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FACEBOOK. Instagram. Google. Twitter. All services we rely on — and all services we believe we don’t have to pay for. Not with cash, anyway. But ad-financed Internet platforms aren’t free, and the price they extract in terms of privacy and control is getting only costlier.
我们对Facebook、Instagram、Google和Twitter提供的服务十分依赖，并且坚信自己无需为使用这些服务付费。至少无需付现金。但这些靠广告收入维持运营的互联网平台并不提供免费的午餐，它们以窥探用户隐私、操控用户行为的方式收取费用，并且代价只会越来越高昂。
A recent Pew Research Center poll shows that 93 percent of the public believes that “being in control of who can get information about them is important,” and yet the amount of information we generate online has exploded and we seldom know where it all goes.
皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)不久前进行的一项民意调查显示， 93%的民众认为“对于哪些人可以获得他们的个人信息保持控制很重要”，但我们在网上产生的信息量急剧增长，而我们甚少知道信息的去向。
Facebook and other social networking sites that collect vast amounts of user data are financed by ads. Just this week Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, announced plans to open users’ feeds to more advertisers. The dirty secret of this business model is that Internet ads aren’t worth much. Ask Ethan Zuckerman, who in the 1990s helped found Tripod.com, one of the web’s earliest ad-financed sites with user-generated content. He even helped invent the pop-up ad because corporations were wary of the user content appearing next to their ads. He came to regret both: the pop-up and the ad-financed business model. The former is annoying but it’s the latter that is helping destroy the fabric of a rich, pluralistic Internet.
Facebook等大量搜集用户数据的社交网站都以广告为主要收入来源。Facebook旗下的Instagram本周刚刚宣布，打算把用户信息流开放给更多广告主。这种商业模式有一个不可告人的秘密：互联网广告不值多少钱。不妨问问伊桑·朱克曼( Ethan Zuckerman)，他在1990年代帮助创办的Tripod.com，是最早的靠用户产生内容、靠广告获取收入的网站之一。他甚至帮忙发明了弹窗广告，因为一些公司很在意它们的广告旁边出现什么样的用户原创内容。他对推出这两样东西——即弹窗广告和以广告为基础的商业模式——感到后悔。前者很烦人，而后者则正在帮助摧毁一个丰富、多元的网络世界的基本结构。
Mr. Zuckerman points out that Facebook makes about 20 cents per user per month in profit. This is a pitiful sum, especially since the average user spends an impressive 20 hours on Facebook every month, according to the company. This paltry profit margin drives the business model: Internet ads are basically worthless unless they are hyper-targeted based on tracking and extensive profiling of users. This is a bad bargain, especially since two-thirds of American adults don’t want ads that target them based on that tracking and analysis of personal behavior.
朱克曼指出，Facebook每个月可以从每个用户身上赚取20美分的利润。这个数目少得可怜，尤其是考虑到该公司声称每位用户平均每个月花在Facebook上的时间多达20小时。微不足道的利润率推动着这种商业模式的运行；而且，除非是在精确追踪和大规模分析用户行为的基础上极具针对性地投放广告，否则互联网广告基本一钱不值。这是一门糟糕的生意，尤其是考虑到三分之二的美国成年人并不希望网站在追踪和分析其个人行为的基础上把他们列为某个广告的目标受众。
This way of doing business rewards huge Internet platforms, since ads that are worth so little can support only companies with hundreds of millions of users.
大型网络平台是可以从这种生意模式中得到回报的，因为只有拥有数以亿计的用户的企业才能靠价格如此低廉的广告生存下去。
Ad-based businesses distort our online interactions. People flock to Internet platforms because they help us connect with one another or the world’s bounty of information — a crucial, valuable function. Yet ad-based financing means that the companies have an interest in manipulating our attention on behalf of advertisers, instead of letting us connect as we wish. Many users think their feed shows everything that their friends post. It doesn’t. Facebook runs its billion-plus users’ newsfeed by a proprietary, ever-changing algorithm that decides what we see. If Facebook didn’t have to control the feed to keep us on the site longer and to inject ads into our stream, it could instead offer us control over this algorithm.
以广告为基础的互联网企业把我们的网络互动搞得面目全非。人们之所以云集在网络平台上，是因为这些平台可以把我们联系起来，让我们接触到全世界的海量信息——这是一项非常关键、非常有价值的功能。然而，为了自身的利益，以广告为主要收入来源的这些企业会和广告主站在一边，操控我们的注意力，而不是让我们随心所欲地进行网络交往。很多用户都以为，在自己的信息流里可以看到朋友发布的所有东西。但事实并非如此。Facebook以一种不断变化的专有算法控制着十多亿用户的动态信息流，这种算法决定着我们能看到哪些内容。如果Facebook不必靠控制信息流来让我们在更长的时间里留在它的网站上或者把广告插入我们的信息流之中，那它就可以让我们控制这种算法。
Many nonprofits and civic groups that were initially thrilled about their success in using Facebook to reach people are now despondent as their entries are less and less likely to reach people who “liked” their posts unless they pay Facebook to help boost their updates.
