原始文章
五年前，我和我的大學好友 Dayv 坐在一起喝啤酒。 我在 Twitter 上滾動，看著人們對唐納德特朗普最近的憤怒感到憤怒，我說 “你知道……十五年前，互聯網是逃離現實世界的一種方式。 現在，現實世界是對互聯網的逃避。” “Tweet that!”，Dayv 說，我也這麼做了。 那個平庸的觀察成為我有史以來最受歡迎的推文，這句話現在已經在整個網絡的內容工廠中無限發布。
Five years ago I was sitting around drinking a beer with my college buddy Dayv. I was scrolling through Twitter and watching people get mad at Donald Trump’s latest outrage, and I said “You know…fifteen years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now the real world is an escape from the internet.” “Tweet that!”, Dayv said, so I did. That banal observation became my most popular tweet of all time, and the quote has now been posted ad infinitum on content mills all over the web.
為什麼如此平淡的觀察會引起這麼多人的共鳴？ 很容易理解為什麼互聯網現在感覺像是我們需要逃離的地方。 智能手機將互聯網物理連接到我們的人身上； 現在我們無論走到哪裡都帶著互聯網，它的彩色小圖標總是在招手，告訴我們放棄我們正在與之交談的人或我們正在做的事情並檢查最新的帖子。 但更難記住的是，為什麼互聯網曾是人們逃離現實世界的避風港。
Why did such a bland observation resonate with so many people? It’s easy to see why the internet now feels like a place we need to flee from. The smartphone physically attached the internet to our persons; now we take the internet wherever we go, and its little colored icons are always beckoning, telling us to abandon whoever we’re talking to or whatever we’re working on and check the latest posts. But what’s harder to remember is why the internet used to be an escape from the real world.
當我小時候第一次接觸互聯網時，我做的第一件事就是找到和我一樣喜歡的人——科幻小說和電視節目、龍與地下城等等。 在早期，這就是你上網時所做的事情——你找到你的人，無論是在 Usenet 或 IRC 或網絡論壇或 MUSHes 和 MUD 上。 在現實生活中，你不得不與一群惹你生氣的人打交道——不喜歡你政治的同事、嘮叨你找一份真正工作的父母、開著豪車的受歡迎的孩子。 互聯網是你可以和其他傻子一起做傻子的地方，無論你是動漫迷還是自由主義者槍迷，還是孤獨的 40 多歲的基督徒，還是仍然在壁櫥裡的同性戀孩子。 社區是逃生口。
When I first got access to the internet as a kid, the very first thing I did was to find people who liked the same things I liked — science fiction novels and TV shows, Dungeons and Dragons, and so on. In the early days, that was what you did when you got online — you found your people, whether on Usenet or IRC or Web forums or MUSHes and MUDs. Real life was where you had to interact with a bunch of people who rubbed you the wrong way — the coworker who didn’t like your politics, the parents who nagged you to get a real job, the popular kids with their fancy cars. The internet was where you could just go be a dork with other dorks, whether you were an anime fan or a libertarian gun nut or a lonely Christian 40-something or a gay kid who was still in the closet. Community was the escape hatch.
然後在 2010 年代，互聯網發生了變化。 不僅僅是智能手機，儘管它確實使它成為可能。 發生變化的是，互聯網互動越來越多地開始圍繞少數極其集中的社交媒體平台展開：Facebook、Twitter，以及後來的 Instagram。
Then in the 2010s, the internet changed. It wasn’t just the smartphone, though that did enable it. What changed is that internet interaction increasingly started to revolve around a small number of extremely centralized social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and later Instagram.
從商業角度來看，這種集中化是早期互聯網的自然延伸——人們之間的聯繫越來越緊密，所以讓他們聯繫得更多。 當每個人的主頁都可以成為他們的 Facebook 頁面時，為什麼每個人都要做自己的網站？ 當您可以直接在 Twitter 上與任何人交談時，為什麼還要嘗試在 IRC 聊天室中追踪人們？ 讓世界上的每個人都通過單一網絡聯繫是我們對電話系統所做的，而且每個人都知道網絡的價值與用戶數量的平方成正比。 因此，將整個世界的社交互動集中在兩個或三個平台上將印出大量金錢，同時也會創造一個更快樂、聯繫更緊密的世界。
From a business perspective, this centralization was a natural extension of the early internet — people were getting more connected, so just connect them even more. Why have everyone make their own websites when everyone’s homepage could just be their Facebook page? Why try to track people down in IRC chat rooms when you could just talk to anyone directly on Twitter? Putting everyone in the world in touch through a single network is what we did with the phone system, and everyone knows that the value of a network scales as the square of the number of users. So centralizing the whole world’s social interaction on two or three platforms would print loads of money while also making for a happier, more connected world.
