有时，整个技术新闻团都会**在推特上，花几个小时在推特上直播同一事件，然后写一系列博客文章，讲述什么都没发生。这一事件被称为国会听证会，今天我们见证了今年的最后一次听证会。

经过数月礼貌的推迟，桑达尔·皮猜终于在周二来到国会，在三个半小时的时间里，他尽可能少地说了些什么。众议院司法委员会（House Justicial Committee）的听证会是由我们立法者的普遍困惑所定义的，就像它之前的Facebook听证会一样。

例如，众议员佐伊·洛夫格伦（D-CA）提出了一个问题，问你为什么在谷歌搜索“**”时会出现唐纳德·特朗普的照片

News outlets reported on the Trump “idiot” results earlier this year. If you search the term now, in fact, you’ll mostly get pictures from stories explaining why it happened. It appeared to be the result of outside parties gaming Google’s search results, a well-known tactic known as “Google bombing.”

Trump isn’t the first president to get Google-bombed: in the mid-2000s, searches for “miserable failure” famously returned results about President George W. Bush. It can be a politicized (or just funny) extension of normal search engine optimization tactics. In this case, it’s convincing Google that a Trump picture is what most people want when they search for “idiot,” by upvoting or linking to posts with that combination of words and images.

就在那一刻，共和党众议员史蒂夫·金（R-IA）要求谷歌首席执行官皮切伊解释为什么他女儿的iPhone表现异常：

“我有一个七岁的孙女，她在选举期间拿起**，她正在玩一个小游戏，一个孩子会玩的那种游戏，”金告诉皮卡在那里突然出现了一张她祖父的照片。我不会在记录中说她祖父的照片周围使用了什么样的语言，但我想问你：在一个7岁的孩子的iPhone上，谁在玩儿童游戏，这是怎么表现出来的？”

阿迪·罗伯逊也对这一点表示了不满：

It’s not clear what King was referring to, but it’s possible his granddaughter’s iPhone (or possibly Android phone) was displaying a notification card about a news story. The language around his photo may forever remain a mystery, but during campaign season, there was no shortage of writers with strong feelings about King’s numerous racist and anti-immigrant statements, or his endorsement of a Canadian white nationalist mayoral candidate. In any case, during the hearing, King also suggested that Congress should check Google employees’ social media profiles to monitor their political leanings — so some confusing troubleshooting requests were probably the least of Pichai’s worries.

但在我们完全取消国会的资格之前，值得注意的是，他们确实试图弄清蜻蜓计划的情况。谷歌是否正在为中国建立一个经过审查的搜索引擎——这是许多内部异议的主题——还是没有？瑞安·加拉赫在拦截。

Pichai repeatedly insisted that Dragonfly was an “internal effort” and the Google currently had “no plans to launch a search service in China.” Asked to confirm that the company would not launch “a tool for surveillance and censorship in China,” Pichai declined to answer, instead saying that he was committed to “providing users with information, and so we always — we think it’s ideal to explore possibilities. … We’ll be very thoughtful, and we will engage widely as we make progress.”

Pichai’s claim that the company does not have a plan to launch the search engine in China contradicted a leaked transcript from a private meeting inside the company. In the transcript, the company’s search chief Ben Gomes discussed an aim to roll out the service between January and April 2019. For Pichai’s statement to Congress to be truthful, there is only one possibility: that the company has put the brakes on Dragonfly since The Intercept first exposed the project in August.

尽管立法者努力跟进，但他们没有取得多少新进展(尽管在接受《*****》的后续采访时，Pichai似乎暗示蜻蜓计划最终可能会成为搜索以外的东西：“我们能在中国的教育和医疗等领域探索和服务用户吗？”他说我们最终可能不会进行搜索。我们试图了解一个市场。”）

为什么记者们今天在Pichai的运气比国会好？在我看来，希拉·奥维德（Shira Ovide）指责这些听证会的奇怪结构，使证人有最大的机会逃避审讯：

Pichai repeatedly fell back to saying that this China project is “exploratory” and that Google will be transparent if it moves ahead. That’s not a good enough answer. He needs to say how many employees are working on this project, what Google’s criteria are for returning web search to China and whether Google will build tools that will enable the Chinese government to surveil its own citizens without their knowledge.

To be clear, I don’t want to repeat the false idea that members of Congress are old luddites who aren’t able or willing to understand how tech companies work. Some members of Congress asked great questi*** on Tuesday. Some of them did not. This format, however, does not feel like a good way to decide public policy. 1 The thorny topic of the power of big technology companies deserves much better than this from all sides.

