By Kevin Roose

凯文·罗斯

Listen, liberals. If you don’t think Donald Trump can get reelected in November, you need to spend more time on Facebook.

听着，自由主义者。 如果您不认为唐纳德·特朗普可以在11月再次当选，则需要花更多时间在Facebook上。

Since the 2016 election, I’ve been obsessively tracking how partisan political content is performing on Facebook, the world’s largest and arguably most influential media platform. Every morning, one of the first browser tabs I open is CrowdTangle — a handy Facebook-owned data tool that offers a bird’s-eye view of what’s popular on the platform. I check which politicians and pundits are going viral. I geek out on trending topics. I browse the previous day’s stories to see which got the most reactions, shares and comments.

自2016年大选以来，我一直在迷恋党派政治内容在Facebook(世界上最大，最有影响力的媒体平台)上的表现。 每天早晨，我打开的第一个浏览器选项卡中的一个是CrowdTangle，它是Facebook拥有的一种方便的数据工具，它提供了该平台上热门产品的鸟瞰图。 我检查哪些政客和专家正在传播病毒。 我讨厌热门话题。 我浏览前一天的故事，以了解哪些得到最多的React，分享和评论。

Most days, the leader board looks roughly the same: conservative post after conservative post, with the occasional liberal interloper. (If you want to see these lists for yourselves, you can check out @FacebooksTop10, a Twitter account I created that shows the top 10 most-interacted-with link posts by U.S. Facebook pages every day.)

多数情况下，排行榜看起来大致相同：保守派职位接连保守派职位，偶尔会有自由派闯入者。 (如果您想自己查看这些列表，可以查看@ FacebooksTop10 ，这是我创建的Twitter帐户，每天显示美国Facebook页面上互动次数最多的10个链接)。

It’s no secret that, despite Trump’s claims of Silicon Valley censorship, Facebook has been a boon to him and his allies, and hyperpartisan Facebook pages are nothing new. (In fact, my colleague John Herrman wrote about them four years ago this month.)

众所周知，尽管特朗普宣称要对硅谷进行审查，但Facebook一直是他和他的盟友的福音，而超级党派的Facebook页面也不是什么新鲜事。 (实际上，我的同事约翰·赫尔曼( John Herrman )于本月四月写了关于它们的文章 。)

But what sticks out, when you dig in to the data, is just how dominant the Facebook right truly is. Pro-Trump political influencers have spent years building a well-oiled media machine that swarms around every major news story, creating a torrent of viral commentary that reliably drowns out both the mainstream media and the liberal opposition.

但是，当您深入研究数据时，真正展现出Facebook权利的真正优势是什么。 亲特朗普的政治影响者们花费数年时间建立了一个运转良好的媒体机器，充斥着每个主要新闻报道，创造了一系列病毒式评论，可靠地淹没了主流媒体和自由派反对派。

The result is a kind of parallel media universe that left-of-center Facebook users may never encounter, but that has been stunningly effective in shaping its own version of reality. Inside the right-wing Facebook bubble, Trump’s response to COVID-19 has been strong and effective, Joe Biden is barely capable of forming sentences, and Black Lives Matter is a dangerous group of violent looters.

结果是一种平行媒体世界，而偏心的Facebook用户可能从未遇到过，但在塑造自己的现实版本方面非常有效。 在右翼的Facebook泡沫内部，特朗普对COVID-19的React是强有力和有效的，乔·拜登(Joe Biden)几乎没有能力判刑，而黑住事件(Black Lives Matter)是一群危险的暴力掠夺者。

Trump and his supporters are betting that, despite being behind Biden in the polls, a “silent majority” will carry him to reelection. Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest and most online son, made that argument himself at the Republican National Convention this week. And while I’m not a political analyst, I know enough about the modern media landscape to know that looking at people’s revealed preferences — what they actually read, watch, and click on when nobody’s looking — is often a better indicator of how they’ll act than interviewing them at diners, or listening to what they’re willing to say out loud to a pollster.