它肯定是前者。 Facebook 成為了一個無堅不摧的企業巨頭，而 Twitter 儘管管理不善是出了名的，但仍設法保持盈利並免受競爭。 但幾乎在 2010 年代高度集中之後，我開始注意到我所熟悉和喜愛的互聯網出了點問題。
It certainly did the former. Facebook became an all-conquering corporate behemoth, and Twitter managed to stay profitable and secure from competition in spite of being notoriously poorly managed. But almost immediately after the great centralization of the 2010s, I started noticing that something was wrong with the internet I had come to know and love.
它始於 Facebook 提要。 在舊互聯網上，您可以在每個論壇或聊天室中展示自己不同的一面； 但是在你的 Facebook 動態中，你必須是你認識的每個人的同一個人。 當 2010 年代中期爆發社會動盪時，情況變得更糟了——你不得不看著你的自由派朋友和保守派朋友在你或他們的帖子的評論中做出反應。 那些評論破壞了友誼甚至家庭紐帶。
It started with the Facebook feed. On the old internet, you could show a different side of yourself in every forum or chat room; but on your Facebook feed, you had to be the same person to everyone you knew. When social unrest broke out in the mid-2010s this got even worse — you had to watch your liberal friends and your conservative friends go at it in the comments of your posts, or theirs. Friendships and even family bonds were destroyed in those comments.
起初 Twitter 似乎沒有 Facebook feed 那麼糟糕，因為如果你不想的話，你不必透露你的真實身份。 但 Twitter 將全世界的每個人聚集在一起的方式要極端得多。 你的家人和朋友可能會在 Facebook 上打架，但至少你不必被隨機匿名納粹分子或共產主義者或對視頻遊戲新聞發狂的怪人的憤怒評論淹沒。
At first Twitter seemed less bad than the Facebook feed, since you didn’t have to reveal your real identity if you didn’t want to. But Twitter was far more extreme in the way it threw everyone in the whole world together. Your family and friends might fight on Facebook, but at least you didn’t have to get deluged with angry comments from random anonymous Nazis or communists or weirdos mad about video game journalism.
2010 年代早期 Twitter 的定義是關於毒性和騷擾與早期互聯網言論自由理想的鬥爭。 但在 2016 年之後，這些鬥爭不再重要，因為平台上的每個人都簡單地採用了極端主義巨魔開創的相同的毒性和騷擾模式。 到 2019 年，你可能會被憤怒的圖書管理員、週六夜現場的粉絲或歷史教授包圍。 對付憤怒的暴民的唯一防禦，就是讓你自己成為憤怒暴民。 Twitter 感覺就像一座監獄，在監獄裡你需要一群幫派才能生存。
The early 2010s on Twitter were defined by fights over toxicity and harassment versus early-internet ideals of free speech. But after 2016 those fights no longer mattered, because everyone on the platform simply adopted the same patterns of toxicity and harassment that the extremist trolls had pioneered. By 2019 you could get mobbed by angry librarians, or Saturday Night Live fans, or history professors. The only defense against an angry mob was to get your own angry mob. Twitter felt like a prison, and in prison you need a gang to survive.
為什麼在過去幾十年的去中心化互聯網上沒有發生這種情況，而在中心化互聯網上卻發生了這種情況？ 事實上，周圍總是有納粹分子、共產主義者，以及所有其他有毒的巨魔和瘋子。 但他們只是一個煩惱，因為如果一個社區不喜歡這些人，版主就會禁止他們。 即使是普通人也被禁止進入他們的論壇
Why did this happen to the centralized internet when it hadn’t happened to the decentralized internet of previous decades? In fact, there were always Nazis around, and communists, and all the other toxic trolls and crazies. But they were only ever an annoyance, because if a community didn’t like those people, the moderators would just ban them. Even normal people got banned from forums where their personalities didn’t fit; even I got banned once or twice. It happened. You moved on and you found someone else to talk to.
