Russian meddling is only one challenge facing the social-media giant

Young Americans are using it less, costs are soaring and regulation looms

Feb 24th 2018?| SAN FRANCISCO

IN ITS early days Facebook embraced the motto “move fast and break things” to describe its engineers’ strategy of rapid innovation.?“Move slowly, and try not to break anything else”?seems to be its new creed. In the last year Facebook has contended with several controversies, including charges that it helped spread false news,?unwittingly?facilitated Russian meddling in the 2016 election and fanned political polarisation (see Briefing). After denials of responsibility and little action, Mark Zuckerberg, its boss, has talked of “fixing” Facebook in 2018. It will be a huge task.

Russia’s alleged manipulation of Facebook users will harm the company. On February 16th special counsel Robert Mueller filed conspiracy and fraud charges against 13 Russians for interfering in America’s 2016 election; Facebook was mentioned no fewer than 35 times as a place where Russian?trolls?swayed Americans through targeted political advertising and?curated?posts.

unwitting: not aware of what is really happening

troll: a person who tries to cause problems on an internet message board by posting messages that cause other people to argue, become angry, etc.

Facebook 以前的格言是“打破規(guī)則，快速前進(jìn)”， 但自從卷入2016競(jìng)選門后，現(xiàn)在的格言是“ 緩慢發(fā)展，不觸犯任何法律法規(guī)”

The?indictment?is also evidence that Facebook was not transparent in reporting the extent of activities that occurred on its platform. Last autumn it said it had determined Russian content reached around 130m Americans, and that Russian trolls had spent a mere $100,000 on ads during the 2016 election. Those figures seem too low. The Russian troll farm described in Mr Mueller’s indictment probably had an annual budget of around $70m and would have spent heavily on Facebook ads and content. American politicians may press the social-media firm for more information and also haul executives before Congress again to give testimony, especially as concerns mount about foreign interference in upcoming elections in 2018 and 2020—big distractions for a firm contending with several other significant challenges.

Controversies around Russian meddling, fake news and hateful speech on social media have not yet?dented?Facebook’s advertising revenues. But it seems likely that shrill and angry posts on the site, and bad press about social media, are playing a part in chilling usage of the core Facebook platform. Mr Zuckerberg’s approach to fixing it has been to tweak what posts users see, prioritising “meaningful interaction” over “meaningful content”, which has resulted in people seeing more of their friends’ updates and fewer news stories. But that does not go nearly far enough, says John Battelle of NewCo, a digital publisher.

indictment: an official written statement charging a person with a crime

Facebook宣稱俄羅斯那邊花了10萬廣告費(fèi)，1300萬美國(guó)人受到了這些2016大選廣告內(nèi)容的影響，但政府那邊的調(diào)查顯示，俄羅斯的干預(yù)競(jìng)選經(jīng)費(fèi)是7千萬，大部分花在了Facebook的廣告上！

Last month when Facebook reported earnings, it announced a decline in daily active users in America and Canada for the first time and estimated that, globally, users were spending around 50m fewer hours per day on Facebook. Such a drop translates into users worldwide spending around 15% less time on Facebook year over year, reckons Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group, an equity-research firm.

In America, Facebook is steadily losing users under the age of 25 (see chart). Youngsters are spending more time on other apps such as Snapchat, and Facebook-owned photo-sharing app Instagram, where their parents and grandparents are less likely to?lurk. While Instagram and the two messaging apps that Facebook owns, Messenger and WhatsApp, help?insulate?the firm, “core” Facebook still accounts for at least 85% of the firm’s revenue. Americans and Canadians are by far its most valuable audience, with an average revenue per user of $86, four times more than the global average. If users continue to engage less with Facebook’s core network, it could cause advertisers to leave over time.

lurk: [ computers] to read messages written by other people on the internet in a newsgroup, chat room, etc, without writing any messages yourself

Facebook 公布了去年的營(yíng)收?qǐng)?bào)告中顯示美國(guó)和加拿大的日均活躍用戶首次下降，而且全球花在這個(gè)app上的時(shí)間也減少了15%。如果用戶花在這個(gè)app上的時(shí)間持續(xù)減少，那么廣告投放商就會(huì)陸續(xù)離開！

Yet most analysts and investors are still?exuberant?about future prospects for Facebook, which with a market value of $521bn is the world’s sixth biggest publicly traded firm.?They may be underestimating some of the risks the firm faces.?One challenge, which has been highlighted by the Russia controversy, is its?sloppiness. For a company whose sales pitch to advertisers is that it offers precision, targeting and transparency superior to traditional media, including television, it is remarkable that it has struggled to track the movement of ad dollars and content on its properties.

