IT WEB, THAT WORLD IN WHICH VIOLENCE PAYS TOGETHER WITH POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

I. The web is the kingdom of the filtered gnat and the swallowed camel - II. The real cases: when art becomes «sensitive content» on the web - III. What does the web produce in the perception of reality, especially in the younger ones - IV. The assault bloggers - V. The web and the enemy's need - VI. Authentic web control - VII. The web and the task of pastors in caring for souls.

- Actuality -

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Cap.

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PDF print format article – article print format – article in printed format

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Formats that reward aggressive tone, like video investigations without cross-examination, live live broadcasts, posts constructed specifically to make the comments below them argue, conflict as an impulse for readers and subscribers, they function selectively and amplified on the Internet.

Pietro Vannucci known as Perugino (1450-1523), Saint Sebastian

Otherwise instead, in an editorial context, with an editor-in-chief who supervises the drafts in the first instance and a responsible editor who reviews the pieces and assumes all responsibilities under the law, anyone who exaggerated would be filtered, content and reprimanded if necessary, also because it would expose an entire newspaper to serious risks.

There is that filter online, but he intervenes on the wrong things: obscures Perugino's San Sebastiano, mistaken for a "violent scene" and "pornographic", or the breastfeeding Madonna, branded as a sexual image and instead lets real violence flow, directed against real people, which deserves to be blocked much more than a body painted five hundred years ago. Who writes about social does not respond to any editorial team, to no responsible director: responds only to its audience, already agree with him, and to an algorithm that does not distinguish true from false, but the quiet from the noisy, finally always rewarding the second.

It's not an exception, it is a structural mechanism which is worth a lot for an individual influence as for much larger phenomena: la lite, l'insult, shared indignation makes people stay on the platform longer than a calm article. And the time spent on the platform is, ultimately, the only thing that system cares about: sell to advertisers. Every escalation rhetoric is not sanctioned but rewarded. Insult and quarrel are profitable and pay.

I. The web is the kingdom of the filtered gnat and the swallowed camel

There is an image that Jesus uses against the scribes and Pharisees and which is useful here almost literally: "Blind guides, which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel!» (Mt 23,24). Like this, the same systems capable of identifying a nipple painted by Titian in a tenth of a second remain blind when faced with a fifty-minute video constructed to attack real people, with name and surname, through accusations of unprecedented gravity, without evidence and documents shown, without any other basis than the speaker's statement or the reference to his own previous writings and videos as sources of proof.

The comparison is not accidental: the algorithms recognize a portion of skin very well - it is a visual task - and very poorly an unfounded accusation, which would require a judgment on the content and truth of what is stated: a job that no platform has any interest in doing well, because it would slow down the traffic that earns it. Facebook this is the most striking case: all it takes is a specious report from just one user and the block is triggered immediately with the consequent deletion of other people's posts or the suspension of the page. The user affected by censorship is invited to present an "appeal" which will in turn be evaluated by another artificial intelligence, who often doesn't even respond, while those who know these structural limits learn to exploit them to attack the activities of others.

(II). The real cases: when art becomes «sensitive content» on the web

There is no need to imagine anything, the examples are documented and recent. Instagram went dark in July 2024 the Madonna of the Roses by Titian from the official profile of the Uffizi, for violating the hate content guidelines; In the 2022 it was the turn of Botticelli's Venus on TikTok, and previously to Michelangelo's David. Facebook, In the 2021, censored a video of Windows on Art for a Cupid attributed to Michelangelo - preserved at the Metropolitan in New York - despite its "community standards" explicitly admitting "the publication of photographs of paintings, sculptures or other forms of art depicting nude figures". The same fate befell, on our own social channels, to the Crucifix painted by Salvador Dalì in 1954 and preserved in the Vatican Museums: the image, chosen for the cover of the book by the Dominican pontifical academic Giovanni Cavalcoli (cf.. who), one of the three founding fathers of this magazine of ours, In the 2019 it was censored as sexually explicit content as soon as it was published, while they remain visible, everywhere, teenagers miming vulgar sexual gestures, far worse than any natural nude, having learned perfectly how to circumvent the filters. When in August 2025 a similar fate befell The David in Jago, blocked by Meta for "sensitive content", Undersecretary of Culture Lucia Borgonzoni intervened to remind us that "art cannot be censored by an algorithm" incapable of distinguishing it from pornography.

