上周五晚，Facebook的馬克·扎克伯格在他的Facebook頁面發布了一篇博文，談到了所謂的假新聞，以及公司在把它們傳播給數億用戶上所扮演的角色引發的爭議。他寫道：“不論如何，我們會嚴肅地對待消息失實的問題。”

當我看到這篇博文時，旁邊的“贊助”欄頂部正顯示著克林特·伊斯特伍德的照片和一篇文章的標題“克林特·伊斯特伍德享年84歲——粉絲從全球各地發來‘愛的回憶’表示悼念”。當然，這是條徹底的假新聞。克林特身體好著呢。

扎克伯格處在一個困難的位置。自大選起，他就一直遭受抨擊，因為各種基于猜測的捏造信息占據了新聞的頁面，它們大多數是支持特朗普的，在Facebook上的流傳可能也影響到了選舉的結果。這就像因為有人用電話撒謊就抨擊AT&T和威瑞森（Verizon）一樣，不過當然這也有一些不同。Facebook上的一切內容都在公司的服務器上運行，可以被他們分析，這對他們根據用戶的興趣和訪問歷史定向投放廣告商的廣告十分重要。

那么，為什么公司阻止不了假新聞呢？

答案是，這是個不可能完成的任務。什么是新聞？什么是新聞機構？它們與任何人決定在自己的Facebook主頁上說的內容有何不同？Facebook在全球有數十億用戶，其中的任何一個人都可以起個貌似真實的話題性標題，以新聞文體寫些他們喜歡的胡說八道，而任何其他用戶都可能給它點贊，再接下來，任何事都可能發生。《紐約時報》（New York Times）的一個案例研究，就解釋了某篇關于得克薩斯州奧斯丁爆發反特朗普抗議游行的假報道是如何傳播的。這篇報道的作者僅有40名Twitter粉絲，報道卻被轉發了超過35萬次。

正如扎克伯格所意識到的，沒有哪個機構可以監管和確證所有這些報道。他在推文中寫道：“我們自己不想成為事實的仲裁者，而要依靠我們的社區和可以信賴的第三方。”他本不應該擔心這個——處于用戶彼此爭論的中心完全不符合他本應扮演的角色——但是他正在面對現實：必須采取某些行動了。他可能會做出一些改變，讓用戶更容易舉報假消息，也可能邀請第三方給那些不可信的內容加上警告標志，屏蔽那些散布假消息的慣犯等等。

無論扎克伯格決定怎么做，商業領袖都要做好被假消息坑害的準備。這種情況已經發生了。一個名叫TruthFeed的新聞網站發布了一篇消息，引用了百事公司）首席執行官盧英德的話，要與特朗普的支持者“結束業務往來”。特朗普的支持者呼吁抵制百事公司，致使公司股價下跌——然而這段話是偽造的，努伊從來沒這么說過。

“媒體”和“新聞”如今有了奇怪的新含義，而我們所有人和扎克伯格一樣，必須搞清楚它們對于我們的影響。（財富中文網）

譯者：嚴匡正

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg on Friday night posted a message on his Facebook page about so-called fake news and the controversy over his company’s role in carrying it to hundreds of millions of users. “The bottom line is: We take misinformation seriously,” he wrote.

Immediately adjacent to his post when I checked it, at the top of the “Sponsored” column, was a photo of Clint Eastwood and the the headline “Clint Eastwood gone at 84 – ‘In loving memory’ messages pour in from fans around the world,” plus a link to a website with the word “news” in its name. The news was, of course, entirely fake. Clint is fine.

Zuckerberg is in an impossible spot. Since the election he has been under attack based on conjecture that made-up information presented as news, mostly pro-Trump, and circulated on Facebook may have tipped the election’s outcome. This is like blaming AT&T and Verizon for the lies people tell on the phone, but of course it’s also different. Everything on Facebook runs through Facebook servers and can be analyzed by the company, which is critical to its pitch to advertisers that they can target their ads, within limits, based on users’ interests and histories.

So why can’t it stop phony news?

The answer is that the task is impossible. What is news, and what is a news organization, as distinct from what any random human chooses to say on his or her Facebook page? Any of Facebook’s billion-plus users worldwide can set up a page with a plausible-sounding newsy name and start writing any nonsense they like in a journalistic style, and any other user can like it, and then anything can happen. A New York Timescase study explains how a completely false report on anti-Trump protests in Austin, Texas, by a man with about 40 Twitter followers was shared more than 350,000 times on Facebook.

No organization could possibly monitor and confirm all such reports, as Zuckerberg realizes. “We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves,” he wrote in his post, “but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties.” He shouldn’t have to worry about this at all – getting in the middle of what his users say to each other is arguably the opposite of his proper role – but he’s confronting the reality that he must take some kind of action. He will likely make several changes enabling users to report false information more easily, perhaps inviting third parties to add warnings to stories that appear suspect, blocking ad revenue to repeat offenders, and other actions.

Regardless of what Zuckerberg does, business leaders must prepare for being victimized by fake news. It’s happening already. A headline at a news site called TruthFeed recently quoted PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi as telling Trump supporters to “take their business elsewhere.” Trump supporters called for a boycott, the stock fell – but the quote was fabricated. She never said it.

The words “media” and “news” have taken on strange new meanings, and we all, like Zuckerberg, have to figure out the implications for ourselves.