The tycoon aims to flush out Twitter about the amount of fake profiles that represent the main vehicle for hoaxes and hate speech. The war in Ukraine has brought the issue of hatred and online propaganda back to the fore. It is precisely from the Net that we should start again to (re)give an "ethical" future to information. But more than a dream it is a chimera 21 May 2022 Mila Fiordalisi Director
The lesson of Covid was not enough to teach how powerful online fake news is to the point of accrediting theories and theses, even the most incredible. From chips under the skin connected to 5G through vaccines based on toxic substances and so on, from drugs with miraculous power to pendants capable of shielding from radiation: the list of hoaxes that has spread online in the last two years is very long and continues to remain firm and without any possibility of oblivion. The virus of disinformation spreads at an unstoppable speed and level of contagion. And the attempts and initiatives carried out by social platforms – Facebook and Twitter in the lead – to obscure fake news, videos and to block and eliminate fake profiles to stem the phenomenon were not enough. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict has bounced the numbers, this time Telegram is the channel that ended up in the crosshairs (but not only). Disinformation, hate and propaganda campaigns make proselytes to the point of becoming the object of political attention and representing litmus tests for pollsters. The phenomenon has come out of the Net involving first the online versions of newspapers and newspapers (which with click-catching headlines often distort and divert the very meaning of the news) and now more than ever the main television broadcasts, those of debate, which are following the social "model" to increase the audience by counting on the presence of characters and self-styled experts brought to the fore precisely because of their ability to generate online and offline followers and to make the hashtags and accounts of the same "traditional" media jump into the ranking of "trend topics" and to trigger doubts and fears. Information has ended up in a perverse trap from which it is difficult if not impossible to pull out. Even Copasir is taking an interest in the question: something never seen before and that at least leads to a reflection, beyond the inevitable controversies that are generated on the front of "freedom of information", trumpeted if necessary – let's face it – only to give a semblance to form rather than substance. But most of all, Elon Musk has been fierce on the issue of fake news , who with his 44 billion offer to take over Twitter has become the champion of a "dream": to eradicate disinformation on social media and hate speech at the root. More than a dream a chimera. Yet the visionary creator of Tesla and SpaceX believes in it. And whatever they say so far, he has managed to transform his visions into nine-zero business projects to the point of becoming the richest man in the world. How the Twitter operation will end we are all curious to understand. And we are curious to understand if that 5% of fake accounts declared by Twitter is the truth or a colossal hoax. Musk claims that fake profiles could be 20%. And this is not a matter of goat wool: if so it would mean that the unique users declared by Twitter would be much less considering that fake profiles are often and willingly alter egos of people who do not want to put their face on it when it comes to insulting, denigrating, defaming. And that, in terms of business, the value of Twitter would therefore be very different from that declared by the current owner: not only one would not be worth one but even two (or more) would count only as one. A big difference for investors, think of the world of advertising. It will be complicated to come to terms with the numbers but Musk's hypotheses appear more than true: just take a look at what happens on the social profiles of the so-called influencers, but it also applies to us mere mortals with laughable numbers. Scrolling through the comments appears to the naked eye the amount of profiles without name and surname, alias without identity, which become the protagonists of the so-called shit storm campaigns as soon as the occasion becomes propitious, practically every time a tweet does not like or is not aligned with their ideas and beliefs and, even worse, to those of the "pack leader" on duty – are now known to all, just to give an example, the smear campaigns carried out through armies of fake accounts created ad hoc by professional social media managers on commission of politicians and parties and even journalists, entrepreneurs and managers, in short, even of people apparently "good" but whose dark side is revealed among the narrow meshes of the Net in which everything is created and destroyed. It would be nice a social world in which the platforms took the responsibility (a long-standing issue) to authorize the creation of an account only in the face of "real" identities, with names, surnames and why not even with an identification document. Those who are on the Net without hiding would have nothing to say, but the heated debates that have already been unleashed and continue to be unleashed at the sole hypothesis of "controlling" someone – and here from the flag of freedom of information is held that of freedom of expression – are the clear sign that that 20% that Musk hypothesizes could even be "prudent" as they say in jargon. And that the percentage could turn out to be Bulgarian if only it were possible to have evidence of it. But to put it to Totò "if I were, if I had and if I could they were three fools who traveled around the world".