社區審核有效。 這是早期互聯網的壓倒性教訓。 它之所以有效，是因為它反映了現實生活中的社會互動，社會群體排斥那些不合群的人。它之所以有效，是因為它將監管互聯網的任務分配給了大量志願者，這些志願者提供免費的維護工作 論壇很有趣，因為對他們來說，維護社區是一項熱愛的工作。 它之所以有效，是因為如果你不喜歡你所在的論壇——如果模組過於苛刻，或者如果它們過於寬鬆並且社區已被巨魔接管——你只需走開並找到另一個 論壇。 用偉大的 Albert O. Hirschman 的話來說，您始終可以選擇使用“退出”。
Community moderation works. This was the overwhelming lesson of the early internet. It works because it mirrors the social interaction of real life, where social groups exclude people who don’t fit in. And it works because it distributes the task of policing the internet to a vast number of volunteers, who provide the free labor of keeping forums fun, because to them maintaining a community is a labor of love. And it works because if you don’t like the forum you’re in — if the mods are being too harsh, or if they’re being too lenient and the community has been taken over by trolls — you just walk away and find another forum. In the words of the great Albert O. Hirschman, you always have the option to use “exit”.
然而，從推特上看，似乎沒有出口。 你會去哪裡？ 如果您是一名記者，那麼 Twitter 就是所有最新消息的來源。 如果你是一個不同意記者的普通人，想直接當著他們的面大喊大叫，那麼 Twitter 是你唯一可以做到的地方。 如果你想把它混入永無止境的政治和文化事務中，推特是你可以獲得最多觀眾的地方，並且感覺你的影響力最大。 複製 Twitter 很容易——右翼分子嘗試了幾次，用 Gab、Parler 和 Truth Social——但感覺原始版本的網絡效應無法克服。 所以你日復一日地回去，忍受灌籃暴徒的毒性，再次投入戰鬥。
From Twitter, however, there seemed to be no exit. Where would you go? If you were a journalist, Twitter was the source for all the most up-to-the-minute news. If you were a regular person who disagreed with journalists and wanted to yell directly in their faces, Twitter was the only place you could do that. If you wanted to mix it up in the neverending scrum of political and cultural affairs, Twitter was where you could get the largest audience for that, and feel like you had the largest impact. It was easy to clone Twitter — right-wingers tried several times, with Gab, Parler, and Truth Social — but it felt like the network effect of the original just couldn’t be overcome. So you went back day after day, to endure the toxicity of the dunk-mobs and throw yourself once more into the fight.
而在企業方面運營 Twitter 的人根本無意改變這一點。 他們可能已經就“言論自由”談了一個很好的遊戲——每個人都這樣——但他們真正想要的是繼續賺錢。 他們修補了平台的邊緣，但從未觸及他們的殺手級功能，即引用推文，Twitter 的產品負責人稱之為“灌籃機制”。 因為扣籃是商業模式——如果你不相信我，你可以查看許多研究論文，這些論文表明惡意和憤怒推動了 Twitter 的參與。
And the people who ran Twitter on the corporate side had no intention of changing this at all. They may have talked a good game about “free speech” — everyone does — but what they really wanted was to keep making money. They tinkered at the edges of the platform, but never touched their killer feature, the quote-tweet, which Twitter’s head of product called “the dunk mechanism.” Because dunks were the business model — if you don’t believe me, you can check out the many research papers showing that toxicity and outrage drive Twitter engagement.
🚨This is the trap that social media, and by extension all of us, are in:
— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) November 20, 2022
📈Toxicity drives use. Lowering toxicity drops ad sales (if you are ad supported) & engagement (even if you are not)
📉Toxicity spreads like a disease. It turns regular users toxic & makes networks awful pic.twitter.com/NeqlZ4G05H
公司倒霉、無能的管理層找不到更好的模式，所以他們固執地堅持現有的模式。 他們堅決抵制任何帶有社區節制意味的行為——從話題視圖中刪除被屏蔽的用戶評論，允許用戶從他們的話題中刪除回复，等等。
The company’s hapless, incompetent management couldn’t figure out any better model, so they clung doggedly to what they had. They steadfastly resisted anything that would smack of community moderation — dropping blocked users’ comments from thread view, allowing users to remove replies from their threads, etc.
