晚上好，新年快乐！对于数以百计的你谁注册的休息，谢谢你，欢迎来到界面。我的目标是以便利的时事通讯形式，为您提供科技和**动荡时代最好的每日直播博客。如果过去几周有什么迹象的话，2019年我们将有很多事情要谈。

休息时你错过了什么？首先，对Facebook进行更多的审查。《****》发表了一系列报道，调查该公司对其与第三方的数据共享协议的监管历来松懈；其帮助**用户的有问题的努力；内容节制制度的政治影响；联邦贸易委员会不愿参与其中任何一项。

对一些记者和评论家来说，这篇报道为科技媒体多年来的乌托邦主义提供了必要的纠正。对于Facebook内外的其他人来说，但据报道包括马克·扎克伯格在内，这感觉有些过分了。对我来说，《****》在这段时间里最能引起共鸣的故事是对数据共享实践的调查——我做了一份关于它的奖金通讯，你可以在这里找到。

还有什么？

Facebook的股价在过去一个季度急剧下跌，扎克伯格因此停止**其股票。谢丽尔·桑德伯格（Sheryl Sandberg）给Salesforce首席执行官马克·贝尼奥夫（Marc Benioff）打电话，告诉他，如果他只阅读她办公室将寄给他的一些材料，他就会改变对Facebook对世界不利的看法。贝尼奥夫声称这些材料从未到达，这似乎是荒谬的。

参议院情报委员会委托撰写的一份报告发现，Instagram在2016年俄罗斯的信息运营中所起的作用比之前所知的要大得多，BuzzFeed在2018年对Facebook上的错误信息进行的分析发现，前50名虚假帖子的参与度仅略低于去年的前50名，也高于2016年的前50名。

对今年社交网络的预测总体上倾向于负面。《卫报》向一系列人询问扎克伯格今年的大项目应该是什么，他们的意见从“他可能应该辞职”到“他肯定应该辞职”。看看反社会媒体作家西瓦·维亚纳坦（Siva Vaidhyanathan）的伟大自尊心，他写道：

Zuckerberg could take a two-year sabbatical from Facebook, enroll at the University of Virginia, and finish his bachelor’s degree under my direction. That would serve him — and his company and all its users — better than just about anything else he could do.

作为一个严肃的提议，我觉得外禅宗的想法很可笑——但我确实认为它作为情景喜剧的前提是有道理的。

Instagram测试了水平进给，引起了瞬间恐慌。****（Amnesty International）——或者说是最明显的杂志——宣布**在Twitter上面临严重虐待。在YouTube上，明星们推广了一种可疑的赌博形式，这是他们所做的最糟糕的事情，直到几天后，他们戴上了眼罩，参加了一场极其糟糕的鸟箱挑战赛。

更多的链接吸引了我的眼球，请继续阅读。首先，我想谈谈里德·霍夫曼。

伯明翰项目

关于俄罗斯干预2016年美国总统选举，有两种基本的思考方式。其一是，误报运动是社交网络天真造成的历史反常现象，通过增加技术安全人员、人工智能和**干预，可以防止这种现象再次发生。另一方面，2016***件暴露了社交平台的脆弱性，这些脆弱性是如此根本，以至于无法有效遏制——这为任何希望左右政治的利益相关方留下了机会。

在伯明翰计划中，我们有令人信服的证据支持后一种观点。一个致力于支持民主党和进步事业的团体联盟被抓到在Facebook上使用俄罗斯式的信息操作。LinkedIn联合创始人里德·霍夫曼（Reid Hoffman）提供了部分资金，现已发现这些业务发生在阿拉巴马州、德克萨斯州和田纳西州。尽管似乎没有人认为这些行动在2018年中期选举中起到了决定性作用，但它们导致人们对社交网络作为诚实政治讨论平台的信任度普遍下降。

Scott Shane和Alan Blinder描述了12月19日在阿拉巴马州发现的第一组手术：

The project’s operators created a Facebook page on which they posed as c***ervative Alabamians, using it to try to divide Republicans and even to endorse a write-in candidate to draw votes from Mr. Moore. It involved a scheme to link the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts that suddenly began following the Republican candidate on Twitter, a development that drew national media attention.

