为什么扎克伯格不会下台

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原创：纽约时报中文网  NYT教育频道  2018-11-04

Facebook创始人、首席执行官扎克伯格。很少有人可以想象没有他的Facebook，这突显出对我们最大的科技公司的行为进行问责已经变得多么困难。 DOUG CHAYKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A few weeks ago, after Facebook revealedthat tens of millions of its users’ accounts had been exposed in a securitybreach, I began asking people in and around the tech industry a simplequestion: Should Mark Zuckerberg still be running Facebook?

几周前，Facebook透露其数千万用户的账户暴露在一个安全漏洞之下，随后我开始向科技行业内外的人们提出一个简单的问题：Facebook还应该由马克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)来管理吗？

I’ll spare you the suspense. Just abouteveryone thought Mr. Zuckerberg was still the right man for the job, if not theonly man for the job. This included people who currently work at Facebook,people who used to work at Facebook, financial analysts, venture capitalists,tech-skeptic activists, ardent critics of the company and its giddiestsupporters.

我就不卖关子了。几乎所有人都认为扎克伯格仍然是这份工作的合适人选，甚至是唯一的人选。我问过的人包括目前在Facebook工作的人、曾在Facebook工作的人、金融分析师、风险资本家、技术怀疑论者、该公司的激烈批评者与最狂热的支持者。

The consensus went like this: Even if Mr.Zuckerberg — as Facebook’s founder, chief executive, chairman and most powerfulshareholder — bore most of the responsibility for the company’s cataclysmicrecent history, he alone possessed the stature to fix it.

他们的共识是这样的：作为Facebook的创始人、首席执行官，董事长和最有权力的股东，扎克伯格要为公司近阶段的灾难承担大部分责任，但也只有他拥有这个声望，可以去弥补它们。

More than one of his supporters told me itwas bad faith to even broach the subject — that Mr. Zuckerberg’sindispensability was so plain that the only reason I might have to ask whetherhe should still run the company was the clicks I would get on this article. Buteven critics were not that excited about the idea of Mr. Zuckerberg’s removal.Barry Lynn, executive director of the Open Markets Institute, an organizationthat fights monopoly power, argued that Facebook’s problems grew out of itsbusiness model and the legal and regulatory vacuum in which it has operated —not the man who runs it.

不止一个扎克伯格的支持者告诉我，甚至连提出这个问题都是居心不良的表现——扎克伯格就是不可或缺的，这一点实在太明显了，我之所以会问出这种问题，唯一原因就是我想为这篇文章赚点击率。但即便是批评者们，也不希望看到扎克伯格去职。打击垄断势力的组织开放市场研究所(Open Markets Institute)总干事巴里·林恩(Barry Lynn)认为，Facebook的问题源于其商业模式，以及它的运营范畴处于法律和监管的真空地带——而不是运营它的人。

“To be blunt, if we took Mark Zuckerberg out and we replaced him withMahatma Gandhi, I don’t think the corporation would change in any significantway,” Mr. Lynn said.

“坦白地说，如果我们把马克·扎克伯格弄走，用圣雄甘地代替他，我认为这家公司不会有任何重大改变，”林恩说。

That few can imagine a Facebook without Mr.Zuckerberg, 34, underscores how unaccountable our largest tech companies havebecome. Mr. Zuckerberg, thanks to his own drive and brilliance, has become oneof the most powerful unelected people in the world. Like an errant oil companyor sugar-pumping food company, Facebook makes decisions that create hugeconsequences for society — and he has profited handsomely from the chaos.

扎克伯格今年34岁，很少有人可以想象没有他的Facebook，这突显出对我们最大的科技公司的行为进行问责已经变得多么困难。扎克伯格凭借自己的动力和才华，已成为世界上非选举产生的最有权力的人之一。正如一个行为不端的石油公司或大量使用食糖的食品公司，Facebook做出的决定会给社会带来巨大后果——而他从混乱中获取了丰厚利润。

Yet because of Facebook’s ownershipstructure — in which Mr. Zuckerberg’s shares have 10 times the voting power ofordinary shares — he is omnipotent there, answering basically to no one.

