自上个月接管推特(Twitter)以来,埃隆·马斯克一直以“强硬”面貌示人,这种管理方式也在许多领导者心中引起了共鸣。但微软联合创始人、前首席执行官比尔·盖茨对马斯克的做法并不赞同。
本周,在回答有关“要想弥合根深蒂固的分歧,我们更多面临的是工程方面的挑战还是人际方面的挑战”的问题时,盖茨告诉《金融时报》(Financial Times),“推特现在一团乱麻,大家不是有条有理地推进工作,而是好像都在走一步看一步”。
一言以蔽之,盖茨认为,马斯克的行为将使数字世界的两极分化问题进一步恶化,或将造成灾难性后果。
问题始于今年10月,当时马斯克以440亿美元正式收购了这家社交网站。几乎在同一时间,推特原有的架构和秩序开始崩溃。广告商因为担心政策调整而集体出逃,记者账号遭禁,高管团队宣布集体辞职,数以千计的员工或是遭到解雇或是在上班时发现自己所属团队已全员离职。
马斯克曾公开表示,自己打算解禁此前被封号的用户,其中就包括美国前总统唐纳德·特朗普(其账号因传播虚假信息、煽动暴力而遭到封禁),经网友投票同意,马斯克恢复了其推特账号。蒙特克莱尔州立大学研究发现,在马斯克入主推特后,该平台上的仇恨言论数量“明显立刻出现大幅飙升”。在被解雇或主动离开公司的员工中,就有负责监测、删除平台上不良内容的人员。
这与盖茨理想中的情况恰恰相反。盖茨在接受《金融时报》采访时表示,像推特这样具有巨大影响力的社交媒体平台,负有必要的(社会)责任,“需要关注那些可能煽动暴乱或导致民众对疫苗、口罩安全性产生巨大误解的问题”,这里的问题指的是虚假信息。
从竞争中学习
内容监管一直是社交媒体行业的老大难问题,而且严重程度有增无减。Meta就因虚假信息问题而臭名远扬,许多人更是认为,该平台分享的“假新闻”直接影响到了2016年大选的结果,并因此对该平台大加批评。
在CEO行动大会(CEO Initiative conference)的一次圆桌会谈中,现任Meta全球事务总裁的尼克·克莱格对《财富》杂志说,为帮助解决虚假信息问题,他在2018年帮助Meta组建了一个独立的监督委员会,该委员会“由来自世界各地、信奉表达自由的专家组成,在公司之外独立运作”。
“欢迎加入我们,”他在提及马斯克时补充道。
“运营社交媒体公司就会碰到这种问题。你没法让所有人都满意。”克莱格说,“当然,在美国尤其如此,一半人会觉得你删掉了太多内容,另一半则觉得你删得还不够”。
他建议马斯克也考虑成立一个独立的监督委员会,不过考虑到后者上周刚解散了推特的“信任与安全委员会”(Trust and Safety Council),其建议被采纳的可能性微乎其微。如果继续执掌推特,等待马斯克的将是一项艰巨的任务。(大多数推特用户认为马斯克应该卸任推特首席执行官一职,而马斯克也曾表示自己会根据投票结果决定去留,但此后一直没有就此事发表意见)。
盖茨一直致力于为民众提供清晰、易懂、真实的信息。12月20日上午,盖茨在博客上发布了今年的年终信,他在信中表示,他认为美国两极分化的政治格局是拖累全球健康危机(如新冠疫情、脊髓灰质炎和疟疾)取得进展的首要因素。
在此背景之下,盖茨认为这个拥有3.29亿用户、内容审核团队却遭到掏空的社交网站或会引发灾难性后果也就不足为奇了。(财富中文网)
译者:梁宇
审校:夏林
自上个月接管推特(Twitter)以来,埃隆·马斯克一直以“强硬”面貌示人,这种管理方式也在许多领导者心中引起了共鸣。但微软联合创始人、前首席执行官比尔·盖茨对马斯克的做法并不赞同。
本周,在回答有关“要想弥合根深蒂固的分歧,我们更多面临的是工程方面的挑战还是人际方面的挑战”的问题时,盖茨告诉《金融时报》(Financial Times),“推特现在一团乱麻,大家不是有条有理地推进工作,而是好像都在走一步看一步”。
一言以蔽之,盖茨认为,马斯克的行为将使数字世界的两极分化问题进一步恶化,或将造成灾难性后果。
问题始于今年10月,当时马斯克以440亿美元正式收购了这家社交网站。几乎在同一时间,推特原有的架构和秩序开始崩溃。广告商因为担心政策调整而集体出逃,记者账号遭禁,高管团队宣布集体辞职,数以千计的员工或是遭到解雇或是在上班时发现自己所属团队已全员离职。
马斯克曾公开表示,自己打算解禁此前被封号的用户,其中就包括美国前总统唐纳德·特朗普(其账号因传播虚假信息、煽动暴力而遭到封禁),经网友投票同意,马斯克恢复了其推特账号。蒙特克莱尔州立大学研究发现,在马斯克入主推特后,该平台上的仇恨言论数量“明显立刻出现大幅飙升”。在被解雇或主动离开公司的员工中,就有负责监测、删除平台上不良内容的人员。
这与盖茨理想中的情况恰恰相反。盖茨在接受《金融时报》采访时表示,像推特这样具有巨大影响力的社交媒体平台,负有必要的(社会)责任,“需要关注那些可能煽动暴乱或导致民众对疫苗、口罩安全性产生巨大误解的问题”,这里的问题指的是虚假信息。
从竞争中学习
内容监管一直是社交媒体行业的老大难问题,而且严重程度有增无减。Meta就因虚假信息问题而臭名远扬,许多人更是认为,该平台分享的“假新闻”直接影响到了2016年大选的结果,并因此对该平台大加批评。
在CEO行动大会(CEO Initiative conference)的一次圆桌会谈中,现任Meta全球事务总裁的尼克·克莱格对《财富》杂志说,为帮助解决虚假信息问题,他在2018年帮助Meta组建了一个独立的监督委员会,该委员会“由来自世界各地、信奉表达自由的专家组成,在公司之外独立运作”。
“欢迎加入我们,”他在提及马斯克时补充道。
“运营社交媒体公司就会碰到这种问题。你没法让所有人都满意。”克莱格说,“当然,在美国尤其如此,一半人会觉得你删掉了太多内容,另一半则觉得你删得还不够”。
他建议马斯克也考虑成立一个独立的监督委员会,不过考虑到后者上周刚解散了推特的“信任与安全委员会”(Trust and Safety Council),其建议被采纳的可能性微乎其微。如果继续执掌推特,等待马斯克的将是一项艰巨的任务。(大多数推特用户认为马斯克应该卸任推特首席执行官一职,而马斯克也曾表示自己会根据投票结果决定去留,但此后一直没有就此事发表意见)。
盖茨一直致力于为民众提供清晰、易懂、真实的信息。12月20日上午,盖茨在博客上发布了今年的年终信,他在信中表示,他认为美国两极分化的政治格局是拖累全球健康危机(如新冠疫情、脊髓灰质炎和疟疾)取得进展的首要因素。
在此背景之下,盖茨认为这个拥有3.29亿用户、内容审核团队却遭到掏空的社交网站或会引发灾难性后果也就不足为奇了。(财富中文网)
译者:梁宇
审校:夏林
Some leaders have been empathizing with Elon Musk’s “hardcore” tactics since he took over Twitter last month. But Bill Gates, cofounder and former CEO of Microsoft, doesn’t count himself among them.
“The Twitter situation is stirring things up,” he told the Financial Times this week in response to a question about whether mending staunch divides would be more of an engineering challenge or an interpersonal challenge. “That, instead of an objective set of measures done by a broad group of people, you’re sort of seeing seat-of-the-pants type activity.”