“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the report says.

这一切的幕后黑手是谁？参与的每个人都试图与工作保持距离。《*****》做了一项英勇的工作，试图对参与其中的各种捐助者、非营利组织、研究人员和网络安全公司进行分类。霍夫曼说，他不知道他资助的团体将使用俄罗斯式的策略，并为他的疏忽道歉。大多数参与调查的人都说是这场运动的负责人——网络安全公司New Knowledge——发誓说不是。

无论如何，有人在撒谎(到目前为止，Facebook已经暂停了五个用户帐户，其中包括新知识首席执行官乔纳森·摩根（Jonathon Morgan）

但要强调的只是《****》文章中的一点：这里的一个策略是让数千名明显的俄罗斯机器人跟随共和党候选人罗伊·摩尔（Roy Moore），从而产生媒体报道，表明摩尔是俄罗斯人青睐的候选人，而俄罗斯可能正在努力促进他的候选人资格。

这是一场令人头晕目眩的信息战——一场合法的假旗子行动。这只是一个开始。组织者还致力于推动另一位共和党候选人以书面形式参选，希望此举能吸引摩尔的选票。

在另一项努力中，他们为“干燥的阿拉巴马州”**了一场假运动，试图将摩尔与恢复禁令联系起来。在今天的后续报道中，Shane和Blinder采访了后者的一位组织者：

Matt O**orne, a veteran progressive activist who worked on the project, said he hoped that such deceptive tactics would someday be banned from American politics. But in the meantime, he said, he believes that Republicans are using such trickery and that Democrats cannot unilaterally give it up.

“If you don’t do it, you’re fighting with one hand tied behind your back,” said Mr. O**orne, a writer and c***ultant who lives outside Florence, Ala. “You have a moral imperative to do this — to do whatever it takes.”

在其他地方，德克萨斯州和田纳西州的竞选活动利用误导性的网页，试图在无党派议题上扩大受众，然后让他们充斥着政治内容，以此来削弱共和党人，促进民主党人。这是托尼·罗姆、伊丽莎白·德沃斯金和克雷格·廷伯格：

Some of News for Democracy’s pages inserted Democratic messages into the feeds of right-leaning voters, according to a review of Facebook’s ad archive. News for Democracy ran ads touting Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke on “The Holy Tribune,” a Facebook page targeted to evangelicals, the archive shows. Another page called “Sounds like Tennessee” focused on local sports and news, but also ran at least one ad attacking since-elected GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn.

“People start to trust the content emanating from the page, because it appeals to their interests, and once there is a certain degree of trust, you can start to pivot by slowly adding in kernels of disinformation or overly-politicized information that lacks context,” said Benjamin T. Decker, research fellow at the Shorenstein Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, who called such tactics an “intentional act of deception,” that mimicked strategies of Russian operatives around the 2016 presidential election.

从这些努力对2018年选举产生影响的程度来看，影响似乎很小。但很明显，各政治派别现在都认为这些策略足够有效，足以保证投入大量资源。策略肯定会演变——奥斯本的目的中所体现的犬儒主义证明了手段语言表明这场战争将在2020年走向一些黑暗的新地方。

民主

Facebook和谷歌将向华盛顿支付45万美元，以解决有关政治广告透明度的诉讼

Facebook将不再接受华盛顿的政治广告，因为披露要求超出了该公司目前提供的范围。

在这场阻止亚马逊赢得五角大楼云计算合同的恶战中

内奥米·尼克斯（Naomi Nix）报道说，这些天来，在赢得五角大楼的一份大型合同时，涉及到暗中诽谤：

Allegati*** of a corrupt procurement process have been directed at Pentagon officials and company managers, primarily at Amazon.com Inc., the front-runner for the contract, which involves transitioning massive amounts of Defense Department data to a commercially operated cloud system. Microsoft Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Oracle Corp. are the biggest names jockeying against Amazon, though there’s no evidence they are behind the mudslinging.

