应该通过《诚实广告法案》

If there was ever a piece of no-brainer legislation that should be passed by Congress, it is the Honest Ads Act put forward last week by US senators Amy Klobuchar, Mark Warner and John McCain. This bipartisan group is asking for online political advertising to be subject to the same rules of disclosure as ads on television, print, and radio. The idea is to make sure that foreign nations like Russia cannot use platforms such as Facebook, Google or Twitter to influence US elections, as they did in 2016.

如果说美国历史上有一部无需国会动脑就应该通过的立法，那就是上周美国参议员埃米•克罗布彻(Amy Klobuchar)、马克•华纳(Mark Warner)和约翰•麦凯恩(John McCain)提出的《诚实广告法案》(Honest Ads Act)。这个两党小组要求在线政治广告遵循与电视、印刷、广播广告同样的信息披露规则。其出发点是确保俄罗斯等外国无法像在2016年那样利用Facebook、谷歌(Google)或Twitter等平台影响美国大选。

The legislation is necessary for three reasons. First, it would even the playing field between platform companies and the rest of the media industry. This is long overdue. Google and Facebook together take roughly 85 per cent of all new digital advertising revenue. For years, they have come up with absurd excuses for why they should not be subject to the same rules as everyone else (online ads are too small to include disclaimers; it is too tough to figure out if ads are commercial or political, and so on).

这一立法是必要的，原因有三点。首先，这样做可以让网络平台公司与其他媒体之间的竞争环境变得公平。其实早该如此了。谷歌与Facebook两家拿走了全部新数字广告收入的约85%。对于他们为什么不应受制于与其他媒体一样的规则，多年来他们想出一些奇葩的借口(在线广告太小，无法包含免责声明;很难弄清楚一些广告是商业性质的还是政治性质的，等等)。

Their reasoning does not hold water. These businesses have traditionally been just fine using the smallest of small print on privacy policies, so it should not be too much trouble to do the same thing with political disclosures. And if it is too tough to figure out what is political, play it safe and disclose everything.

他们的理由站不住脚。这些企业一直在隐私政策上使用最小号字体，似乎也没什么问题，因此在政治披露方面做同样的事情应该不会太麻烦。而且，如果难以弄清楚什么是政治广告，那就稳妥一些，披露一切。

Of course they do not want to do that, because opacity is a key part of what political operatives are paying for. That is reason number two that this legislation should pass — it would go some way towards cleaning up dark money and influence in politics.

他们当然不想这样做，因为不透明正是政治操盘手要购买的东西。这是上述法案应该通过的第二项理由——它将在一定程度上清除政治中见不得人的资金和影响力。

Online advertising is hyper-targeted. That is the whole appeal. We get to see things that are meant for our eyes only. Rather than clear, broad messages that are put where everyone can see them, online advertising can play to the deepest fears of individuals, allowing them to be exploited with divisive or hateful messages that could be much more easily called out and debunked if they were, say, being shown on national TV or in a print advertisement in a major paper.

在线广告具有极强的针对性。这种广告形式的吸引力就在于此。我们倾向于看到专门针对我们的内容。与大家都能看到的清楚、宽泛的信息不同，网络广告可以激起个人最深层的恐惧，使他们被煽动分裂或仇恨的信息利用，这类信息如果出现在全国电视台或者主流报纸的印刷广告中，就会更容易被发现和揭穿。

Indeed, as one political insider put it to me, it is not just the Russians, but our politicians themselves who want to keep their advertising in the dark. Consider, for example, the Trump campaign’s xenophobic pre-election posts on Facebook. The US president is somewhat singular in that he does not seem to mind openly dog-whistling. But others might well be deterred from taking the low road if they could be openly named and shamed for doing so.

的确，正如一位政治圈内人对我所言，不仅是俄罗斯人，其实我们的政客也希望隐瞒自己的政治广告。例如，看看特朗普竞选团队大选前在Facebook上发布的排外帖子。美国总统有些奇特，因为他似乎并不介意公开跳出来说难听的话。但其他人很可能不敢采用这种下三滥方式——如果他们这样做会被曝光，搞得下不了台。

The third reason the Honest Ads Act should pass is it would be a step towards reframing the regulatory debate around Big Tech. Large and powerful industries and companies that enjoy monopoly rents often like to portray themselves as “special” or “different”, and thus in need of a separate set of rules.