什么会有帮助？具有基本平台素养的立法者；预测科技CEO们为他们准备的非答案；编写更深入的后续问题；与其他代表协调攻击途径。立法者也可能试图与首席执行官讨论他们提出的解决方案——将真正的政策问题摆到桌面上，而不是简单的以抓住机会为导向的配音。

就科技公司首席执行官而言，他们可以更好地回答立法者提出的问题的精神，即使这些立法者在细节上弄错了。一位立法者所关心的事情通常是显而易见的，即使他们是如何被引导得出他们常常离奇和阴谋的结论的还不完全清楚。例如，Pichai本可以花更多的时间来讨论为什么谷歌有强大的经济动机来保持搜索结果不受政治偏见的影响，而不是一次又一次地简单地断言它是这样做的。

也许明年吧。

民主

塔斯社报道，俄罗斯因谷歌不遵守搜索结果法而对其处以罚款

据路透社报道，俄罗斯对谷歌的罚款可能是有史以来最低的

Russia fined Google 500,000 roubles ($7,530) on Tuesday for failing to comply with a legal requirement to remove certain entries from its search results, Russia’s communicati*** watchdog was quoted as saying by TASS news agency.

Russia said last month that it had opened a civil case against Google as it had not joined a state registry that lists banned websites that Moscow believes contain illegal information and was therefore not compliant with the law.

泄露的音频揭示了谷歌为讨好保守派所做的努力

尼塔莎·蒂库（Nitasha Tiku）获得了3月份泄露的音频，谷歌在其中描述了他们争取保守派的努力：

In February, The New York Times Magazine published a cover story urging regulators to break up Google because the company abuses its dominance in search to crush promising compe*****s. The next day, representatives from two c***ervative think tanks published blog posts defending Google and attacking the article’s call for antitrust enforcement. Both think tanks have received funding from Google. Both blog posts referenced studies by a professor who has received funding from Google. In one post, the study referenced was published in a quarterly journal owned by third think tank, which has also received funding from Google.

In a company-wide meeting a couple of weeks later, on March 1, Google’s public policy team described the blog posts as the fruit of Google’s efforts to build deeper relati***hips with c***ervatives, according to an audio recording of the meeting reviewed by WIRED. The recording of a contentious hour-long meeting offers a window into how Google thinks about its relati***hips in Washington, DC, its sensitivity to claims of political bias, and how executives explain to employees acti*** that some view as at odds with Google’s values.

政治推特、“信息战”和俄罗斯：虚假新闻争吵如何成为主流

关于反虚假信息智库的争吵是俄罗斯影响力运动的一部分吗？工党和外交部不同意

LinkedIn联合创始人在民主党的“生存威胁”中支持3500万美元的选民数据项目

LinkedIn联合创始人里德·霍夫曼（Reid Hoffman）计划花费3500万美元为民主党人建立一个最终选民数据库，这增加了建立LinkedIn带来一些好处的可能性：

With tens of milli*** of dollars at their disposal, the people behind Hoffman-backed project could eventually create their own voter file, making the Democratic Party’s file less valuable. That process, however, would likely take several years and would be nearly impossible to complete by the 2020 election.

As a result, DNC officials say the committee is open to collaborating with Hoffman, or perhaps joining forces with him.

在别处

尽管承诺清理“有问题”的视频，但仇恨阴谋在YouTube上依然猖獗

Craig Timberg、Elizabeth Dwoskin、Tony Romm和Andrew Ba Tran在内容类型上有一个新的条目，包括在YouTube上搜索可怕的东西，然后写下你发现的东西：

YouTube is particularly valuable to users of Gab.ai and 4chan, social media sites that are popular among hate groups but have scant video capacity of their own. Users on these sites link to YouTube more than to any other website, thousands of times a day, according to the recent work of Data and Society and the Network Contagion Research Institute, both of which track the spread of hate speech.

The platform routinely serves videos espousing neo-Nazi propaganda, phony reports portraying dark-skinned people as violent savages and c***piracy theories claiming that large numbers of leading politicians and celebrities molested children. Critics say that even though YouTube removes milli*** of videos on average each month, it is slow to identify troubling content and, when it does, is too permissive in what it allows to remain.

PewDiePie向可恨的反犹YouTube频道大喊

YouTube最受欢迎的创作者，被称为PewDiePie的人，有不良行为的历史。最近，他推广了一个以可恶内容著称的频道，朱莉娅·亚历山大报道：

E;R’s videos are disturbing. They often use the guise of film, anime, or cartoon critici** to convey anti-Semitic and hateful thoughts or imagery. This is particularly disturbing when linked to Kjellberg, who dealt with his own controversy after showing men holding up a sign reading “Death to All Jews” in 2017.

