In the dawning days of the millennium, a great harvest was promised. A new class of young revolutionists, who saw the world as not yet living up to its grandeur and thus felt the duty to order it in their vision, vowed a season of abundance and grand prosperity.
新千年曙光初现，前途美妙。新一批年轻的革命者，认为世界难堪其伟大，感觉有义务按照其愿景对之加以改造，他们号称要迎来富饶和伟大繁荣的时代。
Among these strivers was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose pursuit—equal parts singular, noble, and naive—was to rewire communication. Beset by a pioneer spirit, Zuckerberg sculpted ambition into reality, upending the way we document, exchange, and consume information. In doing so, he has in part revolutionized the capacity of human potential. But just as a harvest rewards, so will it forsake. What has since transpired from those early moments of millennial innocence is as tragic as it was inevitable. The cost of utopia, we are now seeing, may be too high.
其中的奋斗者之一就是脸书首席执行官马克·扎克伯格，他追求重建交流，这非凡、高尚，却也幼稚。满怀开拓者精神，扎克伯格把雄心壮志付诸实践，颠覆了我们保存、传送和消费信息的方式。他在部分程度上让人类潜能发生了革命性变化。但有得必有失。新千年早期的天真想法，最后证明是悲剧性的，也难以避免。乌托邦的代价，我们现在正在亲历，而且可能难以承受。
I won’t recount Facebook’s indiscretions here—many of my WIRED colleges have mapped the chaos since news first broke that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica mined personal data from 87 million users across the social network—but it is helpful to understand the extent of the carnage.
我不想复述脸书的轻率之举，政治咨询公司剑桥分析通过社交媒体挖掘了8700万用户的个人数据，这一新闻爆出后，我的许多《连线》同事已经详述了种种糟糕，可理解这场数据大屠杀的深度是有好处的。
That Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis firm that worked on President Trump’s 2016 campaign, likely used that data to target voters and shape history, exposes one of the cracks of the Great Utopian Project: Innovation is only as good as the spirit of the people who brandish it.
为特朗普总统2016年大选工作的数据分析公司剑桥分析可能用那些数据改造选民、塑造历史，并暴露出这个大型乌托邦工程的罅隙：创新好坏要看创新者。
The problems, though, are bigger than one platform. Connectivity, as it’s been digitally reshaped in the form of email and social media, is now polluted with all manner of contagions. We’ve gained a lot, but what we’ve lost—trust and empathy, possibly the right to an honest democratic process—registers with even greater consequence.
问题不只是一个平台的事。被电子邮件和社交媒体等数字化工具重塑的互联互通，现在正被各种脏东西所污。我们从中获益良多，但也失去了信任感和同理心，可能还失去了诚实参与民主程序的权利，带来的后果甚至更为糟糕。
The online outbreak that followed the Cambridge Analytica breach was marked by an anti-Facebook campaign steered on Twitter, with tech luminaries like WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton imploring users to #DeleteFacebook.
剑桥分析滥用数据爆出后，互联网一片哗然，值得注意的是推特主导的反脸书运动，WhatsApp共同创始人布莱恩·阿克顿等技术界名人劝说用户#删除脸书。
“When you put people’s precious photos and private personal data on the auction block behind their backs every day, you’re not going to be a king for long,” the actor James Woods tweeted Monday. Ever the dramatist, he punctuated his sentiment with #WeaselZuckerberg.
“你每天偷偷把人们宝贵的照片和私人数据拿出来拍卖，你不会一直称王称霸，”演员詹姆斯·伍兹周一发推文说。曾经是剧作家的他用“鼬鼠扎克伯格”来表达自己的情感。
Sometime around 2009, during my first year of graduate school, I decided I’d been spending a dangerous amount of time on Facebook and deleted my account. The sweet, wild suck of social media was becoming too much of a distraction to the attention my course load demanded. In the decade since I’ve roamed the internet’s ignitable terrain; I traded one craving for another.
大概是2009年，我研究生第一年，就决定删除脸书账号，因为过去我把大量时间浪费在脸书上了。社交媒体甜蜜且野性的诱惑让我分心，无法集中注意力完成课业。过去十年，我在互联网波涛汹涌的领海里冲浪，用一种渴望换来了另一种。
Akin to Facebook, the early days of Twitter and Instagram were defined by moments of community and what felt like idyllic uplift. Dewy-eyed photos and memes and harmless flirtation; a constant pulse of genuine interaction. What we now know is what we’ve always known, that a harvest rots if not properly tended to. In time, users transformed Twitter into a locus of quarrel and toxicity. The site was not without value; it operated as a podium for activism and became perhaps our generation’s most preeminent cultural engine.