Either its algorithms have become so complex and opaque that executives have failed to keep up with them, or they have deliberately chosen to “slow walk” their audit of foreign spending on Facebook.?Neither explanation is flattering.?The company this summer will introduce a feature to allow users to see who is behind a political ad and also to view every ad a particular buyer has purchased. But that is around nine months after it was proposed.

exuberant: very lively, happy, or energetic: filled with energy and enthusiasm

sloppy: not careful or neat: showing a lack of care, attention, or effort

sloppiness

分析家和投資者都對(duì)Facebook的前景有信心，但他們可能忽視了它面臨的幾個(gè)挑戰(zhàn)！第一個(gè)就是競(jìng)選門顯現(xiàn)出來的不夠謹(jǐn)慎細(xì)致，它宣傳它的廣告比傳統(tǒng)媒體更精準(zhǔn)的，透明的，但它很難監(jiān)測(cè)到它的內(nèi)容是否合乎規(guī)范...

A second challenge is?that Facebook’s costs are growing significantly. In 2018 expenses are expected to rise by around half, to $23bn, while gross revenue will grow by about a third, to $54bn, according to BMO Capital Markets, an investment bank. Today Facebook has around 14,000 workers overseeing security, safety, compliance and community operations, twice as many as a year earlier, and that figure is likely to rise as more countries require it to find and remove?objectionable?content.

Facebook is banking that future growth will come from luring more advertising spending away from television, but this will require investment in video content to the tune of billions of dollars.?Meanwhile growth rates for digital advertising are bound to slow. This is particularly true in America, where digital’s share of total ad spending—which today stands at 44%—outstrips?the percentage of time people spend on digital versus traditional media.

outstrip: to do better than someone or something

第二個(gè)挑戰(zhàn)是Facebook的成本在不斷地上漲，它請(qǐng)了更多的員工來監(jiān)測(cè)安全和社區(qū)維護(hù)，因?yàn)橛懈嗟牟缓虾跻?guī)則的內(nèi)容要?jiǎng)h除...

A third risk, and the?biggest,?is?new?regulation.?Politicians have hardened their attitudes toward Facebook. It has swallowed up smaller rivals and has few friends among the political elite.Regulators could?scuttle?new deals, impose new restrictions on data-sharing between Facebook’s various apps, or fine it for anticompetitive behaviour and privacy violations. This is especially likely in Europe, but even at home watchdogs may get fiercer.

In the meantime Facebook will have to?grapple?with regulations that limit its ability to track consumers. In May a new data privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, comes into effect in Europe requiring firms to gain explicit consent from users to follow them around the web and share their information.?The regulation could slow growth in digital advertising in Europe overall.?It could also threaten some of Facebook’s ad products, such as a tool that lets advertisers find their own customers on the social network.

第三個(gè)挑戰(zhàn)也是最大的問題，就是新的法規(guī)要求！政府會(huì)要求它公開分享數(shù)據(jù)，不能一家獨(dú)大壟斷啦，還有違反了隱私條例等等...

scuttle: to cause something to end or fail

grapple: to try to solve a problem: to deal with a problem

Facebook has faced?adversity?before. Many doubted if Mr Zuckerberg could even build a business early on, and then whether he could manage the transition from desktop computers to mobile phones. He proved the?naysayers?wrong.

These days analysts and investors appear to have suspended doubts about his company. Support from the market may offer reassurance. Facebook’s shares have fallen by only 8% from their peak at the start of February. But too many cheerleaders will not help it confront its biggest challenge, that of reinventing its core product, and repairing its reputation.

adversity: a difficult situation or condition

naysayer: a person who says something will not work or is not possible

Facebook 以前也面臨過很多困難，一開始別人不相信扎克伯格能把它發(fā)展起來，后來別人質(zhì)疑他能不能使公司從電腦過渡到手機(jī)，他都一一證明了那些人是錯(cuò)誤的！但這次能不能走出困境，就看它能不能成功改造它的核心產(chǎn)品和修復(fù)受損的名聲！

總結(jié)：社交平臺(tái)軟件真是斗地你死我活，創(chuàng)業(yè)是九死一生的活，每一步走過的路都算數(shù)！

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Lexile?Measure: 1300L - 1400L

Mean Sentence Length: 21.50

Mean Log Word Frequency: 3.10

Word Count: 1050

這篇文章的最后部分藍(lán)思值是在1300-1400L， 和英語專業(yè)八級(jí)閱讀難度差不多！

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