美国选民的两极分化早在Facebook出现之前。但关于社交网络的一个令人不安的问题是，它的病毒机制——以及YouTube、Twitter和其他平台上的病毒机制——是否加速了左翼和右翼之间的分裂。

今天我们有两个故事来研究这种现象。第一个问题是关于向最高**确认布雷特·卡瓦诺的斗争。在Facebook上的新闻分享普遍下降之际，围绕Kavanaugh的痛苦之战一直是该网站的佼佼者。克雷格·西尔弗曼（Craig Silverman）报道说，许多表现最好的帖子都是最具党派色彩的：

Daily Wire’s top story about Kavanaugh confirmation was published Oct. 1 with the headline “Prosecutor Who Questioned Ford Shreds Her Case In Five-Page Memo.” It’s generated more than 205,000 engagements. The site also received just under 180,000 engagements for the story, “Bill Clinton Rape Accuser Juanita Broaddrick Crashes Kavanaugh Hearing, Slams Dems For ‘Biggest Double Standard.’” [...]

Occupy Democrats’ top story about Kavanaugh-Ford is headlined “Matt Damon just DESTROYED Kavanaugh and Senate Republicans in hilarious SNL cold open.” It had just under 70,000 engagements. Another story about the Kavanaugh confirmation, “Bernie Sanders just demanded the FBI investigate five lies Kavanaugh told at his hearing,” generated over 44,000 engagements.

西尔弗曼指出，更多的主流报道，包括《纽约客》和CNN的报道，都优于这些链接。但这场斗争给党派出版商带来了一条生命线，他们今年一直在挣扎，因为Facebook大幅减少了新闻提要中的新闻量。它补充了他们的电子邮件列表，并创造了新的广告收入。而且，在这样做的过程中，它**了未来更加两极分化的报道。

与此同时，由于一次简单的改名，Facebook的用户群正变得越来越两极分化。凯文·鲁斯（Kevin Roose）本周早些时候在推特上谈到了这一现象：“FB上最大的亲卡瓦诺团体之一以前被称为“ISIS支持团体”和“谁放屁？！！”现在《*****》的托尼·罗姆（Tony Romm）写了一篇完整的报道：

The fluid nature of these groups illustrates how the social networking giant’s powerful tools for political and community organizing remain major risks for spreading misinformation and stoking unrest, especially as Facebook wages its war against inauthentic activity online and the 2018 election is just weeks away. Groups are at the heart of Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s stated mission to ensure “online communities strengthen physical communities,” as he put it during a speech in 2017. But group owners can easily rename and refocus their groups, while keeping their original members – and their ability to push content into their daily feeds.

Facebook said in the last month it began displaying the two-year history of all groups’ name changes to improve transparency. The change offers “more information and insights about a Group, as well as increased accountability for Group admins,” said spoke**an Andy Stone. With the Ford group, in particular, Facebook said late Thursday it is investigating its recent, whiplash revisi***.

一方面，这里讨论的群体很小，成员不到10000人。另一方面，它们展示了促进两极分化的努力是如何随着平台而发展的。改变这个团体的名字也使得人们更容易把一个像“谁放屁”这样的普通利益团体变成保守派的据点。

我想Facebook的员工可能会看到这两个故事，然后回答：这是目前美国最大的故事。当然，它在社交网络上爆炸了，当然人们也站在了一边。但最刺耳的声音在平台上传播的速度有多快，传播的距离有多远，以及一项旨在建立社区的服务如何经常表现为部落主义的引擎，这仍然令人震惊。

民主

Facebook的乔尔·卡普兰在紧张的公司会议上承认卡瓦诺的错误

Facebook全球公共政策副总裁乔尔·卡普兰（Joel Kaplan）今天告诉愤怒的员工，在最高**提名人布雷特·卡瓦诺被控***的听证会上，他去支持朋友布雷特·卡瓦诺（Brett Kavanaugh）时犯了一个错误。David McCabe、Mike Allen和Kim Hart：

A Facebook employee who viewed the event characterized the meeting as “intense,” and added that people were not expressing hostility but more incre****ty at the situation.

英国网络安全机构支持苹果、亚马逊中国黑客否认

英国网络安全局周五表示，在苹果和亚马逊质疑彭博社关于其系统被中国间谍破坏的报道后，他们没有理由怀疑。

谷歌首席执行官在五角大楼悄悄会见了军方领导人，试图缓和无人机AI的紧张局势

Sundar Pichai在华盛顿之行期间未经宣布访问了五角大楼，Tony Romm和Drew Harwell报道：

Pichai met with a group of civilian and military leaders mostly from the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, the Defense Department directorate that oversees the artificial-intelligence drone system known as Project Maven, according to people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

规模较小的门店减少了Facebook的促销活动，放弃了新的广告规则

马修·英格拉姆（Mathew Ingram）报道说，一些新闻媒体非常不愿意注册为政治广告商，以至于他们一般都停止了Facebook广告：

Ultimately, Haussamen says, he stopped spending money on promoting content on Facebook. It wasn’t much money—maybe $70 or $80 a month—but the NMPolitics publisher said he thought it was an important symbolic move. Ironically, since he stopped spending money to promote posts, the amount of Facebook traffic to his site has been steady, while engagement on the site’s posts has actually gone up. “Whatever Facebook’s intent was, from my perspective, it has backfired on them completely,” he says. “I’m giving them less money and getting better engagement on their platform. It’s been a win-win.”

