(CNN)As the public combs through Elon Musk's Twitter (TWTR) feed for clues on how the billionaire entrepreneur intends to run the social media platform he's buying for $44 billion, one mysterious line stands out: "authenticate all real humans."

(美国有线电视新闻网)当公众在仔细查看埃隆·马斯克的推特，寻找这位亿万富翁企业家打算如何运营他以440亿美元收购的社交媒体平台的线索时，一条神秘的线脱颖而出:“验证所有真实的人。”

That cryptic proposal is vague enough to keep people guessing about what Musk has in mind but specific enough that it offers several possible paths as he looks to shape Twitter more to his liking.

这个神秘的提议含糊不清，足以让人们猜测马斯克在想什么，但又足够具体，在他试图让在推特更符合自己喜好的过程中，它提供了几种可能的路径。

For example, Musk could seek to require real names on accounts. Or perhaps he may continue to allow pseudonyms but require photo identification, or integration with third-party services where users are already known.

例如，马斯克可能会要求账户使用实名制。或者，他可能会继续允许使用假名，但要求照片身份识别，或者与已知用户的第三方服务集成。

Depending on the outcome, the plan could have big ramifications for Twitter's hundreds of millions of users.

根据结果，该计划可能会对推特的数亿用户产生重大影响。

Musk's drive to "authenticate" Twitter users stems from one of his biggest pet peeves with the platform: spam accounts, particularly those that push cryptocurrency scams. It's often not hard to find these accounts lurking in the replies to Musk's tweets; many even attempt to trade on his celebrity and lure the unsuspecting by impersonating him.

马斯克之所以努力“认证”推特用户，是因为他对该平台最大的不满之一:垃圾账户，尤其是那些推动加密货币诈骗的账户。通常不难在马斯克的推文回复中发现这些隐藏的账户;许多人甚至试图利用他的名气，冒充他来引诱毫无戒心的人。

It didn't help that in the summer of 2020, Musk's verified account was affected by a widespread Twitter hack that led to users including former President Barack Obama and Kanye West unwittingly spreading a bitcoin scam. Cryptocurrency spam bots, Musk has said, represent Twitter's "single most annoying problem."

2020年夏天，马斯克的认证账户受到了一次广泛的推特黑客攻击的影响，导致包括前总统巴拉克·奥巴马和坎耶·维斯特在内的用户在不知情的情况下传播了一场比特币骗局。马斯克曾表示，加密货币垃圾邮件机器人是推特“最烦人的问题”。

Musk's diagnosis may reflect the experiences of a very particular type of user, but it so happens that this user will soon control the design of the platform. As part of his solution for battling cryptocurrency bots, Musk wants to make it easier to separate real from fake accounts under his proposal to "authenticate all real humans."

马斯克的诊断可能反映了一种特殊用户的体验，但碰巧的是，这名用户很快就会控制平台的设计。作为对抗加密货币机器人的解决方案的一部分，马斯克希望通过“验证所有真实人类”的提议，更容易区分真实账户和虚假账户。
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If the goal is to ensure that every account is tied to a flesh-and-blood person, the platform will need some way to verify they are real. One possibility is an expansion of Twitter's existing verification program. Currently, to receive a blue check on their accounts, users have to supply a lix to an official website that they're affiliated with, an official email address or a government-issued form of identification. Musk could stop short of requiring identification but require that users use their real names.

如果目标是确保每个账户都与一个有血有肉的人绑定，该平台将需要某种方式来验证他们的真实性。一种可能性是扩大推特现有的验证程序。目前，要想在账户上收到现金支票，用户必须提供与他们有关联的官方网站的链接、官方电子邮件地址或政府签发的身份证明。马斯克可能不会要求用户提供身份证明，但会要求用户使用真实姓名。

He could explore other methods too, such as lixing accounts to credit cards or relying more on CAPTCHAs to defeat bots, said Jillian York, director for international freedom of expression at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation. (CAPTCHAs aren't a cure-all, however; as bots have grown more sophisticated, CAPTCHAs have had to become more and more difficult for humans to solve in what could be described as a technological arms race.)

数字权利组织电子前沿基金会(Electronic Frontier Foundation)的国际言论自由主管吉利安·约克(Jillian York)表示，他还可以探索其他方法，比如将账户与信用卡连接起来，或者更多地依靠验证码(CAPTCHAs)来打败机器人。(然而，验证码并不是万灵药;随着机器人变得越来越复杂，验证码也变得越来越难以让人类解决，这可以说是一场技术军备竞赛。)

Whatever method he chooses, York and other experts said Musk is likely to run into challenges that fall into two main categories: access and privacy.

