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| China fined the internet giant Alibaba a record $2.8 billion this month for anticompetitive practices, ordered an overhaul of its sister financial company and warned other technology firms to obey Beijing’s rules. | 中国本月以反竞争行为为由，对互联网巨头阿里巴巴开出了创纪录的182亿元罚单，并责令其姊妹金融公司进行全面整改，同时警告其他科技企业遵守政府规则。 |
| Now the European Commission plans to unveil far-reaching regulations to limit technologies powered by artificial intelligence. | 欧盟委员会(European Commission)现在计划公布影响深远的规则，对由人工智能驱动的技术进行限制。 |
| And in the United States, President Biden has stacked his administration with trustbusters who have taken aim at Amazon, Facebook and Google. | 美国总统拜登已让大批打击垄断者加入到他的政府里，这些人已将目标对准亚马逊(Amazon)、Facebook和谷歌(Google)。 |
| Around the world, governments are moving simultaneously to limit the power of tech companies with an urgency and breadth that no single industry had experienced before. Their motivation varies. In the United States and Europe, it is concern that tech companies are stifling competition, spreading misinformation and eroding privacy; in Russia and elsewhere, it is to silence protest movements and tighten political control; in China, it is some of both. | 世界各地的政府正在同时采取行动，对科技企业的影响力进行限制，以前所未有的紧迫性和广度向一个单一行业开刀。各地政府的动机不同。美国和欧洲的政府担心科技企业正在阻挠竞争、传播虚假信息，并侵蚀隐私；俄罗斯和其他地方的政府为的是压制抗议运动，加强政治控制；中国政府两方面的考虑都有。 |
| While nations and tech firms have jockeyed for primacy for years, the latest actions have pushed the industry to a tipping point that could reshape how the global internet works and change the flows of digital data. | 虽然各国政府多年来一直在与科技企业较量，谋取至高无上地位，但最近的行动已将该行业推向一个转折点，可能重塑全球互联网的运作，改变数字资料的流通。 |
| Australia passed a law to force Google and Facebook to pay publishers for news. Britain is creating its own tech regulator to police the industry. India adopted new powers over social media. Russia throttled Twitter’s traffic. And Myanmar and Cambodia put broad internet restrictions in place. | 澳大利亚通过了一项强迫谷歌和Facebook向出版商支付新闻使用费的法律。英国正在设立本国的科技监管机构，对行业进行监管。印度已让政府对社交媒体拥有了新的权力。俄罗斯对Twitter上的信息进行了限制。缅甸和柬埔寨对互联网采取了广泛的限制措施。 |
| China, which had left its tech companies free to compete and consolidate, tightened restrictions on digital finance and sharpened an antimonopoly law late last year. This year, it began compelling internet firms like Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance to publicly promise to follow its rules against monopolies. | 曾对国内科技企业的竞争和巩固地位听之任之的中国，去年年底收紧了对数字金融的限制，加强了反垄断法。今年，中国开始迫使阿里巴巴、腾讯和字节跳动等互联网公司公开承诺遵守反垄断规则。 |
| “It is unprecedented to see this kind of parallel struggle globally,” said Daniel Crane, a law professor at the University of Michigan and an antitrust expert. American trustbusting of steel, oil and railroad companies in the 19th century was more confined, he said, as was the regulatory response to the 2008 financial crisis. | “在全球范围内看到这些并行努力是前所未有的，”密歇根大学(University of Michigan)法学教授、反垄断专家丹尼尔·克莱恩(Daniel Crane)说。他说，美国在19世纪针对钢铁、石油和铁路公司的反垄断行动更具局域性，针对2008年金融危机时的监管做法也如此。 |
| Now, Mr. Crane said, “the same fundamental question is being asked globally: Are we comfortable with companies like Google having this much power?” | 克莱恩说，现在，“全球都在问同一个根本问题：我们对像谷歌这样的公司拥有这么大的影响力放心吗？” |
