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“打破规则，快速前进”， 但自从卷入2016竞选门后，现在的格言是“ 缓慢发展，不触犯任何法律法规”
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宣称俄罗斯那边花了10万广告费，1300万美国人受到了这些2016大选广告内容的影响，但政府那边的调查显示，俄罗斯的干预竞选经费是7千万，大部分花在了Facebook的广告上！
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 公布了去年的营收报告中显示美国和加拿大的日均活跃用户首次下降，而且全球花在这个app上的时间也减少了15%。如果用户花在这个app上的时间持续减少，那么广告投放商就会陆续离开！
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
分析家和投资者都对Facebook的前景有信心，但他们可能忽视了它面临的几个挑战！第一个就是竞选门显现出来的不够谨慎细致，它宣传它的广告比传统媒体更精准的，透明的，但它很难监测到它的内容是否合乎规范...
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
第二个挑战是Facebook的成本在不断地上涨，它请了更多的员工来监测安全和社区维护，因为有更多的不合乎规则的内容要删除...
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.
第三个挑战也是最大的问题，就是新的法规要求！政府会要求它公开分享数据，不能一家独大垄断啦，还有违反了隐私条例等等...
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 以前也面临过很多困难，一开始别人不相信扎克伯格能把它发展起来，后来别人质疑他能不能使公司从电脑过渡到手机，他都一一证明了那些人是错误的！但这次能不能走出困境，就看它能不能成功改造它的核心产品和修复受损的名声！
总结：社交平台软件真是斗地你死我活，创业是九死一生的活，每一步走过的路都算数！
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Lexile®Measure: 1300L - 1400L
Mean Sentence Length: 21.50
Mean Log Word Frequency: 3.10
Word Count: 1050
这篇文章的最后部分蓝思值是在1300-1400L， 和英语专业八级阅读难度差不多！
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