约克和其他专家表示，无论马斯克选择哪种方法，他都可能遇到两大挑战:访问和隐私。

Access is about ensuring that all people who wish to use Twitter can get on the platform. With a system that ties accounts to credit cards, for example, York said Twitter would risk excluding all those who don't have them. Maybe they're too young to have a credit card or they have poor credit and can't get approved. Maybe they don't like having their credit card transactions traded to data brokers or they just prefer using cash for cultural reasons. Tying authentication to consumer credit would "exclude millions of people," said York.

访问是指确保所有希望使用推特的人都可以使用这个平台。例如，约克说，推特有一个将账户与信用卡绑定的系统，就有可能把所有没有信用卡的人都排除在外。也许他们太年轻了，不能有信用卡，或者他们的信用很差，无法得到批准。也许他们不喜欢将信用卡交易交易给数据经纪人，或者他们只是出于文化原因更喜欢使用现金。约克说，将认证与消费信贷挂钩将“将数百万人排除在外”。

Then there's the issue of privacy. While many users may feel they have nothing to hide, a system that forces users to submit their personally identifiable information creates a single point of failure. Not only would more users have to trust Twitter not to abuse their personal information, but Twitter itself would become a much larger target for repressive governments (who could use legal demands to compel Twitter to hand over the information) or cybercriminals motivated by identity theft. Cybercriminals have even reportedly posed as real law enforcement agents to serve fraudulent government requests for tech company data. Twitter could promise to dexe the records, but it would merely be mitigating a risk it created for itself.

此外还有隐私问题。虽然许多用户可能觉得他们没有什么需要隐藏的，但强制用户提交个人身份信息的系统会造成单点故障。不仅更多的用户必须相信推特不会滥用他们的个人信息，而且推特本身也会成为压制性政府(他们可以利用法律要求迫使推特交出信息)或以窃取身份为动机的网络罪犯的更大目标。据报道，网络罪犯甚至假扮成真正的执法人员，为欺骗性的政府请求提供科技公司数据。推特可以承诺删除这些记录，但这只是降低了它给自己带来的风险。

The privacy issue is particularly worrisome to human rights groups, said Natalia Krapiva, an attorney at the digital rights group Access Now, "especially for people in countries like Russia and others where individuals get severely persecuted for criticizing the government or covering important political events like the protests, corruption, or the war in Ukraine."

数字权利组织“现在访问”(Access Now)的律师娜塔莉亚·克拉皮娃(Natalia Krapiva)说，隐私问题尤其让人权组织担忧，“尤其是像俄罗斯这样的国家的人，在这些国家，个人因为批评政府或报道抗议、腐败等重要政治事件而受到严重迫害，”或者乌克兰战争。”

Even a real-names policy could prove challenging. Facebook has some experience with this; the company was forced to make changes to its names policy in 2015 after critics pointed out that abuse victims and other vulnerable groups had good reasons to use pseudonyms. The changes at Facebook raised the bar for reporting a fake name and allowed users to provide reasons to the company why they avoid using their real names.

甚至实名制政策也可能具有挑战性。Facebook在这方面有一些经验;2015年，在批评人士指出虐待受害者和其他弱势群体有很好的理由使用假名后，该公司被迫改变了其姓名政策。Facebook的这些变化提高了举报假名的门槛，允许用户向公司提供避免使用真实姓名的理由。
This points to how complex it can be to translate a simple-sounding principle such as "authenticate all real humans" into a functional product feature. The issue isn't the goal or the motivation; it's that humans are complicated creatures with personal circumstances that rarely fit neatly into boxes. 这表明，将一个听起来很简单的原则(如“验证所有真实的人”)转化为一个功能性的产品特性是多么复杂。问题不在于目标或动机;人类是一种复杂的生物，有着个人环境，很少能整齐地归入特定的范畴。

After years of trial and error, tech platforms have already developed important lessons about user authentication that could benefit Musk, said York.

约克表示，经过多年的尝试和错误，技术平台已经开发出了用户认证方面的重要经验，这可能会让马斯克受益。

"If he merely means things like CAPTCHAs, I think he's in for a surprise," said York. "He's talked a lot about how he'll get rid of bots, but Twitter's been trying to do that for years and I think he'll soon realize it's not an easy problem to solve."

“如果他只是指验证码之类的东西，我想他会大吃一惊的，”约克说。“他说了很多他将如何摆脱机器人，但推特多年来一直在努力做到这一点，我认为他很快就会意识到这不是一个容易解决的问题。”