| Underlying all of the disputes is a common thread: power. The 10 largest tech firms, which have become gatekeepers in commerce, finance, entertainment and communications, now have a combined market capitalization of more than $10 trillion. In gross domestic product terms, that would rank them as the world’s third-largest economy. | 所有这些争端背后贯穿着一条共同的主线：影响力。已成为商业、金融、娱乐和通信行业守门者的十家最大的科技企业，目前的市值总额已超过10万亿美元。按生产总值来算，它们加在一起相当于全球第三大经济体。 |
| Yet while governments agree that tech clout has grown too expansive, there has been little coordination on solutions. Competing policies have led to geopolitical friction. Last month, the Biden administration said it could put tariffs on countries that imposed new taxes on American tech companies. | 然而，尽管各国政府一致认为科技的势力已变得过于广泛，但在解决方案上几乎没有协调的做法。相互对抗的政策导致了地缘政治摩擦。拜登政府上个月曾表示，可能会对那些对美国科技公司征收新税的国家加征关税。 |
| The result is that the internet as it was originally conceived — a borderless digital space where ideas of all stripes contend freely — may not survive, researchers said. Even in parts of the world that do not censor their digital spaces, they said, a patchwork of rules would give people different access to content, privacy protections and freedoms online depending on where they logged on. | 研究人员说，这些政策的结果是，最初设想的那种互联网——一个无边界的、允许各种各样的想法自由竞争的数字空间——可能不会继续存在下去。他们说，即使是在世界上不审查数字空间的地方，这些拼拼凑凑的规则也会让人们由于登录地点的不同，在内容的获取、隐私保护和各种自由上有所不同。 |
| “The idea of an open and interoperable internet is being exposed as incredibly fragile,” said Quinn McKew, executive director of Article 19, a digital rights advocacy group. | “开放的、可互操作的互联网的设想正在显露出其极其脆弱的一面，”数码权利倡导组织Article 19的执行主任奎因·麦丘(Quinn McKew)说。 |
| Tech companies are fighting back. Amazon and Facebook have created their own entities to adjudicate conflicts over speech and to police their sites. In the United States and in the European Union, the companies have spent heavily on lobbying. | 科技企业正在奋力抵抗。亚马逊和Facebook都已成立了自己的部门，对有关言论的冲突进行裁决，监督自己的网站。在美国和欧盟，这些公司在游说上已经花了大量资金。 |
| Some of them, acknowledging their power, have indicated support for more regulations while also warning about the consequences of a splintered internet. | 这些公司中有些承认自己的影响力，表示支持加强监管，但同时也对一个分裂的互联网的后果提出了警告。 |
| “The decisions lawmakers make in the months and years ahead will have a profound impact on the internet, international alliances and the global economy,” said Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of policy and communications. | “立法者们在未来数月乃至数年做出的决定，将对互联网、国际上的联盟，以及全球经济产生深远的影响，”Facebook负责政策与传讯的副总裁尼克·克莱格(Nick Clegg)说。 |
| Mr. Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister, added that Facebook hoped “the techno-democracies in the U.S., Europe, India and elsewhere” would “work together to preserve and enhance the democratic values at the heart of the open internet and prevent it from fragmenting further.” | 曾任英国副首相的克莱格还说，Facebook希望“美国、欧洲、印度和其他地方的科技民主国家”会“共同努力，维护和加强位于开放互联网核心地位的民主价值观，防止互联网的进一步碎裂”。 |
| Kent Walker, Google’s senior vice president of global affairs, also called for nations to coordinate. “Balkanized, inconsistent regulations won’t help and could actually make things worse,” he said. “But done right, well-aligned rules can promote innovation, increase competitiveness and help consumers and small businesses.” | 谷歌负责全球事务的高级副总裁肯特·沃克(Kent Walker)也呼吁各国进行协调。“分裂的、前后不一致的监管不仅无济于事，实际上可能会帮倒忙，”他说。“但如果监管得当，协调一致的规则能促进创新，提高竞争力，也能帮助消费者和小企业。” |
