假新闻背后的严峻现实

“Our goal is to build the perfect personalised newspaper for every person in the world,” said Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in 2014. This newspaper would “show you the stuff that’s going to be most interesting to you”.

2014年，Facebook的马克?扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)曾表示：“我们的目标是为世界上每个人打造完美的个性化报纸。”这份报纸将“让你看到最令你感兴趣的内容”。

To many, that statement explains perfectly why Facebook is such a terrible source of news.

在许多人看来，这番话完美说明了为什么Facebook是一个如此糟糕的新闻来源。

A “fake news” story proclaiming that Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump was, according to an analysis from BuzzFeed, the single most successful item of news on Facebook in the three months before the US election. If that’s what the site’s algorithms decide is interesting, it’s far from being a “perfect newspaper”.

BuzzFeed的一项分析显示，美国大选前的3个月，Facebook上最热门的单条新闻是一则宣称教皇方济各(Pope Francis)已表示支持唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)的“假新闻”。如果这就是该网站算法选定的令人感兴趣的内容，那么它根本称不上是一份“完美的报纸”。

It’s no wonder that Zuckerberg found himself on the back foot after Trump’s election. Shortly after his victory, Zuckerberg declared: “I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way?.?.?.?is a pretty crazy idea.” His comment was greeted with a scornful response.

难怪扎克伯格在特朗普当选后发现自己陷入了不利境地。特朗普胜选后不久，扎克伯格就宣布：“有人认为Facebook上的假新闻——只占内容极小一部分——多少影响了大选……我觉得这是一个相当愚蠢的想法。”他此番评论遭到了公众的嘲讽。

I should confess my own biases here. I despise Facebook for all the reasons people usually despise Facebook (privacy, market power, distraction, fake-smile social interactions and the rest). And, as a loyal FT columnist, I need hardly point out that the perfect newspaper is the one you’re reading right now.

在此，我应该坦白自己心中的偏见。人们常常因隐私权、市场支配力、分散注意力、假笑社交等原因瞧不上Facebook，这些也都是我瞧不上Facebook的原因。而且，作为英国《金融时报》忠诚的专栏作家，我几乎不需要指出，您此刻正在读的就是一份完美的报纸。

But, despite this, I’m going to stand up for Zuckerberg, who recently posted a 5,700-word essay defending social media. What he says in the essay feels like it must be wrong. But the data suggest that he’s right. Fake news can stoke isolated incidents of hatred and violence. But neither fake news nor the algorithmically driven “filter bubble” is a major force in the overall media landscape. Not yet.

但即便如此，我还是要支持扎克伯格，他最近发表了一篇5700字的文章为社交媒体辩护。他在文章里讲的给人的第一感觉是，他一定讲错了，但文中数据表明他是对的。假新闻可以激起个别的仇恨和暴力事件。但在整个媒体版图中，无论是假新闻，还是算法驱动的“过滤气泡”(filter bubble)，都并非主要力量——至少暂时不是。

“Fake news” is a phrase that has already been debased. A useful definition is that fake news is an entirely fabricated report presenting itself as a news story. This excludes biased reporting, satire and lies from politicians themselves.

“假新闻”本就是一个贬义词。一个贴切的定义是：假新闻是一种将自身包装为新闻故事的完全捏造的报道。这排除了偏见报道、讽刺作品和政客们的谎言。

At first glance, such hoaxes appear to be ubiquitous on Facebook. The BuzzFeed analysis finds that the five most popular hoax stories were more successful than the five most popular true stories. (This list of true stories includes the New York Post’s “Melania Trump’s Girl-on-Girl Photos From Racy Shoot Revealed”, a reminder that not all mainstream journalism is likely to win a Pulitzer.)

乍看之下，此类假新闻在Facebook上似乎无处不在。BuzzFeed的分析发现，最热门的5篇虚假报道比最热门的5篇真实报道影响力更大。（这些真实报道包括《纽约邮报》(New York Post)刊登的《梅拉尼娅?特朗普(Melania Trump)女女不雅照流出》(Melania Trump’s Girl-on-Girl Photos From Racy Shoot Revealed)，提醒人们不是所有主流新闻都可能赢得普利策奖(Pulitzer)。）

But hoax stories are less significant than this analysis suggests — partly because Facebook is not the main source of news for Americans (that’s still television news), and partly because true reports will generally be covered in some form by dozens of outlets, which will dilute the popularity of any one version. Each hoax, however, is unique. No wonder the most popular hoaxes outperform the most popular true reports.

