Criticising Big Tech can feel redundant at a time when many chief executives in Silicon Valley are doing such a good job of making the public sceptical about their business models and their executive competence all by themselves.
現在批評科技巨擘似乎是多此一舉，畢竟許多矽谷首席執行長單純憑藉自己的行爲，就已經很成功地讓公衆懷疑他們的商業模式和他們的管理能力。
Even so, Mark Zuckerberg’s speech at Georgetown University and his testimony on Capitol Hill last week are worthy of note. Facebook insists it does not want to be responsible for false political advertising. So I’d like to help Mr Zuckerberg out by fact checking a few of the points of disinformation in his own communications.
即便如此，馬克•祖克柏(Mark Zuckerberg)在喬治城大學(Georgetown University)的演講，以及他上週在國會的作證也值得關注。Facebook堅稱無意爲虛假政治廣告負責任。所以我想幫幫祖克柏，對他自己講話中的一些「假訊息」做事實覈查。
Let’s put aside the total non-starters — like the fact that a man who has become a billionaire via surveillance capital— the industrial-scale monetisation of personal data — invokes the civil rights leaders Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King in his efforts to avoid appropriate regulation. Instead let’s start with Mr Zuckerberg’s assertion that Facebook is part of the “fifth estate”.
且不說那些完全不靠譜的言論，例如，爲了避免受到恰當的監管，一個透過監控資本——利用個人數據獲利的具有產業規模的生意——成爲億萬富翁的人，引用了民權領袖弗雷德裏克•道格拉斯(Frederick Douglass)和馬丁•路德•金(Martin Luther King)的話來證明自己的觀點。我們還是從祖克柏聲稱Facebook是「第五權力」(fifth estate)的一部分這番話說起吧。