If an algorithm mistakes Michelangelo for pornographic material, but doesn't acknowledge fifty minutes of violent verbal accusations hurled at YouTube, the problem is no longer technical, but of priority.

III. What does the web produce in the perception of reality, especially in the younger ones

Those who grow up today do not learn to read the world from books or from a teacher at their side, but from a screen that offers, every few seconds, a new episode of conflict: someone accuses, someone defends themselves, the next episode is already ready. It is an implicit pedagogy, never consciously chosen yet very powerful: teaches that reality is always divided into victims and executioners and that the truth belongs to those who shout the loudest, not to those who bring more evidence. A teenager who scrolls through hours of content designed to outrage isn't just wasting time: internalizes a method of judgment, learn that doubt is weakness and restraint is boredom, a type of approach that will then be applied everywhere to the most disparate situations.

IV. The assault bloggers

Even more insidious figures thrive on the web because they are disguised as controllers and censors. They tease the public with accusations supported only by "sources who must remain anonymous", promising « incontrovertible evidentiary documents » never produced because « it is not yet the time » or « to protect the source ». It is the accusation that feeds itself: it must never be proven, because the evidence itself is said to be too dangerous to show. The reader is invited to take my word for it, exactly what a real journalist would never ask. To the reasonable criticism that only cowards throw shovelfuls of mud at anonymous articles containing serious and unproven accusations without putting their name and face on it, it replicates itself, creating another golden legend: behind those anonymous people there are people so important and prominent that, if they introduced themselves with their names, they would end up the subject of terrible retaliation. Let's use an example to concretely clarify certain dynamics: «According to reliable sources, John Paul I was assassinated, a powerful cardinal whose name we cannot name revealed it". Further reassurance follows: «… but we have all the documentation to be able to demonstrate it at the right time».

Who plays with journalistic information in this way, ignores, first of all, the list of Italian journalists who, like Indro Montanelli, were taken to their legs by the Red Brigades for having carried out their work with their faces uncovered.. A worse fate befell Giancarlo Siani, killed by the Camorra just after 26 year old, followed by Peppino Impastato, Mauro Rostagno and Beppe Alfano killed by Cosa Nostra. Claim that they don't sign because they are too famous and visible, on the one hand it gives further aura in the eyes of naive people without critical sense, on the other hand, it induces laughter in those to whom a similar phrase reminds them of the nineteenth-century wordings printed in those notarial deeds where it appeared: «He doesn't sign because he's noble». Perhaps the notary could have written "because he is illiterate"? Just as it would be disgraceful to write "he doesn't sign because he's cowardly".

V. The web and the enemy's need

There is a question that is rarely asked by those who build their online presence on the continuous attack: because he needs it, not occasionally but systematically, of an enemy? The answer, unpleasant, is that the enemy is not an accident of trade: it is the raw material. A calm content is consumed and forgotten. A conflict, by its nature, asks for a sequel: the next episode, the next revelation, the next «soon we will tell you everything». The public that forms around this mechanism does not become attached to the facts, which always remain vague and never fully exhibited: he becomes attached to the argument itself, with the same fidelity with which one follows a television series, waiting for the next episode more than the truth. And it is here that the psychological dynamics of the attacker merges perfectly with the economy of the platform described above: the longer the conflict lasts the more it pays off and the more it pays off the more it is better for those who fuel it to never end it with a definitive proof. The enemy must be kept alive, not defeated: actually defeating him would mean running out of material for the next episode.

WE. Authentic web control

Authentic control mechanisms would be needed, designed to protect the simple, i Minor, fragile people, not systems that obscure a breastfeeding Madonna and let videos run that destroy the reputations of real people in fifty minutes of violent verbal accusations. An algorithm that can recognize a nipple painted by Titian after five hundred years should, a fortiori, knowing how to recognize a defamatory accusation without evidence, directed against someone who has a name, surname and above all reputation to defend.