夾在網絡效應的輕鬆盈利和對毒性的日益增長的憤怒之間，大型社交媒體平台轉向了中心化的節制。 毫不奇怪，這沒有用。 這不僅對版主本身來說是一項不可能完成的任務，而且這意味著公司的管理層基本上需要採取編輯傾向。 這有效地破壞了社交媒體公司的形象。 而且由於 Twitter 的編輯傾向稍微偏左，這讓保守派特別生氣。 Facebook 意識到這項任務的不可能，最終決定將其 Feed 完全從新聞中移除； 推特當然做不到這一點。
Caught between the easy profitability of network effects and growing anger over toxicity, the big social media platforms turned to centralized moderation. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t work. Not only was it an impossible task for the moderators themselves, but it meant that the management of the company was basically required to take an editorial slant. That effectively wrecked the image of the social media companies. And because Twitter’s editorial slant leaned slightly left-of-center, this made conservatives especially mad. Facebook, realizing the impossibility of the task, finally just decided to move its feed away from news entirely; Twitter, of course, couldn’t do this.
隨著這種情況持續存在，我開始注意到一種趨勢。 人們正在將他們關於新聞、政治和公共事務的討論從 Twitter 轉移到更小的論壇——首先是 Twitter DM 組，然後是 WhatsApp、Signal 和 Discord。 他們仍然保留著自己的 Twitter 賬戶，並在公開場合發表了一些言論，但他們的誠實意見越來越多地在一群可信賴的朋友和意識形態一致的熟人（以及偶爾表現出在意識形態上足夠寬容的經濟學博主 被右翼和左翼團體接納）。 慢慢地，人們似乎重新發現了舊互聯網教給我們的真理——當你可以選擇與誰交談時，討論會更有效。
As this situation persisted, I began to notice a trend. People were taking their discussions about news, politics, and public affairs off of Twitter and into much smaller forums — first to Twitter DM groups, then to WhatsApp, Signal, and Discord. They still maintained their Twitter accounts and said a few things in public, but their honest opinions more and more were said in the privacy of a trusted group of friends and ideologically aligned acquaintances (and the occasional economics blogger who comes off as ideologically tolerant enough to be admitted to both right-wing and left-wing groups). Slowly, people seemed to be rediscovering the truth that the old internet had taught us — that discussions work better when you can pick and choose who you’re talking to.
然後 Elon Musk 出現了。
馬斯克是一顆流星墜入僵化的 Twitter 恐龍世界，對其社區及其規範（如果還不是其基本功能）造成嚴重破壞。 如今，如果你上推特，你會發現它完全被馬斯克的最新舉動所吸引——今天，它任意禁止批評他的記者，昨天，它禁止一個跟踪他的私人飛機的賬戶。 明天會是另外一回事。
Then Elon Musk came along.
Musk is a meteor crashing into the ossified dinosaur-world of Twitter, wreaking havoc on its community and its norms (if not yet its basic functionality). Nowadays if you go on Twitter, you’ll find it absolutely absorbed by Musk’s latest move — today, it’s arbitrarily banning journalists who criticized him, yesterday it was banning an account that tracked his private jet. Tomorrow it will be something else.
馬斯克的右傾中心化節制是否足以導致讓 Twitter 享有主流媒體“任務台”美譽的普遍左傾記者的大量外流，或導致廣告商放棄該平台，還有待觀察 更普遍地轉移到替代站點。 如果一般核心用戶確實決定離開，預計該平台會突然衰落。
It remains to be seen whether Musk’s right-leaning centralized moderation will be enough to cause an exodus of the generally left-leaning journalists who give Twitter its reputation as the mainstream media’s “assignment desk”, or cause advertisers to abandon the platform, or result in a more general move to alternative sites. If core users in general do decide to leave, expect the platform to decline pretty abruptly.
