A criminal trial in Italy takes years. A verdict on social media forms in about six hours.
Everything that follows stems from this difference in speed, and it is a difference that is not about justice. It is about us.
Two Courts with Opposite Rules
In the real court, the accused knows the charges in detail, has a defense lawyer, can present evidence, and whoever decides is required to justify in writing a decision that can be appealed in two subsequent levels. It is a slow machine because it is built to be reversible.
In the parallel court that forms under a post, none of this exists. The accusation is a snippet of video without context. There is no defense, because anything the accused says is read as confirmation. Those who judge do not have to justify anything, are not accountable for anything, and will never see it again.
The decisive difference, however, is another, and it is one that almost no one considers. The social verdict does not provide for an appeal. Not because it is forbidden, but because there is no place to file it. The people who judged you are no longer on that page. They are elsewhere, on another case, and will not come back to read the follow-up.
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Acquittal Is Not News
Here is the worst part, and it's worth facing it.
The accusation arrives when the event is hot, so it travels at the moment of maximum possible attention. The outcome comes years later, when no one cares about that case anymore.
A dismissal, a downgrading, an acquittal do not have any of the characteristics that make content go viral. They do not outrage, do not surprise, do not allow taking sides. They are news that close a story, and closed stories do not produce conversation.
The result is that the public records the accusation and never records the outcome. Not out of malice. Because the outcome simply does not cross their path.
From this follows something that should disturb us more than it does. For most people, the definitive version of a fact is the one from the first forty-eight hours. The rest of the process, the one made of evidence and verification, will never reach the public that has already formed an opinion.
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It's Not a Discourse on the Guilty
Let's be clear, because it's the easiest misunderstanding.
I'm not saying that the accused are innocent. Many are not, and the procedure serves exactly to establish that. When someone is convicted, the conviction is correct and there is nothing to relativize.
I'm saying something different and more uncomfortable. That we pronounce that instant judgment with the exact same certainty both when we are right and when we are wrong, and from the inside the two feelings are indistinguishable.
That's the point. None of us ever feels like we are lynching someone. The feeling is always that we are on the right side, and it is exactly the same feeling that those who are wrong experience.
Add that the parallel punishment is not proportional to anything. It strikes those under investigation for a serious matter and those who wrote an unfortunate phrase with the same violence, because it is not calibrated on guilt. It is calibrated on how much that content circulates.
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The Rule You Can Keep
You don't need a textbook due-process stance. An operational one is enough.
You can say that an event is serious. You can say it disgusts you. You can ask that it be ascertained quickly and that those who made mistakes pay.
What it's best not to do is pronounce the sentence in place of those who should pronounce it, because it is the only part of your intervention that serves no purpose and that, if you are wrong, you can never take back.
The difference between the two things is subtle and changes everything. Asking for justice is civil. Administering it personally under a post is something else, and it already has a name.
Segnale & Rumore is a column on how digital communication really works, between algorithms, platforms, and online reputation. It is written by Calogero Bono, who works with these machines every day.
