Can Tech Executives Be Held Responsible for What Happens on Their Platforms?
ADAM SATARIANO
Telegram的创始人帕维尔·杜罗夫的被捕表明这个转变已经发生。 Jim Wilson/The New York TimesThis month, X closed its Brazil operations after one of its executives was threatened with arrest for not taking down certain content. Last year, Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, pleaded guilty to federal money-laundering violations that took place on his cryptocurrency platform. In 2021, Twitter executives in India faced arrest over posts that the government wanted removed from the site.本月，X关闭了巴西业务，起因是一名当地高管因未删除某些内容而受到逮捕威胁。去年，加密货币平台币安的创始人赵长鹏对平台违反联邦反洗钱法的指控认罪。2021年，Twitter在印度的高管因政府希望删帖而面临逮捕。And on Saturday, Pavel Durov, who founded the online communications tool Telegram, was arrested in France as part of an investigation into the platform’s complicity in crimes including possession and distribution of child sexual abuse imagery.上周六，在线通讯工具Telegram的创始人帕维尔·杜罗夫在法国被逮捕，这是法国对该平台涉嫌参与拥有并传播儿童遭性虐待图片等犯罪行为所做调查的一部分。For years, internet company executives rarely faced personal liability in Western democracies for what took place on their platforms. But as law enforcement agencies, regulators and policymakers ramp up scrutiny of online platforms and exchanges, they are increasingly considering when to hold company leaders directly responsible.多年来，在西方民主国家，互联网公司的高管很少因平台上发生的事情而承担个人责任。执法机构正在越来越多地考虑是否让公司领导人承担直接责任的问题。That shift was punctuated by Mr. Durov’s arrest over the weekend, raising questions over whether tech executives like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg also risk being arrested when they next set foot on European soil.杜罗夫上周末的被捕表明了这个转变已经发生，同时也提出了像Meta的扎克伯格等科技公司高管下次踏上欧洲土地时是否也会面临被捕风险的问题。For now, tech executives have little to fear, with cases like Mr. Durov’s likely to be outliers, experts said. Historically, companies have been held responsible for a platform’s transgressions, rather than individuals. And legally, the bar is high in the United States and Europe to prosecute individuals for activities at their companies, especially with U.S. laws like Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet platforms from being responsible for harmful speech.专家们表示，就目前而言，科技高管还不用担心，因为杜罗夫的这种案子可能是特殊情况。从历史上看，平台违规行为的责任者是公司，而不是个人。从法律上看，美国和欧洲国家因公司活动对拥有公司的个人提起诉讼的门槛很高，尤其是在美国，因为美国有保护互联网平台免于对平台上的有害言论负法律责任的《通信规范法》第230条等法律。But the threshold for holding executives liable for what takes place on their sites is lowering in specific areas, particularly child safety, said TJ McIntyre, an associate professor at University College Dublin’s School of Law.都柏林大学法学院副教授T·J·麦金泰尔表示，但在某些具体领域，尤其是涉及儿童人身安全方面，因网站上发生的事情追究网站高管法律责任的门槛正在降低。Last year, Britain passed an online safety law that can hold tech leaders personally responsible if their company is made aware of content that risks child safety and systematically fails to remove it. Even Section 230 doesn’t apply to some forms of outlawed speech, such as child sexual abuse.去年，英国通过了一项网络安全法，如果科技公司意识到了其平台上存在危害儿童人身安全的内容，但未能系统性地将其删除的话，科技公司领导人将承担个人责任。即使是美国的第230条也不适用于某种形式的非法言论，例如描述儿童遭受性虐待的言论。“There’s a 30-year arc here,” Mr. McIntyre said. Since the 1990s, he said, tech executives have not typically been held responsible for what users did on their platforms, though that approach is now being questioned by those who want stronger accountability.“这条主线有30年的历史，”麦金泰尔说。他说，自20世纪90年代以来，科技高管们通常不会为用户在他们平台上的行为负责，但这种做法目前正受到希望加强问责制的人的质疑。Mr. Durov, 39, has not been formally charged with any offenses and could remain in the custody of French authorities through Wednesday. While French authorities have provided few specifics, he faces a raft of potential charges related to activities on Telegram, including child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking, fraud, money laundering, abetting criminal transactions and refusing to cooperate with law enforcement.现年39岁的杜罗夫尚未被正式指控犯有任何罪行，法国当局可能会将他拘留到周三。虽然法国当局没有提供具体细节，但他面临一系列与Telegram平台上的活动有关的潜在指控，包括儿童遭受性虐待的内容、贩毒、欺诈、洗钱、怂恿犯罪交易，以及拒绝与执法部门合作等。Mr. Durov made himself a target with an anti-authority ethos that governments should not restrict what people say and do online except in rare instances, experts said. Unlike Meta, Google and other online platforms that typically comply with government orders, Telegram was also called out by French authorities for failing to cooperate with law enforcement.专家们说，杜罗夫反权威的道德观让他本人成为打击目标，他认为政府不应该限制人们在网上的言行，除非在极少数情况下。与通常遵守政府命令的Meta、谷歌和其他在线平台不同，Telegram也曾因不与**部门配合而受到法国当局的警告。After Mr. Durov’s arrest, Telegram said that it abided by E.U. laws and that it was “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”Telegram在杜罗夫被捕后表示，该平台遵守欧盟法律，并表示，“声称平台或其所有者应对滥用平台的行为负责任是荒谬的”。