但有趣的是，即使是那些確實期待這種外流的人似乎也不相信會有另一個單一的、統一的平台來取代 Twitter。 原始版本的外觀和功能很容易複製，但似乎沒有人認為每個人都會轉向新的 Twitter； 每個人似乎都認為，如果 Twitter 確實衰落，那麼未來將是支離破碎的。
But what’s interesting is that even the people who do expect this sort of exodus don’t seem to believe that there will be another single, unified platform that just replaces Twitter. The look and functionality of the original is simple to replicate, but no one seems to think that everyone will just move to New Twitter; everyone seems to expect that if and when Twitter does decline, the future is fragmented.
因為也許，只是也許，我們已經吸取了教訓。 也許我們已經意識到互聯網作為一個碎片化的東西會更好地工作。
Because maybe, just maybe, we’ve learned our lesson. Maybe we’ve realized that the internet simply works better as a fragmented thing.
正如 Jack Dorsey 所寫，集中式社交媒體是全球人類集體意識的一次盛大實驗。 這是一座現代的巴別塔，是新世紀福音戰士的人類工具項目。 是的，這是讓一些人變得富有的一種方式，但它也是一個團結人類的實驗。 或許如果我們都可以聚在一個房間裡互相交談，如果我們可以擺脫我們的迴聲室和過濾泡，我們最終會達成一致，而充滿戰爭、仇恨和誤解的舊世界就會融為一體記憶。
Centralized social media, as Jack Dorsey wrote, was a grand experiment in collective global human consciousness. It was a modern-day Tower of Babel, the Human Instrumentality project from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Yes it was a way to make some people rich, but it was also an experiment in uniting the human race. Perhaps if we could all just get in one room and talk to each other, if we could just get rid of our echo chambers and our filter bubbles, we would eventually reach agreement, and the old world of war and hate and misunderstanding would melt into memory.
那個實驗失敗了。 人類不想成為一個全球性的蜂群思維。 我們不是最終會達成一致的理性貝葉斯更新者； 當我們收到相同的信息時，它往往會使我們兩極分化而不是團結我們。被不同意你的人尖叫和侮辱不會讓你離開你的過濾泡泡——它會讓你退回到你的泡泡裡，拒絕任何對你尖叫的人的想法。 沒有人因為被扣籃而改變主意； 相反，他們都只是加倍努力扣籃。 Twitter 的仇恨和毒性有時感覺就像人類個性垂死的尖叫，被蜂群思維不斷要求我們同意比我們進化到同意的人更多的人壓死。
That experiment failed. Humanity does not want to be a global hive mind. We are not rational Bayesian updaters who will eventually reach agreement; when we receive the same information, it tends to polarize us rather than unite us. Getting screamed at and insulted by people who disagree with you doesn’t take you out of your filter bubble — it makes you retreat back inside your bubble and reject the ideas of whoever is screaming at you. No one ever changed their mind from being dunked on; instead they all just doubled down and dunked harder. The hatred and toxicity of Twitter at times felt like the dying screams of human individuality, being crushed to death by the hive mind’s constant demands for us to agree with more people than we ever evolved to agree with.
但人類的個性不會消亡。 相反，正在消亡的是集中式社交媒體。 社交媒體網絡效應很強，但不是無限強。 最近的一項調查發現，只有三分之一的美國青少年使用 Facebook，低於五年前的 70% 以上。 甚至在馬斯克接管之前，使用 Twitter 的青少年比例已經從 33% 下降到 23%。
But human individuality would not die. Instead it is centralized social media that is dying. Social media network effects are strong, but not infinitely strong. A recent survey found that only a third of U.S. teens use Facebook at all, down from over 70% just half a decade ago. And even before Musk’s takeover, the fraction of teens on Twitter had declined from 33% to 23%.
在集中式社交媒體的位置，我們看到了一些正在興起的東西。 首先是 TikTok 和 YouTube； 儘管這些確實有一些評論功能，但總體而言它們更類似於電視、廣播和傳統的單向推送媒體，內容由算法驅動而不是用戶共享。 其次，Snapchat 和 Instagram，它們更側重於個人互動，而不是公共討論。 雖然他們沒有被包括在調查中，但我從軼事和整體使用趨勢來看的一般感覺是聊天應用程序——WhatsApp、Signal、Discord 等——正變得越來越流行。
In place of centralized social media we see a few things rising. First, there’s TikTok and YouTube; although these do have some comment features, overall they’re far more similar to television, radio, and traditional one-way push media, with content driven by algorithms instead of user sharing. Second, Snapchat and Instagram, which are geared much more toward personal interactions and less toward public discussions. And though they weren’t included in the survey, my general sense from both anecdotes and overall usage trends is that chat apps — WhatsApp, Signal, Discord, etc. — are becoming more popular.