在马文项目之后，五角大楼寻求人工智能技术人才

Zachary Fryer Biggs报道了谷歌放弃Maven项目后五角大楼的自我反省：

Inside the Pentagon, Google’s withdrawal brought a combination of frustration and distress— even anger — that has percolated ever since, according to five sources familiar with internal discussi*** on Maven, the military’s first big effort to utilize AI in warfare.

“We have stumbled unprepared into a contest over the strategic narrative,” said an internal Pentagon memo circulated to roughly 50 defense officials on June 28. The memo depicted a department caught flat-footed and newly at risk of alienating experts critical to the military’s artificial intelligence development plans.

今天的战争历史被写在Facebook和YouTube上。但是当它们被取下时会发生什么呢？

梅加·拉贾戈帕兰（Megha Rajagopalan）写到了取缔暴力内容和保存战争罪行证据之间的紧张关系：

The way investigators document human rights abuses is undergoing a fundamental shift. Once researchers depended heavily on diaries, physical records, and interviews with witnesses to atrocities that sometimes took place years after the fact. Now, investigators at international bodies like the United Nati*** and the ICC are also cataloguing and ****yzing milli*** of photos, posts, and videos from social media in an effort to hold human rights abusers accountable in court, working alongside nongovernmental organizati***, researchers, and digital detectives. Holding perpetrators of human rights abuses accountable, researchers say, increasingly depends on access to content posted on social media platforms.

But this shift in how war crimes are being investigated comes at the same time that social media companies are facing unprecedented critici** for failing to police their platforms, allowing neo-Nazis and other extremist groups to spread their messages online.

印度希望Facebook、谷歌、WhatsApp和Twitter等平台删除“非法”内容并破坏加密

在澳大利亚通过类似法律后，Pranav Dixit报道了一项在印度打破加密的举措：

India’s government wants to make it mandatory for platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Google to remove content it deems “unlawful” within 24 hours of notice, and create “automated tools” to “proactively identify and remove” such material.

It also wants tech companies to build in a way to trace the source of the content, which would require platforms like WhatsApp to break end-to-end encryption.

越南：Facebook如何被滥用来压制德国的批评者

记者无国界组织报道说，越南**成功地从一名活动家那里获得了职位，尽管他在德国。

“Our research shows that the Vietnamese government is apparently using digital space to suppress critical voices outside the country as well,” said RSF Germany’s Executive Director Christian Mihr. “Those resp***ible must end these attacks and respect press freedom.”

推特在中国：当局一次打击一个用户

Gerry Shih报道说，中国审查人员挨家挨户要求人们删除推文：

In Beijing and other cities across China, prominent Twitter users confirmed in interviews to The Washington Post that authorities are sharply escalating the Twitter crackdown. It suggests a wave of new and more aggressive tactics by state censors and cyber-watchers trying to control the Internet.

Twitter is banned in China — as are other non-Chinese sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. But they are accessed by workarounds such as a virtual private network, or VPN, which is software that bypasses state-imposed firewalls.

审查中国互联网，为了稳定和利润

谈到中国的审查制度，李元走进了中国的一家审查工厂：

Mr. Li works for Beyondsoft, a Beijing-based tech services company that, among other businesses, takes on the censorship burden for other companies. He works in its office in the city of Chengdu. In the heart of a high-tech industrial area, the space is bright and new enough that it resembles the offices of well-funded start-ups in tech centers like Beijing and Shenzhen. It recently moved to the space because customers complained that its previous office was too cramped to allow employees to do their best work.

“Missing one beat could cause a serious political mistake,” said Yang Xiao, head of Beyondsoft’s internet service business, including content reviewing.

LinkedIn审查了一位民主活动家在中国的个人资料，但随后表示这是一个错误

梅加·拉贾戈帕兰（Megha Rajagopalan）报道了一个不太可能的案例，其中LinkedIn成为了一个政治战场。乐趣2019年目标：禁止你的LinkedIn页面，但只在中国。

LinkedIn censored, and then quickly restored, the profile of a New York–based Chinese human rights activist on its Chinese platform after a wave of negative publicity.