| Amazon said it welcomed scrutiny, but “the presumption that success can only be the result of anticompetitive behavior is simply wrong.” | 亚马逊说它欢迎认真彻底的审查，但“认为成功的原因只能是反竞争行为的假设根本上是错误的”。 |
| Apple, Alibaba, its sister financial company Ant Group, and the Chinese gaming and social media giant Tencent, which owns the WeChat app, declined to comment. | 苹果(Apple)、阿里巴巴及其姊妹金融公司蚂蚁金服，以及拥有微信应用程序的中国游戏和社交媒体巨头腾讯均拒绝置评。 |
| While a tech backlash has gathered momentum for years, it escalated in December. That was when regulators and lawmakers globally made a series of announcements on two main paths of attack against the industry: antitrust and content moderation. | 强列反对科技行业的势头多年来一直在上升，并在去年12月有所加剧。去年底，全球各地的监管者和立法者发布了一系列通告，从两个主要方面对科技行业发起了攻击：反垄断和内容审核。 |
| On Dec. 9, the Federal Trade Commission and nearly every state filed bipartisan lawsuits accusing Facebook of acting anticompetitively. Less than a week later, European policymakers introduced a competition law and new requirements for blocking online hate speech. On Dec. 24, Chinese regulators opened an antitrust investigation into Alibaba after scuppering an initial public offering from Ant. | 去年12月9日，美国联邦贸易委员会(Federal Trade Commission)和几乎所有的州都提起得到两党支持的诉讼，指控Facebook有反竞争行为。不到一周后，欧洲的政策制定者出台了一项竞争法案和删除网上仇恨言论的新要求。中国监管机构在叫停了蚂蚁金服的首次公开募股后，于12月24日对阿里巴巴展开了反垄断调查。 |
| Antitrust and content moderation have been where tech companies are most vulnerable. Google, Facebook, Apple, Alibaba, Amazon and other companies clearly dominate online advertising, search, e-commerce and app marketplaces, and have faced questions about whether they have unduly used their clout to buy competitors, promote their own products ahead of others and block rivals. | 反垄断和内容审核一直是科技公司最易受攻击之处。谷歌、Facebook、苹果、阿里巴巴、亚马逊及其他公司显然主导着在线广告、搜索、电子商务和应用程序市场，它们也一直面临人们对它们是否不适当地利用自己的影响力，收购竞争对手，抢先推广自己的产品，阻止竞争对手的质疑。 |
| The companies also face scrutiny about how hate speech and other noxious online material can spill into the offline world, leading to calls to better control content. | 这些公司也面临着有关仇恨言论和其他有害的网上内容如何影响线下世界的审查，引发了对内容加强控制的呼声。 |
| The antitrust push has especially sharpened in the United States, with landmark suits filed against Google and Facebook last year. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have said they are drafting new antitrust, privacy and speech regulations targeting Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon. They have also proposed trimming a law that shields sites like YouTube, which Google owns, from lawsuits over content posted by their users. | 美国尤其加强了本国的反垄断努力，去年对谷歌和Facebook提起了有里程碑意义的诉讼。共和党和民主党的立法者表示，他们正起草针对Facebook、谷歌、苹果和亚马逊的反垄断、保护隐私，以及言论规则的新法案。他们还提出要修改一项法律，该法律保护像谷歌旗下的YouTube这样的网站不因其用户发布的内容而受到诉讼。 |
| “This is a monopoly moment. Not just for the United States but for the entire world,” the chairman of the House antitrust subcommittee, David Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island, said in a statement. “Countries need to work together in order to take on the monopoly power held by the largest tech platforms and restore competition and innovation to the digital economy.” | “这是一个垄断的时刻。不只是在美国，而且是在全世界，”众议院反垄断小组委员会主席、罗德岛民主党人戴维·西西林(David Cicilline)在一份声明中说。“为了对付最大的科技平台拥有的垄断影响力，恢复数字经济的竞争和创新，各国需要一起努力。” |