VII. The web and the task of pastors in caring for souls

In front of all this, the task entrusted to us as pastors is not to chase after every single abuse of the internet, something impossible and perhaps even useless, but to educate - first and foremost the youngest, but not only them - to a use of digital tools that can distinguish information from suggestion, the proof from the artfully cultivated suspicion. It means teaching, in catechesis as in spiritual direction, that methodical doubt is not a lack of faith or courage, but it is the same prudence that the Christian tradition has always asked for before believing and before condemning. It means helping kids to recognize, behind a video built to outrage, the same logic of the "gnat and the camel", learn to ask yourself not only "what are they showing me", but «what, Meanwhile, they're not letting me see". It is not a task that ends in a homily or an article: it is a patient accompaniment, daily, which today belongs to pastoral care as much as preparation for the Sacraments, because the formation of conscience, in our time, it also passes through social media.

In conclusion: our Father Ariel published a book dedicated to Artificial Intelligence and social media months ago: Freedom denied. Catholic theology and dictatorship of Western conformism, I recommend reading it, because inside you will find many enlightening answers to these issues.

Finally, please take a careful look Of this article and help us as much as possible, we need you.

Cagliari, 29 August 2026

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THE WEB, THAT WORLD WHERE VIOLENCE PAYS OFF ALONG WITH POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

I. The web is the kingdom of the filtered gnat and the swallowed camel ― II. Real cases: when on the web art becomes “sensitive content” ― III. What the web produces in the perception of reality, especially among the young ― IV. Assault bloggers ― V. The web and its need for an enemy ― VI. Genuine oversight of the web ― VII. The web and the task of pastors in the care of souls.

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Cap.

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The formats that reward an aggressive tone, such as investigative videos with no right of reply, hot-take live broadcasts, posts built on purpose to set the comments beneath them fighting, conflict as a driver of readers and subscribers, work in a selective and amplified way online. In an editorial newsroom, by contrast, where a chief sub-editor reviews drafts first and an editor-in-chief revises pieces while assuming full legal responsibility for them, anyone who overstepped would be filtered, restrained and, when necessary, reprimanded — not least because they would expose an entire publication to serious risk.

Online that filter does exist, but it targets the wrong things: it hides Perugino’s Saint Sebastian, mistaken for a “violent” and “pornographic” scene, or the nursing Madonna, flagged as a sexual image, while letting real violence — aimed at real people — run free, violence that would deserve to be blocked far more than a body painted five hundred years ago. Whoever writes on social media answers to no newsroom, to no editor-in-chief: they answer only to their own audience, already in agreement with them, and to an algorithm that does not tell true from false, but quiet from loud, and in the end always rewards the latter.

This is not an exception, it is a structural mechanism that holds true both for a single influence and for far larger phenomena: quarrels, insults, shared outrage keep people on the platform longer than a measured article does. And time spent on the platform is, ultimately, the only thing that system cares about: selling to advertisers. Every rhetorical escalation is not penalised but rewarded. Insult and quarrel pay, and they pay well.

I. THE WEB IS THE KINGDOM OF THE FILTERED GNAT AND THE SWALLOWED CAMEL

There is an image Jesus uses against the scribes and Pharisees that fits here almost to the letter: “Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel!” (Mt 23:24). In just the same way, the very systems capable of spotting a nipple painted by Titian in a tenth of a second remain blind before a fifty-minute video built to accuse real people, by name and surname, through accusations of unprecedented severity, with no evidence or documents produced, with no foundation beyond the speaker’s own say-so or an appeal to their own earlier writings and videos as proof.

The parallel is no accident: algorithms recognise a patch of skin very well — it is a visual task — and an unfounded accusation very badly, since that would require a judgment on the content and the truth of what is being claimed: work no platform has any interest in doing properly, because it would slow down the traffic that makes it money. Facebook is the most glaring case: one user’s pretextual report is enough to trigger an immediate block, with other people’s posts removed or the page suspended outright. The user hit by the takedown is invited to file an “appeal” that will in turn be assessed by another piece of artificial intelligence, which often does not even respond, while those who know these structural weaknesses learn to exploit them to strike at other people’s work.