Tech companies are paying close attention to the legal liability that their executives may face. This year, Meta successfully fought to have Mr. Zuckerberg, its chief executive, removed as a named defendant in a lawsuit brought by New Mexico’s attorney general against the company for child protection failures.科技公司正在密切关注高管可能面临的法律责任。今年，Meta成功争取到将首席执行官扎克伯格的名字从新墨西哥州总检察长对该公司提起的诉讼中撤掉，诉讼涉及该公司未能保护儿童的问题。In other authoritarian countries, U.S. tech companies have sometimes pulled out their employees to prevent them from being arrested. The concern is employees will be used as leverage to force companies to do things like remove content unfavorable to the government.在其他**国家，美国科技企业为了防止员工被捕，有时会将他们撤离。这些公司担心，员工将被用作筹码，迫使公司做一些事情，比如删除不利于政府的内容。Previously, only a few notable cases surfaced in which tech executives were seen as potentially liable for activities that took place on their services. In 1998, Felix Somm, a former executive at CompuServe, an online services company, was given a suspended two-year sentence in Germany for complicity in the proliferation of pornography on the internet. He was later acquitted. In 2002, Timothy Koogle, a former chief executive of Yahoo, faced charges in France for the sale of Nazi memorabilia on the website. He was also later acquitted.此前，仅在少数曝光的引人注目的案件中，科技公司高管被认为可能要对服务平台上的活动负有责任。1998年，在线服务公司CompuServe的前高管菲利克斯·宋姆曾在德国被判处两年有期徒刑、缓期执行，罪名是在互联网上传播色情内容的同谋。他后来被判无罪。2002年，雅虎前首席执行官蒂莫西·库戈勒曾在法国面临指控，因为有人在雅虎网站上出售纳粹纪念品。他后来也被判无罪。In 2012, Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, was arrested by U.S. authorities for copyright infringement related to his website. Ross W. Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road online black market, was convicted in the United States for facilitating illicit drug sales in 2015. In 2016, Brazil briefly imprisoned a Facebook executive for failing to turn over WhatsApp messaging data in a drug trafficking investigation.2012年，Megaupload的创始人金姆·道特康姆曾被美国当局逮捕，因为其网站上有侵犯版权行为。2015年，名为“丝绸之路”的在线黑市创始人罗斯·乌布利希在美国被判有罪，罪名是为非法毒品销售提供便利。2016年，巴西曾短暂监禁了一名Facebook高管，因为他没有向一项贩毒调查移交WhatsApp短信通讯平台的数据。These instances were capped over the weekend by Mr. Durov’s arrest.杜罗夫上周末被逮捕这件事已超过了以前的情况。One challenge for prosecutors and law enforcement agencies is proving a tech executive had knowledge of illegal activity on their platforms and did not try to curb the harms, said Daphne Keller, a professor of internet law at Stanford University Law School.斯坦福大学法学院研究互联网法的教授达芙妮·凯勒表示，检察官和执法机构面临的一个挑战是，证明科技高管知道他们的平台上存在非法活动，却没有试图遏制这些危害。That’s difficult to demonstrate, since TikTok, YouTube, Snap and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have worked to take down and report illegal content to law enforcement officials, so their executives can argue they tried to do the right thing.这很难证明，因为TikTok、YouTube、Snap，以及拥有 Facebook和Instagram的Meta一直在努力删除非法内容，并将这些内容报告给执法官员，所以这些平台的高管能辩称，他们一直在努力做正确的事情。“Knowledge is the key issue here,” said Ms. Keller, a former lawyer for Google. “It’s the usual trigger for anyone losing immunity.”“是否知情是这里的一个关键问题，”凯勒说，她曾担任谷歌的律师。“这通常是一个人失去起诉豁免的触发因素。”Still, the risk of prosecution is needed to force tech companies to act, said Bruce Daisley, who was a vice president at Twitter before Elon Musk bought the site in 2022 and renamed it X.尽管如此，起诉风险是迫使科技公司采取行动的必要条件，布鲁斯·戴斯利说，他曾任Twitter副总裁，那是在2022年埃隆·马斯克收购了该网站、将其改名为X之前。“That threat of personal sanction is much more effective on executives than the risk of corporate fines,” Mr. Daisley wrote recently in The Guardian.“与公司被罚款的风险相比，个人受制裁的威胁对高管们来说要有效得多，”戴斯利最近在《卫报》上写道。Mr. Musk, who takes a hands-off approach to policing content on X, may be putting himself at particular risk just like Mr. Durov, said Kate Klonick, an associate professor at St. John’s Law School who is researching E.U. regulation of online platforms.马斯克对X上的内容采取不干涉的管理方式，他也许正在将自己置于杜罗夫面临的那种特定的危险之中，圣约翰法学院副教授凯特·克洛尼克说，她正在研究欧盟对在线平台的监管。“If I was a betting person, I would say that there will be a day that Elon Musk is on trial or be in prison in some country because of his refusal and his thumbing the nose at the rule of law,” she said.“如果我是个爱打赌的人，我会说，有朝一日，埃隆·马斯克会因为拒绝监管、蔑视法律而在某个国家受审或入狱，”她说。Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment, but that prospect appears to be on his mind, too. The tech mogul, who has declared Mr. Durov’s arrest an affront to free expression, posted on X on Saturday: “POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme.” 马斯克没有回复置评请求，但他似乎也设想过这种前景。这位科技大亨宣称逮捕杜罗夫是对言论自由的侮辱，他周六在X上发帖：“观点：这是2030年的欧洲，你却因为喜欢一个米姆而被处死。”