Facebook正在为其区块链团队招聘工程师和研究人员

加密货币目前的熊市是否让Facebook更容易或更难雇用区块链团队？如果你知道，请回复！

Facebook wants to add a data scientist, a data engineer, and a couple of software engineers to its growing blockchain team, according to its careers page (via SludgeFeed).

“The blockchain team is a startup within Facebook, with a vision to make blockchain technology work at Facebook scale,” the ads say. “It’s a **all, fast-growing, but talented group of people who are passionate about changing the world. “

在美国，社交媒体的新闻来源超过了纸质报纸

根据皮尤的最新数据，五分之一的美国人说他们“经常”通过社交媒体获得新闻，略高于16%的人说他们经常从报纸上获得新闻。Elisa采煤机：

Overall, television is still the most popular platform for news c***umption – even though its use has declined since 2016. News websites are the next most common source, followed by radio, and finally social media sites and print newspapers. And when looking at online news use combined – the percentage of Americans who get news often from either news websites or social media – the web has closed in on television as a source for news (43% of *****s get news often from news websites or social media, compared with 49% for television).

发射

Facebook打开布莱恩特公园弹出窗口，向用户传授隐私

我有一部分人想飞到纽约，亲身体验Facebook隐私弹出式信息亭的超现实的庄严。据尼古拉斯·维加报道，该活动将于周四在市中心举行：

“It’s been a tough year, and people have a lot of questi***,” Khaliah Barnes, a privacy and public policy manager at Facebook, told The Post. “We wanted to have the opportunity to connect with people face to face.”

Visitors to the kiosk, to be located next to Bryant Park’s Holiday Market, will be able to stop by without an appointment, speak with Facebook employees and drink free hot chocolate.

Facebook重新发布搜索广告以抵消收入放缓

据Josh Contine报道，Facebook正在恢复搜索广告：

The reintroduction of search ads could open an important new revenue stream at a time when Facebook’s revenue growth is quickly decelerating as it runs out of News Feed ad space, the Stories format that advertisers are still adapting is poised to overtake feed sharing on social apps and users shift their time elsewhere. In Q3 2018, revenue grew 33 percent year-over-year, but that’s far slower than the 49 percent YOY gain it had a year ago, and the 59 percent from Q3 2016. Opening up new ad inventory for search could reinvigorate the sagging revenue growth rate that, combined with Facebook’s privacy and security scandals, has put intense pressure on Facebook’s leaders Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

Instagram正在测试Creator账户中的知名影响者

Instagram正在推出“Creator Accounts”，为知名用户提供额外的控制和分析功能。

拿

删除所有应用程序

在《****》关于应用程序开发人员如何使用和滥用位置历史数据的报道之后，Jason Koebler建议是时候删除我们所有的应用程序了。大胆的

This problem is getting worse, not better: Facebook made WhatsApp, an app that managed to be profitable with a $1 per year subscription fee, into a “free” service because it believed it could make more money with an advertising-based business model.

What this means is that the dominant business model on our **artphones is one that’s predicated on monetizing you, and only through paying obsessive attention to your app permissi*** and seeking paid alternatives can you hope to minimize these impacts on yourself. If this bothers you, your only opti*** are to get rid of your **artphone altogether or to rethink what apps you want installed on your phone and act accordingly.

与股票回购相比，Facebook的现金用途更好

Shira Ovide希望Facebook不打算花90亿美元购买自己的股票：

If I were making a short list, I would put on it hiring more moderators to do the terrible, laborious work of actively sniffing out hoaxes, election-related tampering and calls to violence on Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and other Facebook-owned hangouts. It might not hurt to increase investment on cybersecurity to do more to prevent foreign governments from using Facebook as a tool for propaganda or to prevent thieves from taking advantage of Facebook software loopholes to compromise accounts of tens of milli*** of people. Facebook could spend even more on policy wonks to shape and prepare for more heavy-handed regulation of tech companies. I could go on.

最后。。。

推特常常是一家公司不断自我打击的故事，在杰克·多尔西（Jack Dorsey）最近公开抨击他在缅甸的冥想静修后，这位首席执行官决定再进行几次自我打击。

我预测，如果多尔西由他相当能干的公关人员发布他计划中的推特，他完全可以避开缅甸门。相反，他被留下来解释推特在促进自由表达方面的观点……他的冥想爱好？我昨天说了，我要再说一遍：讨论**静修的最好方式是尽可能地静默。

跟我说

向我发送提示、评论、问题和国会证词：[email protected].