Zhou Fengsuo, one of the founders of a nonprofit organization that aids political prisoners and other vulnerable groups in China, is best known as one of the student leaders of the pro-democracy protests at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, which ended in a bloody crackdown by the Chinese government. He was forced into exile in the United States over his role in the student movement, which landed him on a most-wanted list in China.

人工智能将如何重塑全球秩序

关于人工智能效应的争论主要有两个主题。一种是对奇点的恐惧，一种AI超越人类智能并逃避人类控制的事件，可能带来灾难性后果。另一种担忧是，新的工业革命将允许机器在世界的每一个或几乎每一个领域扰乱和取代人类

在别处

Facebook的孤独保守派占据了权力地位

迪帕·西塔拉曼（Deepa Seetharaman）介绍了乔尔·卡普兰（Joel Kaplan），他可能是Facebook上最具影响力的保守派声音：

This summer, Mr. Kaplan pushed to partner with right-wing news site The Daily Caller’s fact-checking division after c***ervatives accused Facebook of working only with mainstream publishers, people familiar with the discussi*** said. C***ervative critics argued those publicati*** had a built-in liberal bias.

Mr. Kaplan argued that The Daily Caller was accredited by the Poynter Institute, a St. Peter**urg, Fla.-based journali** nonprofit that oversees a network of fact-checkers. Other executives, including some in the Washington, D.C. office, argued that the publication printed misinformation. The contentious discussion involved Mr. Zuckerberg, who appeared to side with Mr. Kaplan, and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. The debate ended in November when The Daily Caller’s fact-checking operation lost its accreditation.

Facebook对你了解多少

Ina Fried努力收集Facebook收集的关于其用户的所有不同类型的数据。

Facebook与消费者隐私

这是2018年4月，在剑桥分析研究中心（Cambridge Analytica）的余波中，Creative Strategies发布的最新市场调查报告。除此之外，数据显示，近三分之一的受访者计划在未来减少使用Facebook。

为什么人们去Instagram查看评论部分

泰勒·洛伦兹（Taylor Lorenz）在Instagram评论部分报道说：

For years, comments on Instagram were secondary to the photo and video posts that make up the app’s main feed. But recently, Instagram comment secti*** have begun to eclipse the photos they sit below.

Over the past year and a half, the Instagram account @comment**ycelebs has ballooned to nearly 1 million followers by documenting celebrities’ most notable Instagram comments. It has spawned a network of copycat comment accounts, many of which have thousands of followers. Part of the rise in comment culture on Instagram is due to product changes made by the platform. In August 2017, Instagram added threaded comments, making it easier for people to have coherent conversati***. And in the spring of 2018, the company instituted an algorithm that surfaced noteworthy comments from celebrities, athletes, influencers, and verified accounts.

Instagram影响者欺诈事件曝光，品牌“浪费”数百万美元

有一份报告称，2017年11%的受赞助影响者帖子参与度来自假账户。

谷歌在Q&amp；应用程序

如果你想知道工程师的现行价格是否已经冷却下来的话，谷歌为一款我从未听说过的问答应用支付了“不到6000万美元”。

发射

消息人士称，Facebook正在为WhatsApp传输开发一种加密货币

Sarah Frier和Julie Verhage对Facebook的区块链部门有了一些很好的新细节：

Facebook Inc. is working on making a cryptocurrency that will let users transfer money on its WhatsApp messaging app, focusing first on the remittances market in India, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company is developing a stablecoin – a type of digital currency pegged to the U.S. dollar – to minimize volatility, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal plans. Facebook is far from releasing the coin, because it’s still working on the strategy, including a plan for custody assets, or regular currencies that would be held to protect the value of the stablecoin, the people said.

