【英语科技】漠视用户隐私的Facebook

Facebook is among the most powerful internet companies – maybe the most powerful together with Google – in the world.

It has 400m users, 35m of whom use it at least once a day. It is the most visited website in the US. Its initial public offering, which is expected within a year or two, would be the biggest Silicon Valley event since Google's IPO in 2004.

Facebook is thus important not only to investors but to everyone interested in the future of the internet, which is practically all of us. If it decides, in Google's phrase for deceiving or messing around with its customers, to “be evil” then millions feel the effects.

Unfortunately, Mark Zuckerberg, the 25-year-old who founded Facebook as a private social network for Harvard students, has recently been displaying a disregard bordering on disdain for Facebook users' right to maintain control over personal information.

Not only has Facebook gradually eroded the privacy rights of its users, but it has done so in a confusing and opaque way. Facebook's privacy controls are now so complex and hard to understand that many have been nudged into “sharing” a lot, just as Mr Zuckerberg wishes.

“We are building towards a web where the default is social,” he declared to a developers' conference last month. In practice, he meant that Facebook will share users' data with some websites, initially including Pandora, the music service, and Yelp, a small business recommendation site, unless they jump through hoops to stop it.

Mr Zuckerberg was at least speaking plainly, unlike last December, when he wrote in an open letter that “our work to improve privacy continues today”. He failed to mention that, eight days later, it would turn six aspects of each user profile, including gender, location and the friends list, into “publicly available information”.

If Facebook users were allowed a free choice, they might well tick the box to accept anyway. His vision of the “open graph”, in which Facebook's users engage more with websites they visit and applications they use because the services are tailored to them, has allure.

For the sites in its pilot programme, that means Facebook users will, for example, automatically see restaurants recommended by friends when they visit Yelp, or hear music from bands they like when they go to Pandora. The software “cookie” placed on their computers by Facebook will automatically identify them to partner websites.

Facebook users might in future find books that have been read by their friends or gifts based on their location recommended when they visit an online retailer such as Amazon. If Facebook does not encounter too many protests, this pilot is likely to expand.

Some will find this useful and others abhorrent, depending on their view of software surveillance and data sharing. What is indisputable is that consumers need to be given a clear, comprehensible choice about how their personal information is used, so they can decide.

By this standard, Facebook is failing dismally. It is arguably complying with the law (although several privacy groups have argued to the Federal Trade Commission that it is not) since no private data are being provided to advertisers, but it is being far from transparent.

Apart from the difficulty of keeping information private and the barriers to doing so, it is breaching former understandings by getting millions hooked on its services with a promise of strict privacy controls, and then informing them that stuff happens and they must adapt.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a good timeline of how Facebook's privacy policy has weakened from its pledge in 2005 not to share data with anyone but a defined set of friends and groups, to today's Orwellian warning that “when you connect with an application or website, it will have access to General Information about you”.

Mr Zuckerberg has defended this by claiming that privacy standards online are changing and young people want to share more than in the past. This is at best disingenuous and does not justify a failure to inform and consult people.

Even if Facebook users invest the considerable amount of time and effort needed to understand Mr Zuckerberg's gradual changes of policy and decide to trust him with their data, how can they be sure he will not alter the rules again with similar insouciance?

He is not alone in Silicon Valley. Social networks and internet companies often give away services free to users and only retrospectively address the challenge of “monetising” their users in order to satisfy the venture capitalists that have funded them.

Even highly-profitable Google used dubious tactics this year when it tried to compete with Facebook and Twitter by launching its Google Buzz social network. At launch, it set the default to link G-mail users to people they had frequently e-mailed, and it only backed down under protest.

Facebook needs to do basic things to act responsibly and regain trust. It should provide simpler and more intuitive privacy controls, and retain them. It must explain clearly how it will distribute “publicly available information” and what the limits on that use will be, not until it changes its mind but for good.

As it is, Mr Zuckerberg, who turns 26 tomorrow, gives the impression of not caring a hoot about privacy. Whether by protest, legal action or regulation, he should be made to.