特朗普及其支持者押注，尽管在民意调查中落后于拜登，但“沉默的多数”将使他连任。 小总统唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump Jr.)本周在共和党全国代表大会上亲自发表了这一论点。 而且，尽管我不是一名政治分析家，但我对现代媒体环境了解得足够多，因此知道观察人们所揭示的偏好(他们实际阅读，观看和点击的内容)，通常可以更好地表明他们的行为方式。会采取行动，而不是在食客处对他们进行采访，或者听取他们愿意对民意测验者大声说的话。

Maybe Trump’s “silent majority,” in other words, only seems silent because we’re not looking at their Facebook feeds.

换句话说，也许特朗普的“沉默多数”只是显得沉默寡言，因为我们不在看他们的Facebook提要。

”We live in two different countries right now,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist and digital director of Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign. Facebook’s media ecosystem, he said, is “a huge blind spot for people who are up to speed on what’s on the front page of The New York Times and what’s leading the hour on CNN.”

“我们现在生活在两个不同的国家，”共和党数字战略家，马可·鲁比奥(Marco Rubio)2016年竞选活动的数字总监埃里克·威尔逊(Eric Wilson)说。 他说，Facebook的媒体生态系统“对于那些了解《纽约时报》首页上的内容以及CNN上每小时的内容的人们来说是一个巨大的盲点。”

To be sure, Facebook is not the only medium where right-wing content thrives. Millions of Americans still get their news from cable news and talk radio, where conservative voices have dominated for years. Many pro-Trump Facebook influencers also have sizable presences on Twitter, YouTube and other social networks.

可以肯定的是，Facebook不是右翼内容蓬勃发展的唯一媒介。 数以百万计的美国人仍然从有线新闻和谈话广播中获得新闻，多年来，保守的声音一直占据主导地位。 许多亲特朗普的Facebook影响者在Twitter，YouTube和其他社交网络上也有大量存在。

But the right’s dominance on Facebook, specifically, is something to behold.

但是，特别是在Facebook上，该权利的主导地位值得一看。

Here are just a few data points I pulled from CrowdTangle this week:

以下是本周我从CrowdTangle获取的一些数据点：

• The conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has gotten 56 million total interactions on his Facebook page in the last 30 days. That’s more than the main pages of ABC News, NBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and NPR combined. (Data from a different firm, NewsWhip, showed that Mr. Shapiro’s news outlet, The Daily Wire, was the №1 publisher on Facebook in July.)

  过去30天，保守派评论员本·夏皮罗(Ben Shapiro)在他的Facebook页面上获得了5600万次互动。 这超出了ABC新闻，NBC新闻，《纽约时报》，《华盛顿邮报》和NPR的总和 。 (来自另一家公司NewsWhip的数据显示 ，夏皮罗先生的新闻媒体《每日电讯报》是7月份Facebook上排名第一的出版商。)

• Facebook posts by Breitbart, the far-right news outlet, have been shared four million times in the past 30 days, roughly three times as many as posts from the official pages of every Democratic member of the U.S. Senate combined.过去30天，最右端的新闻媒体Breitbart在Facebook上分享的帖子已被分享了400万次，大约是美国参议院每个民主党成员官方页面上的帖子加起来的三倍。
• The most-shared Facebook post containing the term “Black Lives Matter” over the past six months is a June video by the right-wing commentators The Hodgetwins, which calls the racial justice movement a “damn lie.” The second most-shared Black Lives Matter post? A different viral video from The Hodgetwins, this one calling the movement a “leftist lie.” (The Hodgetwins also have the 4th, 6th, and 12th most shared posts.)在过去六个月中，包含“ Black Lives Matter”一词的最多人分享的Facebook帖子是右翼评论员The Hodgetwins在6月发布的视频中，该视频将种族正义运动称为“该死的谎言”。 第二个分享最多的《黑色生活问题》帖子？ The Hodgetwins的另一段病毒视频，称该运动为“左派谎言”。 (Hodgetwins的共享职位也排名第四，第六和第十二。)
• Terrence K. Williams, a conservative comedian and Trump supporter, has averaged 86,500 interactions per Facebook post in August, more than twice as many as Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, who has averaged 39,000 interactions per post. (Mr. Trump outdoes them both, naturally, with an average of 92,000 interactions per post.)保守的喜剧演员和特朗普的支持者特伦斯·威廉姆斯(Terrence K.Williams)在八月的每个Facebook帖子平均互动次数为86,500，是民主党总统候选人提名的乔·拜登(Joe Biden)的两倍多，后者平均每个帖子互动次数为39,000。 (特朗普先生自然胜过他们两个，每个帖子平均有92,000次互动。)

