扎克伯格：别让争议影响我的乐观

Facebook的CEO马克·扎克伯格最近表态称，他不会让反复发生的数据隐私问题和2016年大选期间的“通俄门”等丑闻影响他对Facebook的乐观。

上周二，扎克伯克对软件开发者们表示，Facebook和开发者们“都有一些现实的挑战需要解决，但同时我们也要保持乐观。”

在Facebook的年度F8开发者大会上，扎克伯格谈及过去一年的历次风波时轻描淡写地表示：“这确实是紧张的一年”。

当然，扎克伯格这一年过得何止“紧张”。由于与美国总统大选有关的原因，扎克伯格遭受了密集的抨击。Facebook还曾打着学术研究的名义收集用户个人信息，并将这些信息转售给了政治咨询机构剑桥分析公司，为此他也两次出席国会的听证会，接受了立法委员们的质询。

扎克伯格半开玩笑地说道：“我简直难以相信，今年才过了四个月。”

在此次开发者大会上，扎克伯格也重申了他在最近的几次新闻发布会、国会听证会和季度收益会议上的主要观点。他再次介绍了公司为弥补近期出现的一些问题所做的各种努力，比如在接下来的各国大选期间，Facebook将采用人工智能工具，自动审核有关政治引导性言论，以及在年底前扩建一支20000人的安全员和内容审核员团队等等。

会上，扎克伯格还宣布，Facebook将允许用户删除他们通过Facebook访问的网站浏览记录及cookies记录，以免其他企业追踪到用户的浏览行为。“清除浏览记录”是不少主流网页浏览器的标配功能，但Facebook却一直没有提供该选项，直到一连串数据隐私丑闻接连爆发。

虽然Facebook采取了一些措施弥补服务中的漏洞（扎克伯格称，这些补救措施也是他2018年的个人目标），但他演讲的主旨还是想要说服Facebook的开发者“风物长宜放眼量”，将重点放在下一步开发新功能和新产品上。

扎克伯格表示：“我这一年做的最艰难的决定，并不是斥巨资在安全问题上——这个决定是很容易的。最艰难的决定，是如何找出一条路，继续做好我们需要做的每一件事。”

扎克伯格表示，Facebook的使命是促进人与人的联系，它将不会停止研发能够实现这一目标的工具。因此，Facebook下一步将陆续推出一系列新产品，比如一项新的约会服务，以及最新的Oculus Go头显等AR和VR工具等等。另外，Facebook旗下的照片分享服务Instagram也将支持视频聊天功能。

显然，为了吸引更多用户并让他们痴迷于Facebook的服务，Facebook是不会停止投资研发新工具的。任何增长放缓的迹象都会造成投资者的恐慌，并导致股票大幅下跌。

不过对于Facebook来说，这些新工具推出的时机或许并不理想，尤其是约会服务更是数据隐私问题的重灾区。在国会听证会的第二天，就有立法委员当面驳斥扎克伯克，说Facebook已经就数据隐私问题反复道歉过多次，然而之后还是屡屡再犯。Facebook除了动动嘴皮子，是否真有诚意采取切实行动解决隐患，实在是很难说。

扎克伯格也知道，在接连爆出隐私问题后，大家难免对他的约会服务是否靠谱心中存疑。他表示，Facebook的约会APP“一开始就考虑到了隐私和安全问题”。Facebook最近的几次隐私丑闻已经表明，Facebook经常低估了不法分子操纵其服务为非作歹的能力，所以这次扎克伯格只得亲自为公司约会服务站台，表示公司在构建该服务时，已经预见到了黑客可能会取用户数据的手段，并相应做好了防范。

不过，扎克伯格在演讲中也承认，Facebook并不完美，“公司会犯错，也会承担相应后果，我们也需要解决这些问题”。

考虑到Facebook以后的服务仍然要基于用户的私人数据搭建，这番谁都不得罪的表态也算相当讨巧。不过不管扎克伯格对Facebook的未来有多乐观，在Facebook的发展过程中，可以预见，它面临的隐私保护压力只会有增无减。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn’t going to let Facebook-related controversies like its repeated data privacy problems and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections ruin his hopefulness.

The executive of one of the world’s biggest technology companies told an audience of software developers on Tuesday that both Facebook and developers “have real challenges to address, but we have to keep that sense of optimism too.”

Speaking at Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference, Zuckerberg kicked things off by lightheartedly stating the obvious, “This has been an intense year.”

Zuckerberg, of course, spent the past year facing intense criticism for failing to prevent Russian entities from spreading propaganda on the social network. More recently, he attended two congressional hearings during which he fielded lawmakers questions about how Facebook let an academic obtain user data and then sell it to the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.

“I can’t believe we’re only four months in,” Zuckerberg said in jest.

Reiterating comments he made during recent media briefings, congressional hearings, and Facebook’s latest quarterly earnings announcements, Zuckerberg reminded the audience of all the steps the company is doing to remedy its recent problems. Some of these include using artificial intelligence tools to automatically identify propaganda efforts similar to those allegedly carried out by Russia-linked groups in upcoming world elections, and boosting its security and content review team to 20,000 by the end of the year.

A more recent change, Zuckerberg detailed on Tuesday, involves letting people delete a history of the websites they may have visited from Facebook as well as the cookies companies use to track people across multiple sites. This Clear History feature is a standard tool in popular web browsers, but has been noticeably absent in Facebook prior to its wave of data privacy scandals.

But even though Facebook is taking steps to fix a number of problems with its service (Zuckerberg has described those fixes as his personal goal for 2018), his speech mainly focused on why Facebook and developers must move forward by constantly creating new features and products.

“The hardest decision that I made this year wasn’t to invest so much in safety and security—that decision was easy,” Zuckerberg said. “The hard part was figuring out a way to move forward on everything else we need to do too.”

Facebook has a mission to connect people to each other, Zuckerberg explained, and it won’t stop building tools that do so. With that, he summarized a handful of new Facebook products like a new dating service, augmented reality and virtual reality gadgets like its new Oculus Go headset, and new ways to video chat with friends on the Facebook-owned photo sharing service Instagram.

Clearly, Facebook can’t stop investing in new tools to attract more users and keep them glued to its service. Any signs of slowing growth would worry investors and send its stock plummeting.

But, these new tools—especially a service for dating, in which people can be at their most vulnerable with one another—come at a precarious time for Facebook. As lawmakers told Zuckerberg during the second day of his congressional hearing, Facebook has repeatedly apologized over data privacy mishaps followed by further missteps. It’s difficult to tell if the company takes the issue seriously beyond basic lip service.

Zuckerberg, seemingly aware that debuting a dating service after the numerous data privacy problems, said that Facebook designed the dating app “with privacy and safety from the beginning.” As Facebook’s recent scandals have shown, the company tends to underestimate how bad actors can manipulate its service, so people will have to take Zuckerberg’s word that the company built the dating service while anticipating how personal data could potentially be leaked.

And yet, Zuckerberg admitted earlier in his speech that Facebook is not perfect and that the company “will make mistakes and they will have consequences and we will need to fix them.”

It’s a tricky balancing act that Facebook is playing as it continues to build products that are powered by people’s personal data. And it’s not going to get any easier as Facebook continues to forge ahead—no matter how optimistic Zuckerberg is about Facebook’s future.