然而，由于Facebook的所有权结构——扎克伯格持有股票的投票权是普通股的10倍——他在公司之中无所不能，基本上不需对任何人负责。

This fits a pattern. Over the last twodecades, the largest tech companies have created a system in which executivessuffer few personal or financial consequences for their mistakes. Big tech hasturned founders into fixtures — when their companies are working well, they getall the credit, and when their companies are doing badly, they are the onlyheroes who can fix them.

这符合一种规律。在过去的20年中，那些最大的科技公司建立了一个系统，在这个系统中，高管们如果犯了错误，几乎不会承受个人或经济后果。大型科技公司把它们的创始人变成了固定装置——当公司运作良好时，他们获得了所有的赞誉，公司做得不好时，他们则是唯一可以修复它们的英雄。

There’s another way to put this: For betteror worse, Mr. Zuckerberg has become too big to fail.

还有另一种说法来解释：无论好坏，扎克伯格已经大到不能倒。

In America, it’s not unusual for executivesto escape punishment for how they steer their corporations (see Wall Streetafter the 2008 financial crisis). Still, when companies step in it badly, thereare often at least calls for their leaders’ dismissal. The chief executives ofEquifax and Target were pushed out after data breaches. The chief executive ofWells Fargo was ousted after a scandal involving sham accounts.

在美国，高管们因为控制公司的方式而逃避惩罚，这种事并不罕见（参见2008年金融危机之后的华尔街）。尽管如此，当公司陷入困境时，通常至少会有人呼吁解雇其领导人。艾贵发(Equifax)和塔吉特(Target)的首席执行官在数据泄露后被迫离职。富国银行(Wells Fargo)的首席执行官在涉及虚假账户的丑闻曝光后下台。

Even in Silicon Valley, where companyfounders are revered as money-laying rainbow unicorns, there is some limit tocorporate patience. In the 1980s, Apple fired Steve Jobs. Last year, Uberousted Travis Kalanick, who was as closely aligned with his company’s cultureas Mr. Zuckerberg is with his.

即使在创始人被视为会生钱的彩虹独角兽的硅谷，公司的耐心也有一些限度。1980年代，苹果公司解雇了史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)。去年，优步(Uber)解雇了特拉维斯·卡兰尼克(Travis Kalanick)，他和扎克伯格一样，与自己的公司文化保持高度一致。

Facebook’s problems have not reached thelevel of lawlessness we saw at Uber, but they have been far more consequential.Besides the breach, Facebook has been implicated in a global breakdown ofdemocracy, including its role as a vector for Russian disinformation during the2016 American presidential election.

Facebook的问题还没有达到优步那种无法无天的程度，但同时它们却又是更为重大的问题。除了违规行为外，Facebook还与全球民主的破坏有关联，比如它在2016年美国总统大选期间，就成了俄罗斯传播虚假信息的载体。

Investigators for the United Nations havesaid Facebook was instrumental to genocide in Myanmar; it has also been tied toviolence in India, South Sudan and Sri Lanka. There have been privacy scandals(Cambridge Analytica most recently), advertising scandals (discriminatory ads,fishy metrics), multiple current federal inquiries, and an admission that usingFacebook can be detrimental to your mental health.

联合国调查人员表示，在缅甸的种族灭绝中，Facebook发挥了作用；它还同印度、南苏丹和斯里兰卡的暴力有关。此外还有隐私丑闻（最近的一起是剑桥分析[Cambridge Analytica]）、广告丑闻（歧视性广告、可疑指标），多起正在进行的联邦调查，以及关于使用Facebook可能对心理健康有害的承认。

Even though Mr. Zuckerberg has apologizedand vowed again and again and again to fix Facebook, the company’s fixes oftenneed fixing. In the last week, reporters showed that the company’s recent moveto clamp down on political ads has not worked — Vice News bought Facebook adsfalsely stating that they were “paid for” by Vice President Mike Pence andISIS.