In a nutshell, Gates thinks Musk’s approach is causing digital polarization to reach a fever pitch—which could be catastrophic.
The trouble began in October, when Musk officially bought the social networking site for $44 billion. Almost immediately, structure and order at Twitter began cratering. Advertisers fled en masse over concerns about his inconsistency, journalists were banned, the entire senior leadership team called it quits, and thousands of employees were laid off—or came to work to discover their entire team had left.
Musk has openly considered replatforming banned users, including former President Donald Trump, whose account has been reinstated after being banned for spreading misinformation and inciting violence. Research from Montclair State University found an “immediate, visible, and measurable spike” in hate speech on the platform after Musk’s takeover. Some of the people who were let go or left the company of their own accord were responsible for monitoring and removing abusive content on the platform.
It’s all the opposite of what Gates thinks the world needs. Social media platforms with gigantic reach, like Twitter, bear requisite responsibility, Gates told FT. They “need to focus on the things that incite riots or lead to huge misconceptions about the safety of vaccines or masks,” he said, referring to misinformation.
Learning from the competition
Content regulation has been a growing issue across social media; Meta has notoriously had issues with misinformation, particularly when many denounced the platform for sharing “fake news” that they believed influenced the 2016 election.
In 2018, Nick Clegg, Meta’s now president of global affairs, helped the company assemble an independent oversight board “populated by experts from around the world who, independent of the company, generally have a kind of belief in free expression,” to help combat misinformation, he told Fortune during a panel at the CEO Initiative conference.
“Welcome to the club,” he added of Musk.
“That’s what happens when you run up social media companies. You can’t keep everybody happy. And certainly in the United States—half the country thinks that you’re taking too much content down, the other half thinks you should take down more,” Clegg said.
He suggested that Musk also consider implementing an independent oversight board, although that’s unlikely given that Musk dismantled Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council last week. Musk certainly has his work cut out for him—if he remains at the helm. (The majority of Twitter users think he should step down as CEO, and he vowed he’d do as they said but hasn’t spoken on the matter since.)
Clear, accessible, factual information is a longtime passion for Gates. In his annual year-end letter, which he published on his blog Tuesday morning, he counted America’s polarized political landscape as a prime factor in reversing progress on global health crises like COVID-19, polio, and malaria.
It’s no wonder a social networking site with 329 million users and a gutted content moderation team strikes Gates as a disaster waiting to happen.