A few caveats, before my Democratic readers jump off the nearest pier.

在我的民主党读者跳离最近的码头之前，请注意以下几点。

These figures include only posts on public pages, in public groups, and by verified accounts, and they don’t include Facebook ads, where the Biden campaign has been outspending the Trump campaign in recent weeks. Counting Facebook interactions doesn’t tell you how someone felt about a post, so it’s possible some conservative posts are being hate-shared by liberals. And Facebook has argued that engagement isn’t the same thing as popularity.

这些数字仅包括公开页面上，公共团体中以及通过经过验证的帐户的帖子，并且不包括Facebook广告，在最近几周，拜登竞选活动的支出超过了特朗普竞选活动。 计算Facebook互动次数并不能告诉您某人对帖子的看法，因此一些保守派帖子可能被自由主义者所讨厌。 而Facebook则认为参与度与人气并不相同。

“These points look mostly at how people engage with content, which should not be confused with how many people actually see it on Facebook,” Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesman, said in a statement. Osborne added that “when you look at the content that gets the most reach across Facebook, it’s not at all as partisan as this reporting suggests.” (Facebook does not disclose this type of data publicly, except once in a while in response to my tweets.)

Facebook发言人乔·奥斯本(Joe Osborne)在一份声明中说：“这些观点主要是看人们如何与内容互动，不应与实际上在Facebook上看到多少人混淆。” 奥斯本补充说：“当您查看在Facebook上影响最大的内容时，根本没有这份报告所暗示的那样有偏见。” (除了不时回应我的推文，Facebook不会公开披露此类数据。)

Democrats aren’t totally absent from Facebook’s upper echelon. Ridin’ With Biden, a pro-Biden page started in April by the founders of the liberal Facebook page Occupy Democrats, has quadrupled its following over the past three months, and routinely gets more engagement than Breitbart and other right-wing heavy-hitters. Individual posts by Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats have broken through in recent weeks.

Facebook的高层人士并不完全没有民主人士。 Ridin'With Biden是由自由的Facebook页面Occupy Democrats的创始人于4月开始的支持拜登的页面，在过去三个月中，其访问者增加了三倍，并且通常比Breitbart和其他右翼的重击者获得更多的参与度。 最近几周，伯尼·桑德斯(Bernie Sanders)，巴拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)和其他知名民主党人的个人职位已突破。

And political campaigners have pointed out, correctly, that being popular on the internet isn’t a guarantee of electoral success. (“Retweets don’t vote,” as an experienced Democratic operative once told me.) In addition, Facebook’s older, more conservative user base may not reflect what’s happening on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, which draw a younger crowd.