《诚实广告法案》应该通过的第三个原因是，它将朝着重新框定围绕大科技公司的监管辩论迈出一步。享受垄断“租金”的大型、有影响力的行业和公司，往往喜欢将自身描绘为“特殊的”或“不同的”，因此需要一套单独的规则。

After a time, this idea of a separate playing field gets normalised. Monopolists also use complexity to obfuscate clear debate about what they are actually doing, and whose interests they are serving. I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had with fast talking financiers — and more recently, technologists — who try to throw as much jargon against the wall as fast as possible to see what sticks.

一段时间过后，这种“特殊竞争环境”的观念被正常化。垄断者还利用复杂性来模糊关于他们在做什么以及他们为谁的利益服务的清楚辩论。我记不清自己与那些滔滔不绝的金融家们——而最近是与技术专家们——进行过多少次对话，其间他们试图尽可能多且快地抛出行话，看看哪个能把我镇住。

Yet the best questions are often the simplest ones. In the case of the financial sector, it was and remains: “What is the industry doing that is good for the real economy, versus what is good only for the financial industry?” We await a clear answer there. In the case of Big Tech, we might start with the question: “Are you playing by the same rules as everyone else, and if not, why not?”

然而，最好的问题往往是最简单的。就金融业而言，这个问题一直是：“行业做的什么事对实体经济有利，而不是仅对金融业有好处?”至今我们仍在等待一个明确的答案。对大型科技公司而言，我们或许可以从这个问题开始：“贵公司与其他所有公司遵循同样的规则吗?如果不是，为什么?”

The answer to the first question is clearly no. I hope that the Honest Ads Act will pass, and that lawmakers will move on to examining Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which says that platforms are not responsible for what their users post.

第一个问题的答案显然是否定的。我希望《诚实广告法案》能够通过，而立法者接下来将把目光投向1996年《通信内容端正法》(CDA)第230条，该条规定，平台可以不对用户在其网站上发布的内容负责。

It is a get-out-of-jail free clause which has protected the industry from all sorts of legal issues that most businesses deal with every day, and is as outdated and unfair as the loopholes around political ad disclosure online.

这项“免责金牌”保护了该行业免受大多数企业要应对的各种日常法律问题的困扰，它与在线政治广告披露方面的漏洞一样过时和不公平。

Regulators should also look a lot more carefully at whether the M&A practices of the tech titans are anti-competitive. Consider Facebook’s recent purchase of tbh, a polling app aimed at teenagers, on which 5m users have posted 1bn questions since its launch three months ago.

监管机构还应更仔细地审视科技巨头的并购行为是否违背了竞争原则。想想Facebook最近收购了对主要面向青少年的投票应用tbh，自该应用三个月之前推出以来，已有500万用户发布了10亿条信息。

As Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute, a think-tank, tweeted: “Facebook is buying a competitor that undercuts its data-harvesting business model. FTC [the US Federal Trade Commission] should block this merger.”

正如智库开放市场研究所(Open Markets Institute)研究员马特•斯托勒(Matt Stoller)在Twitter上所写的：“Facebook正在收购一个削弱其数据收集业务模式的竞争对手。美国联邦贸易委员会(FTC)应该阻止这一合并。”

I also hope that lawmakers will begin to educate themselves more thoroughly about the 21st-century digital economy. There are a handful of politicians who have done so. But not many.

我还希望立法者们能开始更彻底地去了解21世纪的数字经济。有几位政界人士这样做过，但不多。

I recently asked one high-level software developer from a Big Tech company, someone who frequently visits Washington, to rank technological understanding among not only Congress members, but among the Capitol Hill staffers who brief them. On a scale of zero to 10, he put that understanding at “negative 10”.

最近，我请某家大型科技公司一名经常访问华盛顿的高级别软件开发者做一件事：对国会议员以及国会工作人员对科技的理解给出0到10的评分。他给出的评分是“-10”。

That is great for his company. But it is dangerous for the rest of us, because understanding Big Tech is now crucial to understanding not only politics, but the economy at large.

这对他的公司而言是件好事。但对我们来说是危险的，因为如今了解大型科技公司不仅对了解政治、而且对了解整个经济都至关重要。

rana.foroohar@ft.com 译者/何黎