尽管扎克伯格一次又一次地道歉并发誓要修复Facebook，但公司的修复措施往往也需要调整。在上周，记者表明，该公司最近采取的打击政治广告行动并没有奏效——Vice新闻在谎称是由迈克·彭斯(Mike Pence)副总统和伊斯兰国(ISIS)“出资”的情况下买到了Facebook的广告。

So given such failures, another questionmight be: Why haven’t any heads rolled at Facebook? Although there have beensome high-profile defections — the co-founders of WhatsApp, Instagram andOculus, all companies bought by Facebook, left in the last few months — Mr.Zuckerberg’s most loyal executives have been with him through thick and thin,many for more than a decade.

所以，考虑到这样的失败，另一个问题可能是：为什么Facebook没有任何人负责任？虽然有一些引人注目的叛逃——所有被Facebook收购的公司，WhatsApp、Instagram和Oculus的联合创始人，都在过去几个月里离开了——然而扎克伯格最忠诚的高管一直与他在一起，很多人都为他效力了十几年。

If Facebook admits now that its problemswere caused by a too-idealistic, move-fast culture, and if it is conceding nowthat its culture must change, how can we be sure that’s happening if most ofthe people who run Facebook remain the same?

如果Facebook现在承认其问题是由一种过于理想化的、快速发展的文化引起的，如果它现在承认它的文化必须改变，那么在大多数运营Facebook的人还保持不变，我们怎么能确定会有改变？

When I asked Facebook about this, thecompany argued that things were changing. It just hired Nick Clegg, a formerdeputy prime minister of Britain, as head of global affairs — a move that thecompany said imbued it with a serious outsider’s perspective.

当我向Facebook询问此事时，公司认为改变正在发生。它刚刚聘请前英国副首相尼克·克莱格(Nick Clegg)来担任全球事务负责人——公司表示此举为公司带来了严肃的局外人视角。

The social network also put me on the phonewith a top executive who argued boisterously for Mr. Zuckerberg’s leadership,but declined to do so on the record. The executive explained that fixingFacebook would involve deep costs. The company is hiring more people to reviewcontent, for example, and it might have to slow down some of its most ambitiousprojects to address its impact on the world. The executive argued that Mr.Zuckerberg’s total domination of Facebook’s equity, plus the reverence in whichemployees hold him, allowed him to weather the financial consequences of thesechanges better than any other leader.

这家社交网络公司还让我与一位高管通电话，此人不遗余力地为扎克伯格的领导力辩护，但拒绝我使用这些话。该高管解释说，修复Facebook将涉及深度成本。例如，该公司正在雇用更多人来审查内容，并且可能不得不放慢一些最雄心勃勃的项目，以解决其对世界的影响。该高管认为，扎克伯格对Facebook股权的全面支配，加上员工对他的崇敬，使他能够比其他任何领导者更好地经受这些变化带来的财务后果。

Facebook’s stock price plunged nearly 20percent on a single day this summer after it reported slowing revenue growth andincreased operational costs. This week, Facebook repeated its slower-growthwarning. A “professional C.E.O.,” one without such a huge stake in the company,would be tempted to try the easy way out, the executive suggested. But Mr.Zuckerberg was free to do what’s right.

今年夏天，在公布营收增长放缓和运营成本增加后，Facebook股价在一天内暴跌近20%。本周，Facebook再次发出了增长放缓的警告。一名在公司里没有那么多切身利益的“职业CEO”会希望找一条简易的出路，该高管表示。但扎克伯格可以自如地去做正确事情。

Mr. Zuckerberg’s supporters also arguedthat he has shown a deep capacity to understand and address Facebook’sproblems. After the company went public in 2012, its stock price languished formonths because it had no plan to make money from consumers’ shift to mobiledevices.

扎克伯格的支持者也提出，对于Facebook的问题，他已经表现出了极大的理解力和解决意愿。在该公司2012年上市后，由于没有从消费者转向移动设备的趋势中赚钱的计划，其股价停止上涨了好几个月。

“Mark would tell you that he was too late in understanding theimportance of mobile — but when that became apparent, Mark understood its gravityand he understood how to fix it,” said Don Graham, a former Facebook boardmember and former publisher of The Washington Post. “He changed the directionof that company incredibly fast, in detail, not by one action but by 20 actions— and if you looked at the quarter-by-quarter numbers of what percentage ofFacebook’s revenue was coming from mobile, I couldn’t believe how fast itchanged.”