(II). REAL CASES: WHEN ON THE WEB ART BECOMES “SENSITIVE CONTENT”

There is no need to imagine anything, the examples are documented and recent. In July 2024 Instagram blocked Titian’s Madonna of the Roses from the Uffizi’s official profile, for violating guidelines on content inciting hatred; in 2022 the same happened to Botticelli’s Venus on TikTok, and before that to Michelangelo’s David. In 2021 Facebook censored a video by Windows on Art over a Cupid attributed to Michelangelo — held at the Metropolitan Museum in New York — even though its own “community standards” explicitly allow “the sharing of photographs of paintings, sculptures or other art depicting nude figures.” The same fate befell, on our own social channels, the Crucifixion painted by Salvador Dalí in 1954 and held in the Vatican Museums: the image, chosen for the cover of a book by the Dominican pontifical academic Giovanni Cavalcoli (cf. here), one of the three founding fathers of this magazine, was censored in 2019 as sexually explicit content the moment it was published, while teenagers miming vulgar sexual gestures — far worse than any natural nude — remain visible everywhere, having learned to perfection how to dodge the filters. When in August 2025 the same fate befell Jago’s “La David”, blocked by Meta for “sensitive content,” Undersecretary for Culture Lucia Borgonzoni stepped in to point out that “art cannot be censored by an algorithm” unable to tell it apart from pornography.

If an algorithm mistakes Michelangelo for pornographic material, yet fails to recognise fifty minutes of violent verbal accusations posted on YouTube, the problem is no longer technical, but a matter of priorities.

III. WHAT THE WEB PRODUCES IN THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY, ESPECIALLY AMONG THE YOUNG

Those growing up today do not learn to read the world from books or from a teacher at their side, but from a screen that offers, every few seconds, a new episode of conflict: someone accuses, someone defends themselves, the next instalment is already ready. It is an implicit pedagogy, never consciously chosen and yet extremely powerful: it teaches that reality always divides into victims and perpetrators, and that truth belongs to whoever shouts loudest, not to whoever brings the most evidence. A teenager scrolling through hours of content built to outrage does not just lose time: they internalise a method of judgment, learn that doubt is weakness and restraint is boredom — an approach they will then apply everywhere, to the most varied situations.

IV. ASSAULT BLOGGERS

Online, even more insidious figures thrive, disguised as watchdogs and censors: they set up blogs where they play at being journalists, if not editors-in-chief, without answering to any of the duties that role actually carries. This kind of figure baits the public with accusations propped up only by “sources that must remain anonymous,” promising “irrefutable proof” that is never produced because “the time is not yet right” or “to protect the source.” It is the self-sustaining accusation: it must never be proven, because the proof itself is said to be too dangerous to show. The reader is asked to take it on faith — exactly what a real journalist would never ask. To the reasonable objection that only cowards throw mud in anonymous articles carrying serious, unproven accusations without putting their name and face to them, the reply creates another golden legend: behind those anonymous figures stand people so prominent that, were they to come forward with their names, they would face terrible retaliation.

An example to illustrate these dynamics concretely: “According to reliable sources, John Paul I was assassinated, as revealed by a powerful cardinal whose name we cannot disclose.” This is followed by further reassurance: “…but we have all the documentation to prove it at the right moment.”

To claim this means, first of all, ignoring the list of journalists killed around the world by dictatorial regimes, criminal organisations and corrupt political lobbies for having done their job in the open. Claiming that they do not sign their names because they are too famous and too prominent lends them, on one hand, a further aura in the eyes of the naïve and uncritical, while on the other it makes those who hear such a claim smile, recalling the nineteenth-century wording found in old legal deeds of sale, where it used to read: “Does not sign because of noble birth.” Or should it perhaps have read: “Does not sign because illiterate”? Just as it would be unseemly to write “does not sign out of cowardice.”

