英语自学网 发表于 2018-4-9 21:20:07

双语:隐私泄露问题频发,社交媒体还被相信?

  I don’t need to tell you that something is wrong with social media.
          用不着告诉你社交媒体出了什么问题。
          You’ve probably experienced it yourself. Maybe it’s the way you feel while
scrolling through your Twitter feed — anxious, twitchy, a little world weary —
or your unease when you see a child watching YouTube videos, knowing she’s just
a few algorithmic nudges away from a rabbit hole filled with lunatic
conspiracies and gore. Or maybe it was this month’s Facebook privacy scandal,
which reminded you that you’ve entrusted the most intimate parts of your digital
life to a profit-maximizing surveillance machine.
          你自己很可能也经历过。这也许是你刷Twitter时的感觉-焦虑不安、有点厌世;也许是你看见一个孩子在看YouTube视频时的不安,你知道她距离充满疯狂阴谋和血腥的兔子洞仅有几个算法之遥;也许是本月Facebook的隐私丑闻,它在提醒你,你把自己数字生活中最私密的部分托付给了一个追求利润最大化的监视机器。
          Our growing discomfort with our largest social platforms is reflected in
polls. One recently conducted by Axios and SurveyMonkey found that all three of
the major social media companies — Facebook, Twitter and Google, which shares a
parent company with YouTube — are significantly less popular with Americans than
they were five months ago. (And Americans might be the lucky ones. Outside the
United States, social media is fueling real-world violence and empowering
autocrats, often with much less oversight.)
          民意调查表明,我们对最大的几家社交平台感到日益不满。Axios和SurveyMonkey前不久的一项调查发现,与五个月前相比,三家主要社交媒体公司-Facebook、Twitter和谷歌(它与YouTube隶属于同一个母公司)-在美国的受欢迎程度明显下降(美国人可能是幸运的。在美国以外的地方,社交媒体助长现实世界中的暴力,赋予独裁者们权力,通常受到的监管更少)。
          But it would be a mistake to throw up our hands and assume that it has to
be this way. The original dream of social media — producing healthy discussions,
unlocking new forms of creativity, connecting people to others with similar
interests — shouldn’t be discarded because of the failures of the current market
leaders. And lots of important things still happen on even the most flawed
networks. The West Virginia teachers’ strike and last weekend’s March for Our
Lives, for example, were largely organized on Facebook and Twitter.
          但如果我们摊摊手,认为这是无可奈何的事,那就错了。社交媒体最初的梦想是制造健康的讨论,释放新的创意形式,把兴趣相似的人联系起来,这一切不应该因为当前市场上领先企业的失败而被抛弃。甚至在缺陷最多的网络上,仍有很多重要的事情在发生。例如西弗吉尼亚州的教师罢工,以及上周末的“为我们的生命游行”(March
for Our Lives),它们主要是在Facebook和Twitter上组织起来的。
          The primary problem with today’s social networks is that they’re already
too big, and are trapped inside a market-based system that forces them to keep
growing. Facebook can’t stop monetizing our personal data for the same reason
that Starbucks can’t stop selling coffee — it’s the heart of the enterprise.
          当今社交网络的主要问题是,它们已经太过庞大,被困在一个以市场导向的体系中,被迫继续扩张。Facebook无法停止将我们的个人数据变现,就像星巴克无法停止销售咖啡一样-它是这个企业的核心。
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