“马克会告诉你，在明白移动设备的重要性方面，他做的太晚了——但当这个问题变得明显起来，马克就明白了它的重要性，也明白了该如何解决这个问题，”Facebook前董事会成员、《华盛顿邮报》(The Washington Post)前出版人唐·格雷厄姆(Don Graham)说。“他以令人难以置信的速度，从细节入手，改变了该公司的方向，这不是用一个行动作出的，而是以20个行动——而且如果你逐季度去看看Facebook利润里百分之多少是来自移动端的，我简直不敢相信它改变的速度这么快。”

The question at Facebook now is whether Mr.Zuckerberg has similarly seen the light on its current problems. He has saidfixing Facebook was his personal challenge for 2018. But there are signs thatits culture remains the same.

如今，Facebook的问题在于，扎克伯格是否对目前的情况持类似看法。他已经表示过，解决Facebook的问题是他个人在2018年面对的挑战。但仍有迹象表明，公司文化依旧没有改变。

Consider its promise that a new home-hubdevice, Portal, which it unveiled this month, would not collect information onusers that could be used in ads. It had to swiftly walk back that promisebecause Facebook’s data-collection system is so pervasive that even some of itsemployees don’t seem to understand it.

比如Facebook本月刚刚推出了新的家庭中心设备Portal，并且承诺不会收集可被用在广告中的用户信息。然而由于Facebook的数据收集系统已经遍布于每个角落，就连公司的一些员工都不能理解它，Facebook只好迅速收回这个承诺。

“I think he has demonstrably failed over the last two years, and thereason he’s failed is because he’s unaccountable,” said Sandy Parakilas, aformer Facebook employee who is now chief strategy officer for the Center ofHumane Technology, an activist organization. “Given a scenario whereshareholders and board members had more influence, it’s hard to imagine thatthere would not have been changes faster.”

“过去两年来，他明显失败了，而他失败的原因在于他不需要负责，”前Facebook员工、如今在活动组织人道技术中心(Center of Humane Technology)担任首席策略官的桑迪·帕拉吉拉斯(SandyParakilas)说。“假设在股东和董事会成员有更多影响力的情况下，很难想象变化不会更快一些。”

One fix for Facebook might be to give theboard greater power over the company. Trillium Asset Management, an investmentfirm, recently put forward a shareholder resolution supported by several statefunds that would require Mr. Zuckerberg to step down as Facebook’s chairman,though he would still maintain majority voting control of the company.

Facebook的一个解决方案可能是赋予董事会更多对公司的权力。投资公司延龄草资产管理公司(Trillium Asset Management)近期提出了一个股东会决议，得到了多个国家基金的支持，该决议要求扎克伯格辞去董事长职务，尽管他仍将保有对公司的多数表决控制权。

“I think by taking the step to relinquish the position of the boardchair, it’s a very important structural change so that he would not have acompletely free hand to muscle his way through decisions,” said Jonas Kron, aTrillium senior vice president.

“我认为，通过放弃董事长职务这个举措，会带来一个非常重要的结构性改变，这么一来，他就不能对许多决策作出全权决定了，”延龄草高级副总裁约纳·克龙(Jonas Kron)说。

A Facebook spokesman said the company hadnot yet taken a position on the resolution. In the past, similar measures havebeen voted down by Mr. Zuckerberg and his allies.

一名Facebook发言人表示，公司尚未对该决议作出表态。过去，类似措施都被扎克伯格及其盟友通过表决击退。

Which leaves us here: Either Mr. Zuckerbergfixes Facebook, or no one does. That’s the choice we face, like it or not.

现在情况就是：要么扎克伯格解决Facebook的问题，要么就谁都解决不了。无论你喜不喜欢，这都是我们面临的选择。

本文作者Farhad Manjoo自2014年起成为时报“State of the Art”专栏作者。他此前在Slate、《华尔街日报》和Fast Company工作，著有"True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society"。欢迎在Twitter和Facebook上关注他。

翻译：晋其角、安妮

链接：https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Uty5i-roYAg0UYV09DtzNg

编辑：陈心茹