TikTok悄然推出的“Lite”应用程序自8月份以来下载量已超过1200万

TikTok怎么已经如此臃肿以至于需要一个精简版？

拿

记者的新年决心：少做技术决定论者

Daniel Funke告诉像我这样的作家，不要把所有出错的事情都归咎于科技：

It’s nearly impossible to determine whether or not a misinformation campaign directly affected an event, so there’s the question of accuracy. Second, blaming misinformation for acts of violence takes the burden off other actors, such as government and law enforcement, who have a primary resp***ibility to protect citizens. Third, it confers more legitimacy upon misinformers whose goal is often to get mainstream news coverage.

In 2019, when tech platforms will continue to play an outsized role in the fight over misinformation, we would do well to be less technodeterminist in our reporting.

透视：大科技违反反垄断法的原因

前助理司法部长萨莉·哈伯德（Sally Hubbard）表示，美国反垄断法应该更像欧洲的反垄断法——关注的不是价格，而是竞争：

The tech giants have “platform privilege” — the incentive and ability to prioritize their own goods and services over those of compe*****s that depend on their platforms. By doing so, they contend they are improving their products and benefiting customers. An entrepreneur can create a superior product or service and still get crushed because Big Tech is controlling the game and playing it, too.

This distorted playing field strikes at the heart of the American Dream. And it deprives c***umers of the choice, innovation and quality that comes from competition on the merits.

华盛顿必须清醒地认识到滥用软件导致死亡

Josh Rogan说，美国**应该监管极权主义者用来监视和控制其公民的技术：

Israel-based NSO Group is only one in a growing group of companies that has put powerful spyware tools previously available only to a few governments out on the open market. Its Pegasus software, according to human rights groups and independent investigators, has been used in as many as 45 countries, often by authoritarian leaders to aid the persecution of dissidents, journalists and other innocent civilians.

What hasn’t been previously reported is that NSO is working with a group of Washington-based c***ultants and law firms to craft its export and ethics policies, including Beacon Global Strategies, a c***ulting firm run by former top U.S. intelligence and national security officials. But if recent reports of alleged continued abuse of the software are true, the system NSO and its c***ultants have devised for preventing abuse is clearly failing.

不要再散布关于孩子们花时间打电话的谣言了

汤姆·奇弗斯说，我们不应该再为孩子和荧屏时间而发狂了：

The problem is that, while the headlines are really, really stark, the evidence is really, really weak. Those headlines, which one psychologist I spoke to described as “scaremongering”, are based on studies that show **all, ambiguous effects; they suggest that social media is the disease, when the research cannot show that it’s anything but a symptom; and almost all the studies are weak and badly designed, so even what little they do show we can’t take very seriously.

后记

这段时间最悲伤的故事也许是总部共同创始人兼首席执行官科林·克罗尔的突然去世。Kroll在创建两个社交平台的过程中扮演了重要角色——第一个是Vine，它被Twitter收购，至今仍是一种文化现象；第二个是琐事应用HQ，它是过去几年中唯一一个取得一定成功的模糊社交应用程序。我会想念他的。

最后。。。

日本亿万富翁向转发者提供免费金钱后，鸡块少年被驱逐，成为转发最多的人

也许你还记得卡特·威尔克森（Carter Wilkerson）的故事，他16岁时就有了在Wendy's发推特的好主意，问自己需要多少次转发才能获得一年的免费鸡块。温迪告诉他答案是1800万，但在他赚了几百万之后，他就让步了。

好吧，到今天为止，威尔克森的推特被降级为温迪的历史垃圾桶。把它拿走，哈姆扎·沙班：

The most retweeted tweet of all time now belongs to Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire behind the e-commerce company Zozotown. His message to the Twitterverse promised 100 winners a chance to win a piece of 100 million Japanese yen, or about $920,800, if they retweeted him.

Maezawa said his promotion on Twitter was a show of gratitude after Zozotown sold 10 billion yen worth of merchandise during its New Year’s sale. His message has been retweeted more than 5.6 million times. He said he would contact the winners through direct message.

为什么我没想到呢？

跟我说

向我发送有关阿拉巴马州的提示、评论、问题和虚假信息：[email protected].