上一次绝地俄国巨魔研究表明，我们仍然不知道如何在网上解释语言

本周早些时候，包括《边缘》杂志在内的多家媒体报道了一项研究，声称俄罗斯巨魔农场是引发最后一位绝地周围紧张局势的罪魁祸首。比扬·斯蒂芬和阿迪·罗伯逊再次访问了这项研究，并与作者交谈。它根本经不起审查：

The paper doesn’t indicate an explicitly coordinated campaign to create an artificial political dispute. It suggests that a lot of real, individual humans decided to express genuinely held political views about a movie that they didn’t care much about. But the structure of the study also establishes these two categories as part of a single phenomenon of “deliberate, organized political influence measures,” or as the paper title puts it, “social media manipulation.” That’s a much more sweeping suggestion.

在别处

揭发剑桥分析公司丑闻的记者威胁要取消第四频道的新闻，并要求他们交出消息来源

卡罗尔·卡德瓦拉德因在今年早些时候震惊Facebook的《剑桥分析》报道而声名鹊起。但在幕后，她向与她共事的记者发出了法律威胁。马克·迪斯特法诺的荒诞故事。

在阿富汗伪造Facebook个人资料和约会

Maija Liuhto有一个关于阿富汗年轻人如何在Facebook上约会的迷人故事(也不是通过使用Facebook约会。）

Until recently, dating was almost nonexistent in Afghanistan, because of religious and cultural norms that prohibit relati***hips before marriage. Communication was difficult too: During Taliban rule, people had to cross the border into Pakistan to make an international phone call (domestic calls weren’t easy either). Today, with the arrival of cheap **artphones and affordable mobile internet—about 90 percent of Afghanistan’s population has access to a cellphone—even the poorest people can get on Facebook. Althoughpremarital relati***hips are still taboo, social media have provided the younger generation with a covert means of online dating.

“Boys usually use this technique to get closer to the girls they like,” says Naweed, an 18-year-old male student in Kabul who had a fake female Facebook profile for more than a year. (He asked to be identified by only his first name, because his family would not approve of him dating.) “I was talking to girls for fun, and I enjoyed it a lot.” Many men first try to friend their crushes using their real profile; if this fails, they resort to creating a fake account.

青少年对2015年怀旧不已，他们正在Instagram上**这方面的迷因

毫无疑问，这是特朗普总统任期内最奇怪的影响之一：极端的短期怀旧。Julia Reinstein的有趣故事：

Yes, 2015 was not that long ago. But most of these memers are teenage girls currently in high school. These were their formative preteen years.

A teen who runs the account @glos**erry told BuzzFeed News she thinks 2015 nostalgia has gotten big “because it is a relatable time for everyone” and “it’s not so far away that people don’t remember it.”

发射

Facebook Lite在土耳其推出iOS版

这些流行应用的精简版本在过去几年中变得越来越流行，但通常只在Android上可用(它们是为使用老式**的低收入人群而设计的。）但它们通常吸引那些喜欢轻量级应用程序的超级用户，而这些应用程序不会因功能膨胀而负担过重——这意味着iOS用户。Facebook目前正在土耳其测试自己的“lite”应用程序的iOS版本(还有谁认为把这个应用称为节食（Facebook）会很有趣吗？）

拿

介绍互联网权利法案

卡拉·斯威谢尔与南希·佩洛西就民主党人计划在夺回国会的情况下对互联网进行监管一事进行了交谈：

The first principle, for example, covers an issue that seems dead obvious and should have been enshrined in law back in the early 2000s: The right “to have access to and knowledge of all collection and uses of personal data by companies.” (Some companies voluntarily follow this rule already, as well as a few of the following, but none are required by federal law.)

The second says c***umers should have to give their permission — an “opt in” rather than “opt out” system — before their data can be collected and shared with third parties. I like to call it the anti-Cambridge Analytica rule.

最后。。。

品特瑞斯特的爸爸们

今天的社交媒体英雄是Neil Haldar，他是我最喜欢的新人群中的一员：Pinterest dads：

Neil Haldar, a divorced dad of a 15-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter, says the social network has been an invaluable parenting aid, especially since he lives in the Bay Area and his kids live in Bozeman, Montana, with their mom. When he visits them about once a month, he looks up recipes and projects on Pinterest that they can do together — from dinosaur-themed dioramas, to dry-ice volcanos, to no-bake key lime pies. He says it’s also been useful for travel planning and finding kid-friendly attracti***.

“I don’t have a guy friend where I can pick up the phone and be like, ‘Hey man, do happen to have an awesome recipe for a no-bake key lime pie?’” Haldar says. “So Pinterest has become my go-to in terms of what’s trending. Now, I have a place to go where I can search and get answers to questi*** that I feel like I’m a little behind on. That makes me a better dad.”

为好爸爸们干杯，为那些品脱癖的爸爸们干杯。

祝你周末愉快。

跟我说

向我发送提示、评论、问题和周末计划：[email protected].