| Mr. Biden has also picked tech critics for key administration roles. Tim Wu, a law professor who supports a breakup of Facebook, joined the White House last month, while Lina Khan, a law professor who has been influential on tech antitrust, was nominated to a seat on the Federal Trade Commission. | 拜登也已为政府的重要职位选择了对技术持批评态度的人。支持拆分Facebook的法学教授蒂姆·吴(Tim Wu)上月成了一名白宫工作人员，在科技反垄断领域颇具影响力的法学教授莉娜·汗(Lina Khan)已被提名为联邦贸易委员会委员。 |
| In Brussels, European Union officials are working on new laws to force Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to speedily remove toxic material and disclose more information about what they allow on their sites. A proposed antitrust law would also lower the threshold for intervention against platforms. | 欧盟官员正在布鲁塞尔制定新法律，以迫使Facebook、Twitter和YouTube迅速删除有害内容，并披露更多有关允许哪些内容在它们网站上发布的信息。拟议中的反垄断法也将降低对这些平台进行干预的门槛。 |
| European officials are also taking aim at emerging technologies before they become mainstream. Draft regulations, to be released on Wednesday, will address the risks of artificial intelligence, potentially restricting how companies use the software to make decisions and influence people’s behavior. | 欧洲官员也正在新兴技术成为主流前把目标对准它们。周三公布的法规草案将提出针对人工智能危险的解决方案，可能会对企业用人工智能软件进行决策、影响人们行为的做法进行限制。 |
| “As the power of digital platforms has grown, it’s become increasingly clear that we need something more to keep that power in check,” Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission executive vice president overseeing digital policy, said in a recent speech. | “随着数字平台的影响力不断增长，我们需要更多控制这种影响力的东西，这正在变得越来越明显，”欧盟委员会(European Commission)负责数字政策的执行副主席玛格丽特·韦斯塔格(Margrethe Vestager)在最近一个讲话中说。 |
| Some tech companies have issued legal threats and ultimatums against the new rules. But they have also bowed to government demands in several countries. | 有些科技公司已为反对新规定发出了法律威胁和最后通牒。但也有几个国家的科技企业向政府的要求做出让步。 |
| Australia offers a glimpse of that. Over the last year, the country dueled with Google and Facebook over a proposed law that would require them to pay news publishers for content shared on their platforms. To protest the legislation, Google threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia. In February, Facebook blocked the sharing of news links completely. | 澳大利亚提供了科技企业反抗的例子。在过去一年里，该国与谷歌和Facebook就一项拟议中的法律展开了较量，该法律要求谷歌和Facebook为其平台上分享的内容向新闻出版商付费。谷歌为抗议这项立法，威胁要让其搜索引擎在澳大利亚不可用。今年2月，Facebook彻底屏蔽了在其澳大利亚平台上分享的新闻链接。 |
| Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and a critic of tech power, said he opposed the Australian law because people would not be able to link freely on the web. He called that “inconsistent with how the web has been able to operate over the past three decades.” | 万维网的发明者和技术影响力批评者蒂姆·伯纳斯-李(Tim Berners-Lee)说，他反对澳大利亚的这项法律，因为那会让人们无法自由链接万维网上的内容。他说这“与万维网在过去30年的运作方式不一致”。 |
| Australia passed the law anyway. Facebook and Google are now paying some media companies for news. | 该法律仍在澳大利亚获得了通过。Facebook和谷歌目前在向一些媒体公司支付新闻使用费。 |