Facebook是全球最具影响力的互联网公司之一。或许，只有谷歌(Google)可与之匹敌。

Facebook拥有4亿用户，其中3500万用户每天至少使用一次该网站。它是美国访问量最大的网站。预计在一、两年内，Facebook将进行首次公开发行(IPO)，这将是自谷歌在2004年上市以来硅谷发生的最大事件。

因此，无论对投资者来说，还是对每位关注互联网未来的人（实际上就是我们所有人）来说，Facebook都非常重要。如果它决定欺骗或捉弄用户——用谷歌的话来说就是“作恶”——那将有无数人受到影响。

遗憾的是，Facebook的创始人、刚满26岁的马克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)，近来对用户掌控个人信息的权利表现出一种近乎鄙夷的漠视。扎克伯格当初搭建Facebook，是为哈佛(Harvard)学生提供一个社交网络。

Facebook不仅在侵蚀用户的隐私权，而且是以一种令人困扰和不透明的方式侵蚀。它的隐私控制如今极其复杂和难以理解，不少用户被迫“共享”了许多信息，而这正是扎克伯格所希望的。

他在上月的一次开发者大会上宣称：“我们致力于建设一个‘以社交为默认状态'的网络。”实际上，他是指Facebook将与某些网站共享用户数据——除非用户通过一连串复杂的设置来取消共享。这些网站最初将包括音乐服务网站潘多拉(Pandora)和小企业推荐网站Yelp。

这次，扎克伯格至少做到了有话直说，去年12月时则不是如此——当时，他在一封公开信中写道：“我们今天仍在努力提高隐私性。”但他未在信中提到的是，八天之后，Facebook将把六个方面的用户资料——其中包括性别、所在地和好友名单——转为“公开可获得信息”。

如果Facebook允许用户做出自由选择，他们很可能最终也会选择同意共享信息，因为扎克伯格描绘的“开放图”愿景很是诱人。在这一愿景中，Facebook用户将对自己所访问的网站和所使用的应用产生更大黏性，因为这些服务是为他们量身定制的。

对参与Facebook试点计划的网站来说，这意味着（举例来说），Facebook用户将在访问Yelp时自动看到好友推荐的餐厅，在访问潘多拉网站时自动听到他们所喜爱乐队的歌曲。Facebook存在用户电脑上的“Cookie”，将自动向合作伙伴网站亮明用户的身份。

未来，Facebook用户在访问亚马逊(Amazon)之类的零售网站时，可能会看到好友读过的书籍、或网站根据他们所在地推荐的礼物。如果Facebook未遇到太多的抗议，那么试点很可能会扩大。

有人会认为这一功能很有用处，还有一些人则会认为它很讨厌，这取决于他们对软件监控和数据共享的看法。但不容置疑的一点是，功能提供方必须就如何使用消费者的个人信息，向他们提供一个明确易懂的选择，以便他们做出决定。

根据这一标准，Facebook的做法严重不及格。其做法可以说合乎法律——尽管有几家隐私团体向美国联邦贸易委员会(US Federal Trade Commission)主张这一做法不合法——因为没有任何私人数据被提供给广告商，但它决非透明。

这一做法除了为保有隐私信息设置困难和障碍，还违反了Facebook原先与用户达成的谅解——Facebook承诺实施严格的隐私控制，从而把无数用户吸引到自己的服务上来，但随后告诉他们事情发生了变化，他们必须适应。

电子前沿基金会(Electronic Frontier Foundation)发表了一个精彩的时间轴，揭示了Facebook的隐私政策如何一步步弱化：从2005年承诺不与任何方面（除了一组自己界定的好友和群）共享数据，到今天奥威尔式(Orwellian)的警告——“当你连接应用或网站时，它将获取你的一般信息”。

对此，扎克伯格的辩解是，网络隐私标准不断改变，年轻人如今想共享更多信息。这充其量不过是种言不由衷的辩解，不能成为未提醒用户和未征询用户意见的理由。

即使Facebook用户花费大量时间和精力来理解扎克伯格对政策的逐步调整，并决定相信他能够正当使用他们的数据，他们又如何能肯定扎克伯格不会以同样满不在乎的态度再次修改规则呢？

在硅谷，扎克伯格的做法决非个例。社交网络和互联网公司经常向用户提供免费服务，但只是“回顾性”的解决赢利难题、以满足作为投资方的风险投资家的要求。

甚至连赢利颇丰的谷歌在今年推出社交网络Google Buzz时也使用了不太靠谱的招数。谷歌推出Buzz旨在与Facebook和Twitter展开竞争。在推出之时，Buzz把Gmail用户的关注对象默认设为与该用户有经常电子邮件往来的人士。在用户的抗议之下，谷歌放弃了这一做法。

Facebook必须从根本上担负起责任并赢回用户的信任。它应该持之以恒的提供更简单、更直观的隐私控制。它必须明示将如何分发“公开可获得信息”，并明示将对这类使用施以何种限制，这些限制必须是永久的，而不是随时可以改变的。

但是，上周五刚满26岁的扎克伯格似乎对隐私问题表现得满不在乎。不管是通过抗议、法律行动还是监管，我们都应该迫使他在乎这个问题。

译者/汪洋