但假新闻也并不像上述分析显示的那么影响重大，部分原因在于Facebook并非美国人的主要新闻来源（主要来源仍是电视新闻）；另一部分原因是，真实新闻通常被几十家媒体以不同形式报导，这将稀释任一版本报道的普及度。但每条假新闻都是独一无二的。最热门的真实报道敌不过最热门的假新闻就不足为奇了。

In January 2017, two economists, Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow, published research studying exactly how prevalent fake news had been before the election. Their clever method tested people’s recall of fake news, as compared with true news stories and “placebo” stories — fake fake news, invented by the researchers. People didn’t remember many fake news stories, and claimed to remember quite a few placebos. Overall, there just didn’t seem to be enough fake news to swing the election result — unless it was potent stuff indeed, even in small doses.

2017年1月，经济学家亨特?阿尔科特(Hunt Allcott)与马修?根茨科(Matthew Gentzkow)发表了一项针对大选前假新闻究竟多么泛滥的研究。他们用巧妙的办法测试了人们对假新闻的记忆力，并与真实新闻报道和“安慰剂”报道（两位研究人员编造的假新闻）进行比较。人们并未记住多少假新闻，而且声称记住了不少安慰剂报道。总而言之，似乎没有足够多的假新闻来左右选举结果——除非内容的确劲爆，即便剂量很小。

“The average voter saw one fake news story before the election,” Gentzkow told me. “That number is a very different picture from what you might get from watching the public discussion.”

根茨科告诉我：“大选前，平均每个选民会看到一条假新闻报道。这一数字可能与你从公共讨论中得到的印象大相径庭。”

Of more concern is that Facebook — and its “most interesting to you” algorithm — simply supplies news that panders to each user’s ideological biases. It’s undoubtedly true that we surround ourselves with people who agree with us on social media. But it’s not clear that Facebook’s algorithm is the biggest problem here. Twitter was politically polarised even in the days when it used no algorithm at all. And newspapers have ideological biases too.

更令人担心的是，Facebook（及其“令你最感兴趣的”算法）提供了迎合每位用户意识形态偏见的新闻。毫无疑问，我们在社交媒体上把自己包裹在与我们持相同看法的人群里。但这并不能说明Facebook的算法是这方面的最大问题。即便在没有使用任何算法的时候，Twitter在政治上也处于两极分化。而报纸同样也存在意识形态偏见。

One recent study of online news reading was conducted by Seth Flaxman, Sharad Goel and Justin Rao, who had access to browser data from Microsoft, and used it to examine how people consumed news online. They found a mixed picture: social media did seem to push stories that were further from the centre of the political spectrum but they also exposed people to a greater variety of ideological viewpoints. That makes sense. Reading the same newspaper every day is a filter bubble too.

塞思?弗拉克斯曼(Seth Flaxman)、沙拉德?戈埃尔(Sharad Goel)和贾斯汀?拉奥(Justin Rao)最近就在线新闻阅读进行了一项研究，他们获取了微软(Microsoft)的浏览器数据，并据此研究人们如何在线阅读新闻。他们发现了一个复杂现象：社交媒体的确似乎在推送那些距离政治谱系中心较远的报道，但它们也向人们呈现更多样化的意识形态观点。这很有意义。毕竟，每天阅读同一份报纸也是一种过滤气泡。

Gentzkow studied the contrast between online and offline news using data from 2004-2009, working with fellow economist Jesse Shapiro. They found little evidence then that online news consumption was more polarised than traditional media. But things are changing quickly. “My guess is that segregation is noticeably and meaningfully higher than in the past,” Gentzkow says, “but still quite modest.”

根茨科与经济学家同事杰西?夏皮罗(Jesse Shapiro)合作，利用2004至2009年的数据对线上和线下新闻之间的差异进行了研究。但他们发现，几乎没有证据表明在线新闻消费比传统媒体消费更加极化。但情况正在飞快变化。“我的猜测是，人们之间的分隔显著而切实地提高了，”根茨科说，“但仍不算严重。”

This feels like an important moment. Fake news is not prevalent, but it could become so. Filter bubbles are probably no worse than they have been for decades — but that could change rapidly too.

现在感觉像是一个重要时刻。假新闻还未遍地都是，但或许会有这么一天。过滤气泡可能不比过去几十年更糟，但这种状况同样可能迅速改变。

“A lot ultimately hinges on what the motivations of American voters are,” says Gentzkow. “Do people actually care at all about getting the truth and having accurate information?”

“很多事最终取决于美国选民的动机是什么，”根茨科说，“人们真的那么在乎获知真相、得到准确信息吗？”

He’s hopeful that, deep down, people watch and read the news because they want to learn about the world. But if what voters really want is to be lied to, then Facebook is the least of our problems.

他从心底希望，人们看新闻、读新闻是因为他们想了解这个世界。但如果选民真正想要的是哄骗，那么Facebook最不该成为我们的难题。