| The starkest turn against the tech companies has been in China. For years, Beijing blocked foreign websites and policed content on domestic platforms, but let homegrown tech firms like Alibaba and Tencent buy rivals, develop new products and expand. | 科技公司遭受的最严重转折是在中国。虽然中国政府多年来一直对外国网站进行封锁，对国内平台上的内容进行审查，但也允许阿里巴巴和腾讯等本土科技企业收购竞争对手，开发新产品，不断扩张。 |
| That changed last year. In regulatory and legal proposals, Beijing telegraphed its desire to bring to heel an industry characterized by cutthroat competition and huge influence over sensitive political issues like labor and data security. | 这种情况在去年发生了变化。在监管和法律草案中，北京释放出让科技行业就范的愿望，这个行业曾以残酷无情的竞争为特点，在劳工和数据安全等政治敏感问题上拥有巨大的影响力。 |
| Even so, few were prepared for the whip-crack speed of Beijing’s enforcement. In November, officials halted Ant’s initial public offering days before it was scheduled, then opened the antimonopoly investigation into Alibaba in December. The one-two punch was a shocking blow to Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder and an entrepreneurial icon, who in October had riled state media after he likened state-run banks to pawnshops. | 尽管如此，几乎没有人对北京执法的极度和速度有所准备。去年11月，官方在蚂蚁金服原定首次公开发行股票的前几天对其上市叫停，随后在12月对阿里巴巴展开了反垄断调查。这两记重击对阿里巴巴创始人、被创业者奉为偶像的马云来说，是一个令人震惊的打击。马云曾在去年12月把国有银行比作当铺，激怒了官方媒体。 |
| Beijing ratcheted up pressure on Mr. Ma’s companies this month with the $2.8 billion fine of Alibaba. On April 12, China also ordered Ant to undergo a “rectification plan” to change the way it runs investment and credit products. | 中国政府在本月加大了对马云公司的压力。先是对阿里巴巴处以182亿元的罚款，又在4月12日对蚂蚁金服提出了“整改方案”，改变其经营投资和信贷产品的方式。 |
| The next day, regulators summoned 34 of China’s largest internet firms, including Tencent and ByteDance, the owner of the video site TikTok, and instructed them to “give full play to the cautionary example of the Alibaba case.” The companies were given a month to conduct a self-inspection and publicly promise to curb anticompetitive behavior and follow Chinese laws on everything from data protection and taxes to speech. | 次日，监管机构召集了34家最大的中国互联网公司，包括腾讯和视频网站TikTok的所有者字节跳动，要求它们“充分发挥阿里案的警示作用”。这些公司被要求在一个月内完成自查，并公开承诺遏制反竞争行为，遵守中国从数据保护、税收到言论等所有方面的法律。 |
| Within a day, ByteDance had pledged to “actively follow the guidance of law enforcement.” Baidu, a search engine, vowed to “resolutely curb false propaganda.” | 字节跳动在一天之内就承诺“积极遵循执法指导”。搜索引擎百度则发誓“坚决遏制虚假宣传”。 |
| “China’s leaders take very seriously having a subservient, quiescent private sector,” said Jude Blanchette, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. | “中国领导人对拥有一个顺从的、沉寂的私营部门非常重视，”华盛顿战略与国际研究中心(Center for Strategic and International Studies)的中国问题学者裘德·布兰切特(Jude Blanchette)说。 |
| Even before the meeting, at least one Chinese tech executive had gotten the message. On a call with analysts last month, Martin Lau, Tencent’s president, struck a conciliatory tone toward the authorities. | 甚至在参加监管部门会议之前，至少已有一名中国科技企业的高管接到了这个信息。腾讯总裁刘炽平在上月与分析师的电话会议上，对当局使用了意在和解的语气。 |
| “I think it’s important for us to understand even more about what the government is concerned about,” he said. Tencent, he added, will “be even more compliant.” | “我们将进一步深入理解政府和社会所关心关切的问题，”他说。他还表示，腾讯将“持续做合规方面的努力”。 |
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