V. THE WEB AND ITS NEED FOR AN ENEMY

There is a question rarely asked of those who build their online presence on constant attack: why do they need an enemy, not occasionally but systematically? The unpleasant answer is that the enemy is not an occupational hazard: it is the raw material. Measured content is consumed and forgotten. A conflict, by its very nature, demands a sequel: the next instalment, the next revelation, the next “soon we will tell you everything.” The audience that forms around this mechanism does not grow attached to the facts, which remain forever vague and never fully produced: it grows attached to the quarrel itself, with the same loyalty with which one follows a television series, awaiting the next episode more than the truth. And this is where the psychological dynamic of the attacker fits perfectly with the platform economics described above: the longer a conflict lasts, the more it earns, and the more it earns, the more it suits whoever feeds it never to close it with definitive proof. The enemy must be kept alive, not defeated: truly defeating it would mean being left with no material for the next instalment.

WE. GENUINE OVERSIGHT OF THE WEB

What is needed are mechanisms of genuine oversight, designed to protect ordinary people, minors, the vulnerable — not systems that black out a nursing Madonna while letting run free videos capable of destroying a real person’s reputation in fifty minutes of violent verbal accusations. An algorithm able to recognise a nipple painted by Titian five hundred years on should, all the more so, be able to recognise an unfounded accusation of criminal association levelled at someone who has a name, a surname and, above all, a reputation to defend.

VII. THE WEB AND THE TASK OF PASTORS IN THE CARE OF SOULS

Faced with all this, the task entrusted to us as pastors is not to chase down every single abuse on the web — an impossible and perhaps even pointless task — but to educate, above all the young but not only them, in a use of digital tools that can tell information apart from suggestion, proof apart from artfully cultivated suspicion. It means teaching, in catechesis as in spiritual direction, that methodical doubt is neither a lack of faith nor of courage, but the very prudence that the Christian tradition has always asked for before believing and before condemning. It means helping young people recognise, behind a video built to outrage, the same logic of the “gnat and the camel,” learning to ask themselves not only “what am I being shown,” but “what, meanwhile, am I not being shown.” This is not a task exhausted in a homily or an article: it is a patient, daily accompaniment that today belongs to pastoral care every bit as much as preparation for the Sacraments, because in our time the formation of conscience passes through social media as well.

In conclusion: our Father Ariel published a book some months ago on Artificial Intelligence and social media: Freedom denied. Catholic theology and dictatorship of Western conformism, I recommend reading it, as inside you will find much illuminating insight on these very themes.

Cagliari, 29 August 2026

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ON THE WEB, THAT WORLD WHERE VIOLENCE PAYS ALONG WITH WHAT IS POLITICALLY CORRECT

I. The web is the kingdom of the filtered mosquito and the swallowed camel - II. The real cases: when on the web art becomes “sensitive content” ― III. What does the web produce in the perception of reality?, especially among the youngest ― IV. Assault Bloggers ― V. The web and the need of the enemy ― VI. Authentic web control ― VII. The website and the task of pastors in the healing of souls.

— Health Pastoral —

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Author
Ivano Liguori, Ofm. Cap..

Formats that reward aggressive tone, that is to say, video reports that do not give a voice to the other side, improvised live broadcasts in the heat of the moment, posts designed to turn comments into fights, or the conflict used as a lure to attract readers and subscribers, they operate on the internet in a selective and amplified way. Instead, in a writing context, with a chief editor who supervises the drafts in the first instance and a responsible director who reviews the articles assuming all legal responsibility, anyone who exceeded would be filtered, content and, if necessary, reprimanded, also because it would expose an entire newspaper to serious risks.

On the internet that filter exists, but intervenes on the wrong things: hides the San Sebastián del Perugino, confused with a "violent" and "pornographic scene", or the breastfeeding Virgin, designated as a sexual image, and instead lets real violence flow, directed against real people, that deserves to be blocked much more than a body painted five hundred years ago. Whoever writes on social networks does not respond to any editorial, before any responsible director: responds only to its own audience, already agree with him, and an algorithm that does not distinguish true from false, but the quiet of the noisy, always rewarding, in the end, the second.

