Week1002_review

ARTS - Review

我们的数据就是我们自己

怎样阻止高科技公司垄断我们的个人信息

Concentrated in a few hands, big data is a threat to democracy. Social media companies and political data-mining firms such as Cambridge Analytica have built their businesses by manipulating public life using personal data. Their work has helped heighten ethnic tensions, revive nationalism, intensify political conflict, and even produce new political crises in countries around the world — all while weakening public trust in journalism, voting systems, and electoral outcomes.

大数据集中在少数人手里，对民主是一种威胁。社交媒体公司和政治数据挖掘公司像剑桥分析公司通过个人数据操纵公共生活建立起自己的商业模式。他们的工作加剧了民族紧张局势，他们的工作帮助加剧了种族紧张关系，恢复了民族主义，加剧了政治冲突，甚至在世界各国制造了新的政治危机——所有这一切都削弱了公众对新闻业、投票制度和选举结果的信任。

Such crises[危机] are symptoms[征兆] of a deeper problem: the effective monopoly[垄断] that a handful of technology firms have gained over a wealth of information relevant[有关的，确切的] to public life. Fixing the situation requires putting the public back in charge of its data.

这些危机是更深层问题的征兆：一小撮科技公司获得了与公共生活有关的大量信息的有效垄断。修复这些问题需要大众对自己的数据负责。

Democracy[民主政治，民众] has long been predicated[断定，表明] on, and reinforced[加强] by, social institutions[机构] that carefully collect information about public life and collective needs. Today, however, a handful of technology companies have far exceeded[超过] the data-gathering[数据采集] capacity[容量] of all other kinds of organizations.

民众已经断定，社会机构正加紧收集公共生活信息和集体需求。然而当今一些高科技公司收集的信息已经远远超过其他组织结构的信息总和。

These private firms possess[掌握] detailed information on the public — and having collected and stored data on every user’s attitudes, aspirations, and behaviors, they then use it to serve their bottom line. Social media platforms are designed to deliberately[故意的] exploit[开拓、利用] the common predilection[偏好] for selective exposure[曝光] — the tendency[倾向] to favor information that confirms pre-existing views — to reinforce messaging from advertising clients, lobbyists[说客], political campaign managers[政治竞选经理], and even foreign governments.

这些私人公司掌握公众的详细信息，收集存储了每个用户的态度、愿望和行为，然后他们用这些来为自己的底线服务。社交媒体平台被故意设计成利用公众偏好来选择性暴露，信息偏好倾向来证实之前已经存在的观点的倾向，来加强广告客户的信息传递，说客，政治竞选经理，甚至外国政府。

There are two ways to protect democracy from the challenge posed by tech companies’ dominance[支配] over socially valuable data. The first option is for governments to regulate[管控] content on an unprecedented[空前的] scale. That would oblige[强制] public regulators[监管者] to either review all social media content to judge its appropriateness[适当] or provide clear signals to private firms — whether the social media companies themselves or third parties — to perform such content reviews. But the problem with both scenarios[情节] is that they would create massive[大量的] new censorship mechanisms [审查机制] that would further threaten democratic culture.

有两种方法来应对高科技公司对社会有价值信息的支配给民众带来的挑战。第一个观点是政府加强管控内容范围。这就强制公共监督者既不审查所有的社交媒体内容来判断是否适当也不提供清晰的信号给私人公司，无论社交媒体公司自己活第三方结构去提供这些内容审查。但是两个都会导致的问的是这将会创造大量的审查机制，将会对民众文化产生深远影响。

Far preferable[更好的] would be market regulations that guide firms on how and when they can profit from information about individuals. Such regulations would put the public back in charge of a valuable collective resource while still allowing citizens to express themselves individually by deciding what to do with their data. To get there, policymakers should focus on five basic reforms, all of which would put public institutions back into the flow of data now dominated by private firms.

更好的方法是市场规则来引导公司如何、何时可以从人们信息中获益。这样规则将使众重新掌握这些有价值的集体资源，同时仍然允许民众自己决定如何来处理他们的数据来表达自己。为了实现这一目标，政策制定者应该关注五项基本改革，所有这些改革都将使公共机构重新回到现在由私营企业主导的数据流中。

First, governments should require mandatory[强制性的] reporting about the ultimate beneficiaries of data. That means, when queried, technology firms should be required to clearly report to users which advertisers, data miners, and political consultants have made use of information about them. Your Facebook app or your smart refrigerator should be required to reveal, on request, the list of third parties benefiting from the information the device is collecting. The trail[追踪] of data should be fully, and clearly, mapped out for users so that if a data-mining firm aggregates users’ data and then sells it on to a political party, the users could still identify the ultimate beneficiary.

第一，政府强制指出数据的最终受益人。意思是，当查询时候，科技公司应该向用户指出，哪些广告商、数据挖掘者，政治团体将会使用这些信息。你的 facebook 应用或你的智能冰箱应该被要求列出自身收集的数据的第三方受益列表。这个数据追踪应该完全、透明向用户敞开，当一个数据挖掘公司聚合用户数据出售给某个政治团体，用户应该仍然可以识别最终受益人。

Second, regulations should require social media platforms to facilitate[促进] data donation[捐赠], empowering[授权] users to actively identify the civic groups [民间团体], political parties, or medical researchers[医学研究者] they want to support by sharing their data with them. In freeing data from private actors, governments could create an opportunity for civic expression by allowing citizens to share it with whichever organizations and causes they want to support — not just the ones that can afford to buy it, as is the case today.

