The Facebook Files: Social Media’s Hidden Demons and the Internal Fight to Expose Them

 
        Facebook在2021年重塑品牌，正式更名為Meta，宣告打造科技烏托邦、元宇宙的決心。只是新名字截至目前為止，並沒有幫助臉書脫胎換骨，也無法解決平台既有的問題，使用者的控訴層出不窮，甚至連員工都主動向媒體爆料……
 
        身為社群媒體巨頭Facebook的員工，坐領高額的薪酬，是什麼原因，讓他們願意以自己的工作為賭注，提供上千頁的公司內部文件給華爾街日報科技記者，舉證平台的設計架構、操作策略的背後，不可告人的醜陋秘辛？是什麼具毀滅性的危機，讓一些員工越深入問題核心、研究得越多，在良心上越過意不去，甘冒被告的風險違抗雇主，將隱藏的禍害昭告世人？
 
        Facebook被詬病缺乏社會責任，對人口販賣、詐騙問題視而不見，變相支援了毒品集團和獨裁政府，當VIP用戶違反平台規則散播惡意和謠言時，臉書平台似乎對失控的狀態束手無策……抑或是考量成本代價，決定袖手旁觀？本書將揭露以馬克‧祖克柏為首的決策中心，是如何以威權，冷漠地回應這一切。
 
        Meta與科技烏托邦的願景，是否漸行漸遠？(文/博客來編譯)
 

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE - By an award-winning technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal, a behind-the-scenes look at the manipulative tactics Facebook used to grow its business, how it distorted the way we connect online, and the company insiders who found the courage to speak out

＂Broken Code fillets Facebook’s strategic failures to address its part in the spread of disinformation, political fracturing and even genocide. The book is stuffed with eye-popping, sometimes Orwellian statistics and anecdotes that could have come only from the inside.＂ --New York Times Book Review

Once the unrivaled titan of social media, Facebook held a singular place in culture and politics. Along with its sister platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, it was a daily destination for billions of users around the world. Inside and outside the company, Facebook extolled its products as bringing people closer together and giving them voice.

But in the wake of the 2016 election, even some of the company’s own senior executives came to consider those claims pollyannaish and simplistic. As a succession of scandals rocked Facebook, they--and the world--had to ask whether the company could control, or even understood, its own platforms.

Facebook employees set to work in pursuit of answers. They discovered problems that ran far deeper than politics. Facebook was peddling and amplifying anger, looking the other way at human trafficking, enabling drug cartels and authoritarians, allowing VIP users to break the platform’s supposedly inviolable rules. They even raised concerns about whether the product was safe for teens. Facebook was distorting behavior in ways no one inside or outside the company understood.

Enduring personal trauma and professional setbacks, employees successfully identified the root causes of Facebook’s viral harms and drew up concrete plans to address them. But the costs of fixing the platform--often measured in tenths of a percent of user engagement--were higher than Facebook’s leadership was willing to pay. With their work consistently delayed, watered down, or stifled, those who best understood Facebook’s damaging effect on users were left with a choice: to keep silent or go against their employer.

Broken Code tells the story of these employees and their explosive discoveries. Expanding on ＂The Facebook Files,＂ his blockbuster, award-winning series for The Wall Street Journal, reporter Jeff Horwitz lays out in sobering detail not just the architecture of Facebook’s failures, but what the company knew (and often disregarded) about its societal impact. In 2021, the company would rebrand itself Meta, promoting a techno-utopian wonderland. But as Broken Code shows, the problems spawned around the globe by social media can’t be resolved by strapping on a headset.

        傑夫·霍伊茨（Jeff Horwitz）是華爾街日報的科技記者，撰寫The Facebook Files 讓他獲頒喬治‧波爾克（George Polk Award）商業報導獎，和傑拉爾德·洛伊布獎（Gerald Loeb Award）記者獎。

JEFF HORWITZ is a technology reporter for the Wall Street Journal. His work on ＂The Facebook Files＂ won the George Polk Award for Business Reporting and the Gerald Loeb Award for Beat Reporting. Previously an investigative reporter for the Associated Press in Washington, DC, he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.