2019年经济学人 Facebook推出“天秤币”(5)（在线收听）

Calls for a Facebook constitution along these lines have grown louder as the social network’s influence on world affairs, from election-meddling in America to genocide in Myanmar, has become apparent. Mr Zuckerberg is no stranger to such thinking. In 2009 Facebook let users vote on big changes in its privacy policies but abandoned the experiment with global democracy a few years later. Last year Mr Zuckerberg announced that Facebook wanted to set up a “content review board” of independent experts—a kind of “Supreme Court”, in his words, which would make “the final judgment call on what should be acceptable speech”.

随着Facebook对世界事务的影响越来越明显，从干涉美国大选到缅甸种族灭绝，要求制定符合这些原则的Facebook章程的呼声越来越高。扎克伯格对这种想法并不陌生。2009年，Facebook允许用户对其隐私政策的重大变化进行投票，但几年后就放弃了全球民主的实验。去年，扎克伯格宣布Facebook想要建立一个由独立专家组成的“内容审查委员会”——用他的话来说，这是一种“最高法院”，它将“对什么应该是可接受的言论做出最终判断”。

Asked whether Libra could serve as a model for Facebook, David Marcus, who is in charge of the project, replies that it marks “a coming of age, the moment we recognise that there are some things that we shouldn’t control—and a radical departure from the traditional way of operating things”. Perhaps. But checks and balances wouldalmost certainlymake Facebookless profitable. It would be ironic if a new digital currency marked the beginning of the end of Facebook’s money-minting days.

当被问及天秤币能否成为Facebook的典型模范时，负责该项目的大卫?马库斯回应称，这标志着“一个时代的到来，我们意识到有些事情我们不应该控制——这与传统的运营方式截然不同”。 也许。但制衡几乎肯定会降低facebook的盈利能力。如果一种新的数字货币标志着Facebook赚钱时代的终结，那将是具有讽刺意味的。