第二，规则应该要求社交媒体平台促进数据捐赠，授权用户把他们的数据分享给他们支持的民间团体、政治团体、或者医学研究人员。在个人行为上解放数据行动时，政府可以允许公民与任何组织分享它们的数据来创造公民表达的机会，并促使他们支持不仅是哪些能够买得起的人，正如今天的情况一样。

The third reform is related to the second: Software and information infrastructure companies should be obliged to tithe for the public good. Ten percent of ads on social media platforms should be reserved for public service announcements, and 10 percent of all user data should be obliged to flow (in a secured way) to public health researchers, civic groups, professional journalists, educators, and public science agencies. Such a system would allow many kinds of advocacy groups and public agencies, beyond Facebook’s private clients, to use existing data to understand and find solutions for public problems.

第三项涉及到第二个问题：软件和信息基础设施公司应该为公共利益服务。社交媒体平台上的百分之十的广告应该被保留用于公共服务公告，并且10%的所有用户数据应该有义务（以安全的方式）流向公共卫生研究人员、公民团体、专业记者、教育者和公共科学机构。这样的系统将允许许多倡导团体和公共机构，超越脸谱网的私人客户，使用现有的数据来理解和解决公共问题的解决方案。

Fourth, the nonprofit rule on data needs to be expanded. Most democracies have rules that prevent firms from profiting from the sale of certain kinds of public data. In many U.S. states, for example, data-mining firms can’t profit from the sale of voter registration data, which public agencies collect. This rule needs to be extended to a wider range of socially valuable data, such as places of employment, that is now gathered by technology companies. Such classes of information could then be passed to public agencies, thus creating a broader set of data in the public domain.

第四，数据的非营利规则需要扩大。大多数民主国家都有防止公司从某些公共数据中获利的规则。例如，在许多美国州，数据挖掘公司不能从公共机构收集的选民登记数据中获利。这个规则需要扩展到更广泛的社会有价值的数据，如就业场所，现在由科技公司收集。这样的信息可以传递给公共机构，从而在公共领域创造更广泛的数据集。

Fifth, public agencies should conduct regular audits of social media algorithms and other automated systems that citizens now rely on for information. Technology companies will call these algorithms proprietary, but public agencies currently audit everything from video gambling machines to financial trading algorithms, all in ways that don’t violate intellectual property.

第五，公共机构应该定期对公民现在依赖信息的社会媒体算法和其他自动化系统进行审计。科技公司将这些算法称为专有的，但公共机构目前对从视频赌博机到金融交易算法的一切都进行审计，所有这些方式都不侵犯知识产权.

Users should have access to clear explanations of the algorithms that determine [决定]what news and advertisements they are exposed to, and those explanations should be confirmed by regular public audits. Moreover, all ads, not just political ones, need to be archived for potential use by public investigators. Audits of today’s technology would also put the designers of new technologies — such as artificial intelligence — on notice that their own algorithms will one day be under scrutiny.

用户应该有机会对算法程序进行清晰的解释，以确定他们所接触的新闻和广告,这些解释应该通过定期让公共审核来确认。此外，所有的广告，而不仅仅是政治广告，需要被公众调查人员存档。对当今技术的审计也会让新技术的设计者——比如人工智能————注意到他们自己的算法有一天会受到审查

Little of this need be wishful thinking. Restoring public access to social information wouldn’t require legislators to pass a raft of new laws, since most democracies have the public science agencies, libraries, and privacy czars needed to effectively administer large collections of public information. Competition regulators in the European Union and United States may already have the authority to set mandatory guidelines for any technology company with a business model that relies on controlling vast stores of publicly valuable data. Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, which has boldly asserted an individual right to control data since going into effect in May, is an important start. It is already having a global impact, as many technology firms find it easier to implement a platformwide response than to adjust particular features for users based in Europe.

这需要的只是一厢情愿的想法。恢复公众对社会信息的访问不需要立法者通过一系列新的法律，因为大多数民主国家都有公共科学机构、图书馆和隐私沙皇需要有效地管理大量的公共信息。欧盟和美国的竞争监管机构可能已经有权为任何技术公司设定强制性准则，其商业模式依赖于控制大量的公开有价值的数据。自5月生效以来，欧洲的数据保护条例大胆宣布了控制数据的个人权利，这是一个重要的开端。它已经产生了全球性的影响，因为许多技术公司发现实施平台响应比在欧洲基于用户调整特定功能更容易。

Tech firms might claim that such demands would infringe on their economic rights as private enterprises. But contrary to such suggestions, it’s entirely fair to regulate the operations (if not the content) of tech firms because the platforms they control have become the fundamental infrastructure for public life. They are a common carrier for our political culture, much the same way the post office, newspaper empires, and television and radio broadcasters conveyed politics in past decades while being regulated to varying degrees.

科技公司可能会声称这样的要求会侵犯他们作为私营企业的经济权利。但与这些建议相反，规范技术公司的运营（如果不是内容）是完全公平的，因为他们控制的平台已经成为公共生活的基本基础设施。他们是我们政治文化的共同载体，就像邮局、报纸帝国和电视广播电台在过去几十年里在政治上进行不同程度的管制一样。

In democracies, citizens expect media companies, journalists, and civic groups to have some public duties, often enforced through the law. Social media and data-mining firms have evaded those responsibilities until now, hoarding public data with little public oversight. Strengthening democracy will require putting socially valuable data back to work for the public good.

在民主国家，公民期望媒体公司、记者和公民团体有一些公共责任，通常通过法律强制执行。社交媒体和数据挖掘公司一直逃避这些责任，囤积公共数据而很少公开监督。加强民主需要将社会有价值的数据重新用于公共利益。

Philip N. Howard is a statutory professor of internet studies at the Oxford Internet Institute and Oxford University’s Balliol College.

Philip N. Howard是牛津互联网研究所和牛津大学巴里奥尔学院的互联网研究专业教授。