲明中，臉書表示他們很期待回答這個問題。

It’s unclear how much this small plot of homepage real estate affects stories’ reach; users’ newsfeeds have prime location by comparison, and the “trending” tab is hard to locate on mobile devices. Yet the report cuts against Facebook’s altruistic-sounding mission “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” What’s more, it alludes to the more far-reaching editorial-like decisions social networks make in sorting news and digital content. Facebook may describe itself as “a platform,” but it acts a lot like a publisher.

目前還不是很清楚這次事件的影響層面有多大；使用者的新聞來源主要是經由對照（comparison）產生，而「熱門話題」這項服務，在行動裝置上較難見到成效。這篇報導對比臉書的成立宗旨──賦予人們權力去分享及使世界更開放及連結──無疑是一大諷刺。再者，它使得社交網絡的新聞分類及內容篩選，最終演變成於編輯決策的產物。臉書自許為一個平台，但實際上它所做的，卻更像個出版商一樣。

As prominently argued by Emily Bell, director of Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Facebook is increasingly shaping the contours of the public square, and citizens and news organizations have little choice but to go along for the ride. The power shift raises the all-important question of how information travels in free societies—and what we know about it.

哥倫比亞大學數位新聞中心（Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism）主席Emily Bell說，臉書正逐漸形塑公眾領域的輪廓，而且逼得公民及新聞組織乖乖就範。這股力量也引發了很重要的問題：資訊在自由社會裡是如何流通的？我們究竟了解多少？

“This is an unregulated field. There is no transparency into the internal working of these systems,” Bell said in a University of Cambridge　speech earlier this year. “We are handing the controls of important parts of our public and private lives to a very small number of people, who are unelected and unaccountable.”

「這是一個不受管制的場域，我們根本不懂其內部運作是怎麼回事」，Bell在今年稍早的一場演講中提到。「我們正把公、私領域的控制權，交給一群我們未曾謀面、以及無法信任的少數人手中。」

News organizations once had a more central role in setting the terms of public debate, balancing money-making aspects of publishing with more civically minded accountability journalism. They also generally followed widely accepted journalistic standards. Social networks have assumed much of the same power, Bell and others have argued, though they typically use more opaque processes and have a greater focus on those profitable slices of publishing. That’s not to say this new construct is necessarily worse, but it is foreign. And Facebook has little incentive to open up about its methodology.

新聞業曾經扮演著引導公眾辯論的重要角色，藉由提供公眾參與的問責機制，平衡了以營利為目標的出版

業，並同時遵守普遍可接受的新聞教條。社交網絡也有相同的能量，Bell和其他人認為，雖然它們運作方式較不透明，和較關注在出版的利益上，但這並不代表情況就比較糟，只是對我們來說比較陌生。不過，臉書也不太願意向世人揭開它的神祕面紗。

Indeed, the corporation occupies a historically unique position. On the one hand, it’s a tech giant whose in-house tools and massive user base give it omnipotence over media outlets. On the other, it’s a media company in its own right, relying on a steady stream of content for survival. And just as journalists have always been defensive toward claims of bias, Facebook, too, has denied its own subjectivity.

的確，臉書有它獨特的歷史定位，一方面它是科技巨頭，以自有的研發技術及大量使用者基礎做後盾，讓它在相關媒體業務上無往不利。另一方面，臉書本身即是媒體，仰賴穩定的新聞內容來獲利。新聞記者總是否認有特定立場，臉書也一樣，並沒有什麼不同。

The social network’s response to Gizmodo’s story on its “trending” section was telling in this regard. On Tuesday morning, VP of Search Tom Stocky wrote a post denying the allegations of political bias, adding that Facebook’s team of news curators merely shepherd topics already identified by its algorithm. The supposed impartiality of this algorithm acts as a smokescreen to the other charges. Wrote Stocky: