Elon Musk’s $44bn education on free speech

He has had a crash course in the trade-offs in protecting free expression

他在保护言论自由的权衡方面有一个速成课程

Elon musk’s two months running Twitter has been an unhappy experiment. The social network’s 250m users have endured a wearying saga in which Mr Musk is the central character. Advertisers have fled. Twitter, which lost 4bn a year, by one estimate. The damage has spread to Tesla, Mr Musk’s carmaker, part of the reason it has lost half a trillion dollars in market value since early September, costing Mr Musk the title of the world’s richest man.

埃隆-马斯克(Elon musk)经营Twitter的两个月是一个不愉快的试验。这个社交网络的2.5亿用户经历了一场令人厌倦的事件，而马斯克先生是其中的核心人物。广告商已经逃离了。推特在2021年损失了2.21亿美元，根据一项估计，现在正处于一年损失40亿美元的状态。这种损害已经蔓延到了马斯克先生的汽车制造商特斯拉，这也是特斯拉自9月初以来市值损失5万亿美元的部分原因，使马斯克先生失去了世界首富的称号。

!! cost sb the title of sth，注意cost的小词用法，使某人失去某某称号

On December 19th it looked as if Mr Musk might throw in the towel, after Twitter users voted for him to step down as chief executive. It has been a costly adventure. But in one sense his turbulent stewardship of the social network has done the rest of the world a favour. In two short months Mr Musk has been through a public crash course in the principles of free speech, neatly demonstrating the trade-offs involved in protecting expression online.

12月19日，在推特用户投票支持他卸任首席执行官后，马斯克先生看起来似乎可能会放弃了。这是一次代价高昂的冒险。但从某种意义上说，他对社交网络的动荡管理为世界其他国家带来了好处。在短短两个月内，马斯克先生经历了一次关于言论自由原则的公开速成课程，巧妙地展示了保护在线表达所涉及的权衡。

!! throw in the towel 认输

From the outside, Twitter seemed simple to someone whose day job was building self-driving cars and space rockets. Mr Musk, a self-described “free-speech absolutist”, had grown concerned (with some justification) that Twitter had been captured by censorious left-wing scolds. Shortly after agreeing to buy the platform he explained his approach to moderation: “By ‘free speech’, I simply mean that which matches the law.”

在外界看来，对于一个日常工作是制造自动驾驶汽车和太空火箭的人来说，Twitter似乎很简单。马斯克先生自称是 "言论自由的绝对主义者"，他越来越担心（有一定的理由）那些审核的左翼批评者抓住推特不放。在同意购买该平台后不久，他解释了他的节制方法。"我所说的'言论自由'，只是指符合法律的言论"。

In practice he has found that the right to speech conflicts with other rights. One is safety. Last month Mr Musk said that his commitment to free speech meant he would not ban a Twitter account that tweeted the whereabouts of his private jet, even though he considered this a security risk. But on December 14th he changed his mind after a “stalker” bothered his son. After suspending the jet account, Twitter introduced rules outlawing the reporting of others’ real-time locations.

在实践中，他发现言论自由权与其他权利相冲突。一个是安全。上个月，马斯克先生说，他对言论自由的承诺意味着他不会禁止一个在推特上发布其私人飞机下落的推特账户，尽管他认为这是一种安全风险。但在12月14日，在一个 "跟踪者 "打扰了他的儿子之后，他改变了主意。在暂停该飞机账户后，推特推出了禁止报告他人实时位置的规则。

As well as limiting speech in the name of safety, Mr Musk has curtailed it to avoid the lesser sin of causing offence. In October the number of views of tweets that Twitter deems “hate speech” doubled, as users tested the limits of Mr Musk’s new regime. Rather than allow this legal-but-nasty content, Twitter cracked down. In November hateful tweets recorded one-third fewer views than before the takeover. Earlier this month Twitter suspended the account of Ye, a rapper formerly known as Kanye West, after he posted a picture of a swastika within a Star of David—an image that, however grotesque, is nonetheless permitted by America’s laws.