這些新興的應用程序和平台的共同點是碎片化。 無論是有意識地自我分類到志同道合的群體或社區主持的群體，還是來自一群不同的人觀看他們自己的算法策劃的視頻提要的自然碎片，這些應用程序都有一種根據他們想要的人分開的方法 與他們交談以及他們想接觸什麼。
What these rising apps and platforms all share is fragmentation. Whether it’s intentional self-sorting into like-minded or community-moderated groups, or the natural fragmentation that comes from a bunch of different people watching their own algorithmically curated video feeds, these apps all have a way of separating people based on who they want to talk to and what they want to be exposed to.
這就是我們恢復舊互聯網的方式——不是以其原始形式，而是以其輝煌、支離破碎的本質。 人們稱 Twitter 為不可或缺的公共空間，因為它是“城市廣場”，但在現實世界中，並不只有一個城市廣場，因為不只有一個城鎮。 有許多。 當你可以退出時，互聯網就可以工作——如果你不喜歡市長或當地文化，你可以搬到另一個城鎮。 這並不意味著我們需要一個沒有人與任何我們不同意的人交談的世界——我們需要半透膜而不是厚牆。 一個分散的互聯網，人們可以在其中嘗試多個空間並從一個論壇移動到另一個論壇，非常適合提供這些膜。 社會上的分歧是進步所必需的，但當它以信任、親和力和半隱私的紐帶為媒介時，它是最具建設性的。 我們的界限總是會相互摩擦，但我們需要一些界限。
This is how we restore the old internet — not in its original form, but in its glorious, fragmented essence. People call Twitter an indispensable public space because it’s the “town square”, but in the real world there isn’t just one town square, because there isn’t just one town. There are many. And the internet works when you can exit — when you can move to a different town if you don’t like the mayor or the local culture. This doesn’t mean we need a world where nobody talks to anyone we disagree with — instead of thick walls, we need semipermeable membranes. And a fragmented internet, where people can try out multiple spaces and move from forum to forum, is perfect for providing those membranes. Disagreement in society is necessary for progress, but it’s most constructive when it’s mediated by bonds of trust and affinity and semi-privacy. Our boundaries will always rub up against each other, but we need some boundaries.
也許有一天人類會準備好成為一個集體意識。 但 2010 年代的實驗表明，這一天不是今天。 讓互聯網再次成為一種逃避——一個你可以找到你的人并快樂的地方。 讓我們再次學習說一千種不同的語言。 讓巴別塔倒塌。
Perhaps someday the human race will be ready to become one collective consciousness. But the experiment of the 2010s shows that this day is not today. Let the internet once more be an escape — a place where you can find your people and be happy. Let us learn to speak a thousand different languages once again. Let the Tower of Babel fall.
巴別塔的意思
“巴別塔” 的意思是 “Babel Tower"，通常指《創世紀》中故事中的巴別塔。這個故事講述了人類在建造一座巨大的塔，以便能夠到達天堂，然而上帝看見了人類的驕傲和野心，就把他們語言分裂成許多不同的語言，使得人類無法互相交流，最終停止了建塔的工作。巴別塔在像徵著人類的野心和自欺欺人的追求。
巴別塔故事
洪水之後，挪亞的兒子們生了很多孩子。地上的人越來越多，開始搬到不同的地方居住，跟耶和華之前吩咐的一樣。
可是，地上有些人不聽耶和華的話。他們說：「我們來建一座城吧，住在那裡，再建造一座塔，高得頂天，好讓大家知道我們有多厲害！」
耶和華看到了，就很不高興，要阻止他們。猜猜看，上帝會怎麼做呢？他讓那些人一下子說起不同的語言，他們沒法溝通，就不得不停工。後來，人們把那座城叫做巴別，意思就是「混亂」。人們的語言混亂之後，就分散到世界各地居住。他們在別的地方還是做壞事。