许多非营利组织和民间团体最初都曾为Facebook的传播效果而兴奋，现在却十分沮丧，因为他们发布的内容抵达那些为他们点赞的用户的可能性越来越小了，除非他们花钱让Facebook帮助推送自己发布的最新信息。
What to do? It’s simple: Internet sites should allow their users to be the customers. I would, as I bet many others would, happily pay more than 20 cents per month for a Facebook or a Google that did not track me, upgraded its encryption and treated me as a customer whose preferences and privacy matter.
那该怎么办？答案很简单：网站应该允许用户成为客户。我会非常愿意每月支付20美分以上，只要Facebook或谷歌不追踪我的行踪，并升级加密系统，把我当成客户对待，而且重视我的喜好和隐私。我相信许多其他人也愿意这么做。
Many people say that no significant number of users will ever pay directly for Internet services. But that is because we are misled by the mantra that these services are free. With growing awareness of the privacy cost of ads, this may well change. Millions of people pay for Netflix despite the fact that pirated copies of many movies are available free. We eventually pay for ads, anyway, as that cost is baked into products we purchase. A seamless, secure micropayment system that spreads a few pennies at a time as we browse a social network, up to a preset monthly limit, would alter the whole landscape for the better.
许多人说，很多用户是永远都不会愿意直接为网络服务付费的。不过，这是因为我们被误导了，以为这些服务就应该是免费的。随着人们越来越多地意识到为广告付出的隐私代价，这种情况可能就会改变。尽管许多盗版电影可以免费获得，仍然有成百上千万用户为Netflix的服务付费。我们终究还是要为广告付出代价，这个成本被加在了我们购买的商品里。如果有一种无缝、安全的微支付系统，可以让我们每次在浏览社交网络的时候都支付个几分钱，而且最多不超过预先设定的每月支付上限，整个情况可能就会向更好的方向改变。
There are other obstacles. Someone has to build those viable, privacy-preserving micropayment systems — but Silicon Valley is known for its entrepreneurial spirit, right? And we’re not starting from scratch. Micropayment systems that would allow users to spend a few cents here and there, not be so easily tracked by all the Big Brothers, and even allow personalization were developed in the early days of the Internet. Big banks and large Internet platforms didn’t show much interest in this micropayment path, which would limit their surveillance abilities. We can revive it.
我们还面对其他的障碍。必须得有人建立这些可行的、能够保护隐私的微支付系统——不过，硅谷最出名的就是创业精神，对吗？而且我们也不是从零开始。在互联网诞生的初期，就已经有人开发出了这样的微支付系统，它们可以允许用户不时地支付几分钱、从而不会那么轻易被所有的“老大哥”追踪，甚至还可以享受个性化服务。那时，大银行和大型互联网平台对这种限制其监控能力的微支付手段没有多大兴趣。我们现在可以让它复活。
Our payments could subsidize access in poorer countries the way ads already do. If even a quarter of Facebook’s 1.5 billion users were willing to pay $1 per month in return for not being tracked or targeted based on their data, that would yield more than $4 billion per year — surely a number worth considering.
我们的付款可以补贴贫穷国家的网络接入设备，就像广告目前所做的那样。在Facebook15亿用户中，哪怕有四分之一愿意每月付1美元，来确保自己的数据不会受到追踪或者成为目标，每年也可以产生超过40亿美元的收益。这个数字显然值得考虑。
Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, seems to have plenty of money, but I’d like to give him some of mine. I want to pay a small fee for the right to keep my information private and to be able to hear from the people I want — not the sponsored-content makers I want to avoid. I want to be a customer, not a product.
Facebook的首席执行马克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)似乎不缺钱，不过我还是想付给他一些钱。我想要支付一小笔费用，让信息不被泄露，而且确保我看到的信息来自我想要看到的人——而不是我想要避开的赞助内容制造者。我想要成为客户，而不是产品。
Mr. Zuckerberg has reportedly spent more than $30 million to buy the homes around his in Palo Alto, Calif., and more than $100 million for a secluded parcel of land in Hawaii. He knows privacy is worth paying for. So he should let us pay a few dollars to protect ours.
据说扎克伯格已经斥资逾3000万美元购买他在加州帕洛阿尔托的住宅附近的房屋，还斥资超过1亿美元购买夏威夷的一块幽僻土地。他知道为隐私付出金钱是值得的。因此，他应该让我们花几美元来保护自己的隐私。
