扎克伯格承认犯下大错，但不会引咎辞职

Facebook首席执行官马克·扎克伯格承认，未能充分考虑社交媒体服务可能被不法分子滥用，犯下了“大错”，但他表示不会辞职。

扎克伯格两周前在一场新闻发布会上表示，要为去年困扰Facebook的一系列危机负责，包括俄罗斯水军散布假新闻，政治顾问公司Cambridge Analytica被指通过分析Facebook用户的数据影响2016年美国总统大选等等。

“我认为，生活就是要从错误中吸取教训，弄清楚今后要怎么做，”扎克伯格称，“这件事反映出，如果想打造一个像Facebook这样史无前例的产品，就是可能出很多乱子。”

尽管经历了一些大失误，扎克伯格说自己仍是最适合领导Facebook的人。有人问及Facebook的董事会是否讨论过让他下台时，他回答：“我没听说。”他还说，Facebook内部没有员工因为Cambridge Analytica的丑闻被解雇。Facebook表示，数据泄密丑闻可能波及多达8700万用户，远超此前报道提到的5000万用户。

“我创立了这家公司，努力经营，也要为发生的状况负责，”扎克伯格说，“我不想让公司任何人成为错误的替罪羊。”

然而有人对扎克伯格任期提出问题，已经显示出这位硅谷昔日的宠儿处境多么艰难。一些愤怒的用户正号召大家删除Facebook账号。扎克伯格两周前称，这一活动影响微乎其微。

“但这不是什么好事，” 他承认，“我们不希望有用户不满我们的服务。”

与此同时，美国联邦贸易委员会开始调查Facebook处理数据的政策，一些国会议员呼吁制定更严厉的隐私法。按日程安排，本周国会可能举行一场有关Facebook隐私泄露问题的听证会，扎克伯格将出席。

两周前，Facebook还透露“恶意行为者”此前滥用Facebook的一项功能，可能抓取20亿Facebook用户的公开简介信息，事态进一步恶化。Facebook表示，已经停用该功能。

扎克伯格称，去年Facebook对其在全球事件中越来越大的影响力做了内部评估。他说，Facebook一直更关注发挥社交网络的效益，比如帮助家庭成员沟通，帮助小企业发展，但Facebook的高管错误地忽视了平台的负面影响。

“现在已经很清楚，我们之前不够重视信息滥用问题，对于应肩负哪些责任，我们的视野不够开阔。”扎克伯格这样认为。

他接着说：“这是一个巨大的错误，是我的错。”

扎克伯格重申，为了应对众多争议，Facebook已经做出一系列改变，包括与新的组织合作，在重大选举以前核查平台的新闻报道是否属实，进一步限制第三方开发者通过Facebook平台应用获取数据规模。

扎克伯格还说，Facebook计划，到今年年底将处理安全问题的员工人数增加到2万人，负责诸如搜寻俄罗斯水军开设的虚假账号等工作。但他承认，解决Facebook的很多问题并非一日之功，将改变付诸实施“可能刚刚将三年行动完成了一年。”

“我希望我有瞬间搞定的魔法，能在三个月或者六个月内解决所有问题，”扎克伯格说，“可我认为，由于Facebook很复杂，涉及很多系统，而且要反思所有工作，重新考虑应与用户建立怎样的责任关系，我想要花很多年时间。”

扎克伯格称之为Facebook的“重大转变”，要为不法分子利用Facebook承担“更多的责任”。他说：“我希望，到今年末很多问题会有起色，大家能切实看到情况好转。”（财富中文网）

译者：Pessy

审稿：夏林

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted to making a “huge mistake” by failing to sufficiently consider how bad actors could abuse the social networking service, but he said that he has no plans to step down.

Zuckerberg said during a press briefing on Wednesday that he takes responsibility for a series of crises plaguing his service over the past year. These include the spread of fake news by Russian trolls and the alleged exploitation of Facebook user data by political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“I think life is about learning from the mistakes and figuring out what you need to do to move forward,” Zuckerberg said. “The reality of a lot of this is, when you’re building something like Facebook that is unprecedented in the world, there are going to be things that you mess up.”

Despite the high-profile stumbles, Zuckerberg says he remains the best person to lead Facebook. When asked whether Facebook’s board has discussed whether he should step down, Zuckerberg said, “Not that I’m aware of.” He added that no Facebook employee has been fired in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which the company said could impact up to 87 million Facebook users—an increase from earlier reports of 50 million.

“I started this place, I run it, I am responsible for what happens here,” Zuckerberg said. “I’m not looking to throw anyone under the bus for mistakes that we made here.”

But the fact that the question about his tenure even came up shows how embattled the one-time Silicon Valley darling is. For example, angry users are campaigning to get others to delete their Facebook accounts, which Zuckerberg said on Wednesday has had little impact.

“But look, it’s not good,” he conceded. “We don’t want anyone to be unhappy with our services.”

Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission has started investigating Facebook’s data handling policies while some lawmakers are calling for tougher privacy laws. Next week, Zuckerberg is scheduled to appear at a likely testy Congressional hearing that will cover Facebook’s privacy problems.

On Wednesday, Facebook added fuel to the fire by disclosing that “malicious actors” had abused a feature to likely scrape the public profile information of the company’s two billion users. Facebook said it has now disabled that feature.

For the past year, Zuckerberg said that Facebook has been undergoing an internal reckoning over its growing influence on world affairs. While the company has long focused on the benefits of its social network like connecting family members and helping small businesses grow, Facebook executives mistakenly overlooked its platform’s negative effects, he said.

“It’s clear now we didn’t focus enough on abuse,” Zuckerberg said. “We didn’t take a broad enough view in what our responsibility is.”

He added, “That was a huge mistake, that was my mistake.”

Zuckerberg reiterated a series of changes Facebook has made to deal with a number of its current controversies. They include partnering with news organizations to fact-check news articles before major elections and further limiting the amount of data third-party developers can obtain by building apps on Facebook.

He also said that Facebook plans to increase the number of staff working on security issues to 20,000 people by the end of the year, to do things like ferret out fake accounts created by Russian trolls. However, Zuckerberg conceded that addressing Facebook’s many problems won’t be a quick fix, and that Facebook is “probably a year into a massive three-year push” to implement changes.

“I wish that I could snap my fingers and in three months or six months have solved all of these issues,” Zuckerberg said. “But, I just think the reality is given how complex Facebook is and how many systems there are, and how we need to rethink our relationship with people about our responsibility there across every single part of what we do, I do think this is a multi-year effort.”

He described it as a “big shift” for Facebook to take “more responsibility” for how bad actors use its service. “My hope is by the end of this year, we’ll have turned a corner on a lot of these issues and people see things are getting a lot better,” he said.