It's not an exception, It is a structural mechanism that is worth so much for just one influence as for much larger phenomena: the dispute, the insult, shared outrage makes people stay on the platform longer than a calm article. And the time spent on the platform is, in last analysis, the only thing that interests that system: sell to advertisers. Each escalation rhetoric is not sanctioned, is remunerated. Insult and dispute are profitable and pay.

I. THE WEB IS THE KINGDOM OF THE FILTERED MOSQUITO AND THE SWALLOWED CAMEL

There is an image that Jesus uses against the scribes and Pharisees that is useful here almost verbatim.: «Blind guides, that you filter the mosquito and swallow the camel!» (Mt 23,24). So, the same systems capable of detecting a nipple painted by Titian in a tenth of a second remain blind to a fifty-minute video constructed to accuse real people, with name and surname, through accusations of unprecedented gravity, without evidence or documents exhibited, without any more foundation than his own word or reference to his own writings and previous videos, as if they were proof.

The parallelism is not accidental: algorithms recognize a fragment of skin very well — it is a visual task — and an unfounded accusation very poorly, that would require a judgment on the content and truth of what is stated: a job that no platform is interested in doing well, because it would slow down the traffic that makes her money. Facebook It is the most blatant case: All it takes is for a single user to file a complaint under any pretext for the block to be activated immediately, with the consequent elimination of other people's publications or the suspension of the page. The user affected by censorship is invited to submit a "resource" that will be evaluated, in turn, by another artificial intelligence that often does not even respond, while those who know these structural limits learn to take advantage of them to attack the activities of others.

(II). THE REAL CASES: WHEN ON THE WEB ART BECOMES “SENSITIVE CONTENT”

No need to imagine anything, examples are documented and recent. In July 2024 Instagram hid Titian's Virgin of the Roses from the official profile of the Uffizi, for violation of the rules on hate content; in 2022 It was Botticelli's Venus on TikTok, and before that to Michelangelo's David. Facebook, in 2021, censored a video of Windows on Art by a Cupid attributed to Michelangelo — preserved in the Metropolitan in New York — despite the fact that its own “community rules” explicitly allow “the publication of photographs of paintings, sculptures or other forms of art depicting nude figures". The same fate befell, on our own social channels, the Crucifix painted by Salvador Dalí in 1954 and preserved in the Vatican Museums: the image, chosen for the cover of the book by the Dominican pontifical academic Giovanni Cavalcoli (cf. here), one of the three founding fathers of this our magazine, was censored in 2019 as sexually explicit content barely published, while they remain visible, everywhere, teenagers imitating vulgar sexual gestures, much worse than any natural nude, having learned perfectly how to bypass the filters. When in August 2025 "La David" by Jago suffered the same fate, hidden by Meta for “sensitive content”, The Undersecretary of Culture Lucia Borgonzoni intervened to remind that "art cannot be censored by an algorithm" incapable of distinguishing it from pornography.

If an algorithm confuses Michelangelo with pornographic material, but does not acknowledge fifty minutes of violent verbal accusations posted on YouTube, the problem is no longer technical, but of priorities.

III. WHAT THE WEB PRODUCES IN THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY, ESPECIALLY AMONG THE YOUNGEST

Whoever grows up today does not learn to read the world in books or with a teacher, but on a screen that proposes, every few seconds, a new episode of conflict: someone accuses, someone defends themselves, the next chapter is ready. It is an implicit pedagogy, never consciously chosen and yet extremely powerful: teaches that reality is always divided into victims and executioners and that the truth belongs to whoever shouts the loudest, not to those who provide more evidence. A teenager who scrolls through hours of content designed to outrage not only wastes time: internalizes a method of judgment, learn that doubt is weakness and moderation is boredom, a type of approach that will then apply everywhere, to the most disparate situations.

