“THERE’S too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarisation in the world today,” lamented Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, recently. To improve things, the world’s largest social network will cut the amount of news in users’ feeds by a fifth and attempt to make the remainder more reliable by prioritising information from sources which users think are trustworthy.

“如今的世界有太多哗众取宠，错误的信息以及极端化的情况，”Facebook的CEO马克·扎克伯格最近哀叹道。为了改变这些状况，这家全球最大的社交网络将用户关注的新闻流里的新闻数量削减五分之一，并优先显示用户认为更可信的来源里的信息，让展示出的新闻更加可信。

Many publishers are complaining: they worry that their content will show up less in users’ newsfeeds, reducing clicks and advertising revenues. But the bigger problem with Facebook’s latest moves may be that they are unlikely to achieve much—at least if the flourishing of fake news on WhatsApp, the messaging app which Facebook bought in 2014 for $19bn, is any guide.

许多新闻机构一直都在抱怨：他们担心在用户的新闻流里显示的内容会减少，造成点击量和广告收入的减少。不过，Facebook最近的行为引发的问题更大：他们的设想不太可能获得成功——至少如果虚假信息泛滥的WhatsApp能前瞻性让人看到。Facebook在2014年以190亿美元的价格收购了这个短信应用。

In more ways than one, WhatsApp is the opposite of Facebook. Whereas posts on Facebook can be seen by all of a user’s friends, WhatsApp’s messages are encrypted. Whereas Facebook’s newsfeeds are curated by algorithms that try to maximise the time users spend on the service, WhatsApp’s stream of messages is solely generated by users. And whereas Facebook requires a fast connection, WhatsApp is not very data-hungry.

在很多方面，WhatsApp与Facebook是对立的。在Facebook上，用户的所有朋友都能看见上的帖子；WhatsApp上的消息是加密的。Facebook的新闻流是由算法管理的，尽可能地消耗用户的时间；但hatsApp的信息只由用户产生。Facebook需要一种快速的连接；WhatsApp对数据的需求并不强烈。

As a result, WhatsApp has become a social network to rival Facebook in many places, particularly in poorer countries. Of the service’s more than 1.3bn monthly users, 120m live in Brazil and 200m in India (see chart). With the exceptions of America, China, Japan and South Korea, WhatsApp is among the top three most-used social apps in all big countries.

结果是，从诸多角度来看，WhatsApp成为一个社交网络，是Facebook的竞争对手，尤其是在贫穷落后的国家。在每月超过13亿人的活跃用户中，有1.2亿人居住在巴西，2亿人在印度（见下图）。除了美国、中国、日本和韩国外，WhatsApp在其他主要国家最受欢迎的社交应用中排名前三。

Most of the 55bn messages sent every day are harmless, but WhatsApp’s scale attracts all sorts of mischief-makers. In South Africa the service is often used to spread false allegations of civic corruption and hoax warnings of storms, fires and other natural disasters. In Brazil rumours about people travel quickly: a mob recently set upon a couple they suspected of being child traffickers based on chatter on WhatsApp (the couple escaped).

尽管每天在WhatsApp里发出的550亿条信息中大部分都是无害的，但是，它的规模吸引了各式各样的作恶者。在南非，经常有人用WhatsApp散布官员腐败谣言，以及对有关暴风雨、火灾和其它自然灾害的虚假警报。有关人的谣言在巴西传播地很快：近日发生了针对一对夫妇的群体事件：一群人利用在WhatsApp上的聊天记录怀疑这对夫妇贩卖儿童（导致这对夫妇出逃）。

But it is in India where WhatsApp has had the most profound effect. It is now part of the country’s culture: many older people use it and drive younger ones crazy by forwarding messages indiscriminately—sometimes with tragic results. Last year, seven men in the eastern state of Jharkhand were murdered by angry villagers in two separate incidents after rumours circulated on WhatsApp warning of kidnappers in the area. In a gruesome coda to the incident, pictures and videos from the lynching also went viral.

不过，在印度，WhatsApp的影响力最为深远。它如今成为印度文化的一部分：许多上了年纪的人用WhatsApp胡乱发信息，让年轻人抓狂——有时造成令人悲痛的结果。去年，印度东部贾坎德州的七名男子在两起事件中遭愤怒的村民杀害，事由是在WhatsApp上传言该地出现绑架者。此事发生后，可怕的是，运用私刑的图片和视频在网络上到处都是。

It is unclear how exactly such misinformation spreads, not least because traffic is encrypted. “It’s not that we have chosen not to look at it. It is impossible,” says Filippo Menczer of Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media, which tracks the spread of fake news on Twitter and other online services. Misinformation on WhatsApp is identified only when it jumps onto another social-media platform or, as in India, leads to tragic consequences.

