At the time of social media, Truth is no longer a trend

What is the intrinsic limit between a constructive debate and an infiltrated one? What is the distinction between balance and deviations? Where is the thin red line between free speech and the need to set a limit? How to distinguish between those who try to nourish the wells of shared knowledge and those who try to pollute them? But above all: is it still possible to carry on arguments of this type when the public debate takes place on social networks?

An immediate example, one above all, based on the Twitter trends of these hours. "Covid in Italy" is in relief, as if it were a relevant opinion, as if it were mass, as if it were an emerging aspect. One click is enough to find yourself in front of a series of analyzes on a research that would trace the presence of Covid in Italy back to September. Opinions, clearly, based on a simple title and not on the reading (nor on the examination) of the research in question. But opinions that, agglomerating, become a small bubble of a few hundred people who stand out among millions. A “noisy minority” which, increasingly, tends to occupy important positions.

Of polluted wells and the search for Truth

This emerging dynamic is certainly important for understanding how the debate takes place online, whether it is politics, economics or health: the beliefs of few can proselytize thanks to the ability to remain united in their simplicity, while the subtle nuances that characterize a majority tend to break up the thread of the discussion into many small streams of complexity that do not reach the trends of the moment. Without malice, perhaps, but social networks thus tend to give strength to denial, conspiracy, the "noncielodicono" of the moment. And that it is not a fault is now something to be demonstrated, so much so that the networks themselves are trying (at least with facade operations) to reduce the consequent damage to the image.

Those who follow Twitter trends this morning, he will therefore learn that putting Codogno in the red zone in spring was madness; that the search for "patient zero" was a *******; that the government hopes to see deaths rise, not decrease; that those who believe in the covid are "timid, cowardly, dumb"; that masks are not a scientific decision, but an authoritarian one. Etc. Etc. Etcetera.

We are still far from understanding how to give a logical balance to this type of discussion, safeguarding both freedom of expression and the possibility of the Truth coming to the surface. After all, social networks are a novelty that has involved the whole population only a few years ago, disrupting the way of communicating, elaborating, understanding, sharing and building the Truth in all its infinite nuances. We will come to the head of it, but in the midst of a pandemic it is completely self-evident how dangerous it is not to have a stable system of building and sharing the Truth or anything that could resemble it. dear price, every day, becoming within a few hours mere statistics available for posts, likes and retweets.