除了以安全的名义限制言论外，马斯克先生还缩减了言论，以避免引起冒犯这一较轻的罪过。10月份，被推特视为 "仇恨言论 "的推文的浏览量增加了一倍，因为用户测试了马斯克先生的新制度的极限。推特没有允许这种合法但令人讨厌的内容，而是进行了打击。11月，仇恨性推文的浏览量比接管前减少了三分之一。本月早些时候，Twitter暂停了原名为Kanye West的说唱歌手Ye的账户，因为他发布了一张大卫之星中的纳粹标志图片--这种图片虽然怪异，但仍为美国法律所允许。

!! cutail: to stop something before it is finished, or to reduce or limit something. 制止；减少；缩减；限制

!! eg:to curtail your holiday/spending;缩短假期／缩减开支

Mr Musk even limited speech when it was bad for profits. After pranksters sent tweets aping brands like Pepsi (“Coke is better”) and Nestlé (“We steal your water and sell it back to you lol”), Twitter outlawed such behaviour to stop advertisers fleeing. Then, to stem an exodus of users, on December 18th Twitter said it would ban people from linking to rival social networks or posting their usernames. When questions were raised as to whether regulators would consider such a move anticompetitive, Mr Musk apologised and free speech was restored.

马斯克先生甚至限制了对利润不利的言论。在恶作剧者发出模仿百事可乐（"可口可乐更好"）和雀巢（"我们偷了你的水，然后再卖给你"）等品牌的推文后，Twitter禁止了这种行为，以阻止广告商的逃离。然后，为了阻止用户外流，12月18日，Twitter说它将禁止人们链接到竞争对手的社交网络或发布他们的用户名。当有人质疑监管机构是否会认为此举具有反竞争性时，马斯克先生表示道歉，言论自由得以恢复。

!! Stem an exodus 遏止外流

!! Stem : a central part of something from which other parts can develop or grow, or which forms a support

All this holds two lessons for whoever follows Mr Musk as Twitter’s boss, should he leave. One is to keep content moderation at arm’s length. The person deciding whether a post is acceptable is compromised if they are also responsible for boosting engagement among users and spending by advertisers. Mark Zuckerberg (whose reputation has risen in light of Mr Musk’s pratfalls) realised this and outsourced Facebook’s biggest moderation headaches to an independent “oversight board” in 2020.

如果马斯克离开，无论他是谁继任Twitter的老板，这一切都有两个教训。一个是保持内容审核的距离。如果决定一个帖子是否可以接受的人还负责提高用户的参与度和广告商的支出，那么他们就会受到影响。马克-扎克伯格（鉴于马斯克先生的失误，他的声誉已经上升）意识到了这一点，并在2020年将Facebook最头疼的审核工作外包给了一个独立的 "监督委员会"。

The second lesson is that moderation has no clean solutions, even for “technokings” with strong views on free speech. Free expression is not a problem with a solution bounded by the laws of physics that can be hacked together if only enough coders pull an all-nighter. It is a dilemma requiring messy trade-offs that leave no one happy. In such a business, humility and transparency count for a lot.

第二个教训是，审核没有干净的解决方案，即使是对言论自由有强烈看法的 "技术派"。自由表达不是一个有物理定律约束的解决方案的问题，只要有足够多的程序员通宵达旦地工作，才能把它破解。它是一个两难的问题，需要混乱的权衡，没有人会满意。在这样一个行业中，谦逊和透明是非常重要的。

!! pull an all-nighter 通宵工作

sth count for a lot 非常重要

These are novel concepts to some in Silicon Valley, who are impatient to tear up the established ways of doing things. But just as cryptocurrency enthusiasts have recently received a bracing lesson in the value of boring old financial prudence, so Mr Musk and his fellow free-speech enthusiasts are learning why free expression has caused many to scratch their heads over the centuries. Tech valuations have suffered a sharp correction in 2022. It has also been a chastening year for tech egos.

对于硅谷的一些人来说，这些是新的概念，他们迫不及待地要撕毁既定的做事方式。但是，就像加密货币爱好者最近接受了一堂关于无聊的老式金融谨慎的价值的课程一样，马斯克先生和他的同伴们正在学习为什么自由表达在几个世纪以来让许多人挠头。科技界的估值在2022年遭遇了一次急剧修正。对于科技界的自尊心来说，这也是一个令人懊恼的年份。