政治活动家正确地指出，在互联网上流行并不能保证选举成功。 (如经验丰富的民主党特工曾告诉我的那样，“转推不投票”。)此外，Facebook年龄较大，较为保守的用户群可能无法反映出吸引了年轻人的Instagram和TikTok等平台的状况。

Still, the platform’s sheer scale makes it vital to understand. As of 2019, 70% of American adults used Facebook, and 43% of Americans got news on the platform, according to the Pew Research Center. (Those numbers may have increased because of the pandemic.) We know that the company’s product decisions can make or break political movements, move fringe ideas into the mainstream, or amplify partisan polarization. Registering 4 million voters before the November election, as Facebook has said it would do, could be a decisive force all on its own. (Typically, higher turnout benefits Democrats, but given what we know about the media diets of hyperactive Facebook users, who knows?)

尽管如此，该平台的庞大规模仍使其理解至关重要。 皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)的数据显示，截至2019年，有70％的美国成年人使用Facebook，而43％的美国人在该平台上获得了新闻。 (由于大流行，这些数字可能有所增加。)我们知道，公司的产品决策可以制定或破坏政治运动，将边缘观念变为主流，或扩大党派分化。 正如Facebook所说的那样 ，在11月的大选之前注册400万选民可能完全是决定性力量。 (通常，更高的投票率使民主党人受益，但鉴于我们对活跃的Facebook用户的媒体饮食了解多少，谁知道呢？)

The reason right-wing content performs so well on Facebook is no mystery. The platform is designed to amplify emotionally resonant posts, and conservative commentators are skilled at turning passionate grievances into powerful algorithm fodder. The company also appears willing to bend its rules for popular conservative influencers. A recent report by NBC News, citing a leaked internal report, found that Facebook executives had removed “strikes” from the accounts of several high-profile conservative pages that had shared viral misinformation in violation of the company’s rules.

右翼内容在Facebook上表现出色的原因并不神秘。 该平台旨在放大情感上的共鸣，保守的评论员善于将热情高涨的抱怨转化为强大的算法饲料。 该公司似乎也愿意为受欢迎的保守影响者改变规则。 NBC News最近的一份报告援引内部泄漏的一份报告，发现Facebook高管已从数个引人注目的保守派网页的帐户中删除了“罢工”，这些页面共享了病毒误导信息，违反了公司的规定。

Over the past few years, I’ve come to view my daily Facebook data-dive as a kind of early-warning system — a rough gauge of what’s grabbing America’s attention on any given day, and which stories and perspectives will likely break through in the days to come.

在过去的几年中，我开始将我的日常Facebook数据潜水视为一种预警系统-粗略衡量每天在吸引美国关注的是什么，以及哪些故事和观点可能会突破未来的日子。

And looking at Facebook’s lopsided political media ecosystem might be a useful reality check for Democrats who think Biden will coast to victory in November.

对于认为拜登将在11月取得胜利的民主党人来说，查看Facebook偏颇的政治媒体生态系统可能是一个有用的现实检查。

After all, Trump’s surging popularity showed up online before it showed up in any polls in 2016. And even though much about Facebook, and American politics, has changed in the past four years, the basic laws of social media physics still apply. Controversy wins. Negative beats positive. All attention looks good to an algorithm.

毕竟，特朗普的迅猛人气在网上出现，然后在2016年的任何民意调查中出现。尽管在过去四年中有关Facebook和美国政治的很多变化，社交媒体物理的基本定律仍然适用。 争议胜出。 负数拍打正数。 所有注意力都集中在算法上。

Brad Parscale — the digital director of Trump’s 2016 campaign — told “60 Minutes” that of everything Trump did that year, the thing that actually moved the needle was Facebook.

特朗普2016年竞选活动的数字总监布拉德·帕斯卡尔(Brad Parscale)告诉《 60分钟》，特朗普当年所做的一切，实际上动摇了一切的是Facebook。

“Facebook was the method,” Parscale said. “It was the highway which his car drove on.”

“ Facebook是方法，” Parscale说。 “这是他的汽车行驶的高速公路。”

That highway is still open. And right now, the fastest cars on it have MAGA bumper stickers.

那条高速公路仍然开放。 现在，最快的汽车上贴有MAGA保险杠贴纸。

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