与脸书差不多，推特和Instagram在早期，交互性也很强，让人感觉喝了一碗鸡汤。天真无邪的照片和调调，无害的挑逗，不断跳跃着彼此间的真诚互动。现在看来，和以前的经验一样，如果处理不当，大丰收就会腐烂变质。后来，用户让推特成为争论话题的中心，网站总是带着价值观，成为激进主义的舞台，可能是我们这一代人最卓越的文化引擎。
But its evils persisted. Hate speech infected timelines, abusive behavior was ignored by site regulators, and outside agents used the app to foster terrorism. Instagram, too, transformed from a Garden of Eden into a home for fake news and Russian trolls with an appetite for anarchy. Through most of these fires, large and small, the tenor among the platforms’ leaders echoed with a startling harmony of indifference.
但邪恶依旧。憎恨性言论污染着时间线，网站监管者无视辱骂行为，外部势力用软件煽动恐怖主义。Instagram也从伊甸园转型为假新闻和俄国煽动言辞的家园，偏爱着混乱。这些大大小小的火星表明，平台领导者的主张与令人惊诧的漠然合拍。
Just how much faith should we put in digital ecosystems that, as we've witnessed in the past, will at some point forsake us? As it stands, what we’ve lost continues to amass. Users are rapidly jettisoning their faith in Facebook, and if it turns out the social network helped to erode democracy in the blazing light of day, what then?
我们该在多大程度上信任将在未来某时抛弃我们的数字生态系统，正如我们过去看到的那样？照现在看，我们失去的东西还会增加。用户在脸书上迅速抛弃了信仰，假设社交媒体推动在光天化日下腐蚀民主，接下来还会发生什么呢？
Consider this too: If our data is all we are—online, at least—such unbridled conection to social media platforms is a kind of tyranny. It’s a relationship where power is distributed menacingly and unequally, where personal information is ammunition. Networks that once granted control now rip people of it.
再想想这一点：如果我们的数据全然就是互联网上的东西，这种与社交媒体平台毫无保留的接触就是一种暴政。在这种关系中，权力险恶且不平等地被分配，个人信息成了弹药。那些曾经赋予人们控制权的网络现在剥夺了人们的控制权。
This week, Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress. It’s his first appearance on Capitol Hill, and he’ll be using at least part of it to tell lawmakers Facebook has already taken steps to correct its afflictions. Sitting before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Tuesday, he told legislators that the company has started fact-checking photos and videos as a part of a larger plan to prevent abuse and propaganda. He shared how engineers are working to scrub pages from the Russia-based Internet Research Agency from Facebook and Instagram. He spoke about security and audits, about 'giving people control,' about 'enabling innovation.' He showed contrition and looked genuinely uneasy in the spotlight.
上周，扎克伯格在国会作证。这是他第一次在国会山露面，他至少会借机对立法者说，脸书已经采取措施纠正造成的损害。周二坐在众议院能源和商业委员会，他对议员说，公司开始核对照片和视频，这是避免滥用和宣传计划的一部分工作。他分享了工程师如何才把俄国互联网研究机构从脸书和Instagram上删除。他谈到安全和审查，“给人们控制权”和“确保创新”。他深感懊悔，在聚光当下也显得很不自在。
'Facebook is an idealistic and optimistic company. For most of our existence, we focused on all the good that connecting people can bring,' Zuckerberg said in his opening remarks. 'But it’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake.'
“脸书是秉承理想主义和乐观主义的公司，我们成立公司，本质上专注于将人们连接起来能够带来的全部好处，”扎克伯格在开场白中说。“但如今显然，我们在防止这些工具作恶方面做得还不够。其中包括假新闻，外国势力干预选举，憎恨性言论和开发者及数据隐私。我们没有在更高水平上思考我们的责任，这是个很大的错误。”
That is all good and well, but it won’t be enough. As Apple CEO Tim Cook said, we can no longer trust Zuckerberg to fix these problems alone. There’s that word again—trust. It’s such a fragile and slippery thing. So easily broken.
说得不错，但还不够。正如苹果首席执行官蒂姆·库克所言，我们不再相信扎克伯格自己能解决这些问题了。还是那两个字，信任。这是如此脆弱和易逝的东西，很容易破碎。
Because even if Facebook figures out a way to heal and grow back, to erect better safeguards, to essentially replenish the harvest, how can we trust that the land shouldn’t just be left fallow? How can we trust that our personal data won’t again be used as a bullet against us?
因为即便脸书找到办法修补恢复，提供更好的保护，重获了丰收，我们怎么能相信土地不会仅仅被撂荒呢？我们如何相信我们的个人数据不会再次被用于射向我们自己的子弹呢？
Despite taking hold in our lives with damaging regularity, the architecture of loss is never quite the same. It’s why what happens now, how Zuckerberg responds, and how we respond to him, will be the true test of human ingenuity—a reminder that though innovation remains prey to the perversions of human immorality, it does not have to succumb to it.
就算用受损的规则保住了生活，破损的建筑再也无法恢复如初。这也是为何现在发生的事，扎克伯格的应对方式以及我们如何看待他，构成对人类创造力的真正考验，提醒人们不要忘记，尽管创新依然受害于人类无德的种种堕落做法，它并非必须屈服于后者。
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