IV. ASSAULT BLOGGERS

Even more insidious figures thrive on the web because they disguise themselves as controllers and censors.: They create blogs where they play at being journalists, when not directors of a medium, without responding to any of the duties that that role really entails. These types of figures provoke the public with accusations sustained only by "sources that must remain anonymous.", promising “incontrovertible evidentiary documents” that are never exhibited because “it is not yet time” or “to protect the source”. It is the accusation that feeds itself: should never be tried, because the proof itself is said to be too dangerous to show. The reader is asked to trust the word given, just what a real journalist would never ask for. Given the reasonable criticism that only cowards throw mud with their hands full in anonymous articles with serious and unproven accusations without giving their name and face, is answered by creating another golden legend: Behind those anonymous people there are such outstanding characters that, if they presented themselves with their names, would suffer terrible reprisals.

An example to concretely illustrate these dynamics: «According to reliable sources, John Paul I was assassinated, as revealed by a powerful cardinal whose name we cannot reveal". Follow the further guarantee: "...but we have all the documentation to be able to prove it at the appropriate time".

hold this it means, first of all, ignore the list of journalists murdered around the world by dictatorial regimes, criminal organizations and corrupt political pressure groups for having exercised their trade openly. Claiming that they do not sign because they are too famous and well-known, On the one hand, it confers an ulterior aura in the eyes of the naive who lack critical sense., and on the other hand it provokes laughter from those, hearing a phrase like that, They recall the nineteenth-century formulas that appeared in the old legal deeds of sale., where it was read: "He does not sign because he is noble". Or could it be written: "He doesn't sign because he is illiterate"? It would be equally indecorous to write "he doesn't sign because he is a coward".

V. THE WEB AND THE NEED OF THE ENEMY

There is a question that is rarely asked of those who build their online presence on the continuous attack: why do you need, not occasionally but systematically, an enemy? The answer, disgusting, is that the enemy is not an accident of the trade: is the raw material. Serene content is consumed and forgotten. a conflict, by its own nature, requires continuity: the next chapter, the next revelation, the next “we will tell you everything soon”. The public that is formed around this mechanism does not adhere to the facts, that always remain vague and never fully displayed: sticks to the dispute itself, with the same fidelity with which a television series is followed, waiting for the next chapter more than the truth. And this is where the psychological dynamics of the attacker fit perfectly with the platform economy described above.: the longer the conflict lasts, more yields, and the more it yields, It is better for those who feed it to never close it with a definitive test. The enemy must be kept alive, not defeat him: Defeating him for real would mean running out of material for the next chapter..

WE. AUTHENTIC CONTROL OF THE WEB

Authentic control mechanisms would be needed, designed to protect simple people, to the minors, to vulnerable people, not systems that hide a breastfeeding Virgin and let out videos capable of destroying the reputation of a real person in fifty minutes of violent verbal accusations. An algorithm capable of recognizing a nipple painted by Titian five hundred years later should, a fortiori, knowing how to recognize an accusation of criminal association without evidence, directed against someone who has a name, surnames and, above all, a reputation to defend.

VII. THE WEB AND THE TASK OF PASTORS IN THE CURE OF SOULS

Given all this, The task entrusted to us as pastors is not to pursue every online abuse, something impossible and perhaps also useless, but to educate — above all the youngest, but not only to them — in a use of digital tools that knows how to distinguish information from suggestion, the proof of artificially cultivated suspicion. It means teaching, both in catechesis and in spiritual direction, that methodical doubt is not a lack of faith or courage, but the same prudence that Christian tradition has always demanded before believing and before condemning. It means helping young people recognize, behind a video built to outrage, the same logic of the "mosquito and the camel", to ask not only "what are they showing me?", but, meanwhile, "They are not letting me see". It is not a task that is exhausted in a homily or in an article: It is a patient and daily accompaniment that today belongs to pastoral care as much as the preparation for the Sacraments., because the formation of consciousness, in our time, also go through social networks.

In conclusion: our Father Ariel A few months ago he published a book dedicated to Artificial Intelligence and social networks: Freedom denied. Catholic theology and dictatorship of Western conformism, whose reading I recommend, because inside you will find many illuminating answers on these topics.

Cagliari, 29 of August of 2026

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The books of Ivano Liguori, to access the book shop click on the cover

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