这些谣言是如何传播的，还不甚明晰，至少不是因为信息传播加密了。“这不在于我们选择不去看它，这是不可能的，”印第安那大学社会媒体观察台的菲利普·门采尔说道。他所在的这个机构追踪调查推特等网络社交媒体上虚假信息的传播。WhatsApp上散布的谣言只有出现在其他社交媒体平台上或如在印度造成了悲剧性后果时才发现。

Some patterns are becoming clear, however. Misinformation often spreads via group chats, which people join voluntarily and whose members—family, colleagues, friends, neighbours—they trust. That makes rumours more believable. Misinformation does not always come in the form of links, but often as forwarded texts and videos, which look the same as personal messages, lending them a further veneer of legitimacy. And since users often receive the same message in multiple groups, constant repetition makes them more believable yet.

一些谣言传播模式正在变得越发清楚，但是，谣言经常通过聊天群传播。人们自愿地加入这些聊天群，加入的成员都是自己信任的人，如家人、同事、朋友和邻居等。这让谣言变得更具有信服力。谣言并不总是以链接的方式出现，通常是以文本和视频的方式转发，让人看起来像是私人信息，披上了合法性的外衣。由于用户在多个聊天群里收到相同的信息，不断的重复出现使他们认为这些谣言更加可信。

Predictably, propagandists have employed WhatsApp as a potent tool. In “Dreamers”, a book about young Indians, Snigdha Poonam, a journalist, describes visiting a political party’s “social media war room” in 2014. Workers spent their days “packaging as many insults as possible into one WhatsApp message”, which would then be sent out to party members to be propagated within their own networks. Similar tactics are increasingly visible elsewhere. Last month’s conference in South Africa of the African National Congress, at which delegates elected a new party leader, saw a flood of messages claiming victory for and conspiracy by both factions. With elections due in Brazil and Mexico this year, and in India next year, expect more such shenanigans.

可以预见的是，宣传机构将WhatsApp当做了一个强有力的工具。在一本有关年轻印度人的书《梦想家》(Dreamers）中，记者叫斯尼哥达·普那姆讲述了在2014年访问一个政党的“社交媒体作战室”。工作人员花整天将“尽可能多的侮辱性事件放进一条WhatsApp信息里”，之后发给成员，散布到各自的社交圈里。相同的方式在其他地方也越来越多地出现。上月，南非的非洲国民大会的会议上，代表选出了新的党领导人。会上充斥着大量胜选信息或是对立团体的阴谋论。今年巴西和墨西哥将举行总统大选，明年是印度大选，预计会有更多这一类谣言出现。

Governments and WhatsApp itself are keenly aware of the problem. In India authorities now regularly block WhatsApp to stop the spread of rumours, for instance of salt shortages. Regulators in Kenya, Malaysia and South Africa have mooted the idea of holding moderators of group chats liable for false information in their groups. WhatsApp is working on changing the appearance of forwarded messages in the hope that visual cues will help users tell the difference between messages from friends and those of unknown provenance. But ultimately it will be down to users to be more responsible and not blindly forward messages they receive.

各国政府和WhatsApp自身也强烈地意识到了这个问题。印度当局现在不时地屏蔽WhatsApp，阻止一些谣言的传播，如盐短缺。肯尼亚、马来西亚和南非的监管机构设立聊天群管理员功能，负责管理群里的虚假信息。WhatsApp正在设法改变转发信息的显示，以期显示的颜色有助于用户区别朋友和和其他不知出处的信息。不过，这最终需要的是用户有更多的责任心，不盲目地转发所接收到的信息。

It is as yet unclear whether fake news on Facebook will be less of a problem after it changes its algorithms. The experience of WhatsApp suggests, however, that the concerns will persist. “Even with all these countermeasures, the battle will never end,” Samidh Chakrabarti, a Facebook executive admitted on January 22nd. “Misinformation campaigns are not amateur operations. They are professionalised and constantly try to game the system.”

现在不太明确的是，Facebook在改变算法后，虚假信息的传播是否还会是一个问题。然而，WhatsApp的经历表明对此的种担忧会一直持续下去。“尽管有应对措施，这场战斗从不会结束。”Facebook的高管萨米德·查克拉巴蒂在1月22日说道。“谣言活动不再是非专业性的操作，它们变得专业化，不断地侵蚀Facebook系统。”

编译：菲菲

编辑：翻吧君

来源：经济学人