“People are dying” due to disinformation traveling on social media which have become “the collector of humanity’s worst impulses”. This is the harsh indictment made by Barack Obama against the ‘Big Tech’ in a speech delivered at Stanford University, the California Ivy League located in Silicon Valley, the heart of the American technology industry, to denounce how the decisions taken industry are making “democracies more vulnerable”. And ask that the rules of the platforms be “redesigned” to fight the scourge of disinformation. In his speech, Obama highlighted the damage and destruction caused by disinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories on the 2020 elections that led to the assault on Congress, false information on Covid and vaccines, up to the Russian fake news campaign in support for the invasion of Ukraine. “People like Vladimir Putin and Steven Bannon understand that it is not necessary for people to believe this information to weaken democratic institutions – he said, pointing the finger at the Russian president and Donald Trump’s former strategist – you just have to flood the public space. with this garbage, you have to circulate enough doubts and conspiracy theses to make people not know what to believe. ” “Once we lose faith in leaders, in the mainstream media, in political institutions, in the possibility of having the truth, then the game is won,” Obama added. “I regret not having fully understood the risk of disinformation as president” The former president then pointed the finger at the system of algorithms on which social networks work: “The algorithms have evolved to such an extent that no one outside these companies can predict what they’re going to do and sometimes even the people who created them don’t know, and that’s a problem. ” But for Obama it is not “an inevitable result of new technologies, but the result of very specific choices, made by companies that have ended up dominating the Internet in general and social media platforms in particular”. “Decisions – concludes Obama’s’ ‘j’accuse’ – that intentionally or unintentionally have made democracies more vulnerable”. The former president, however, does not fail to regret the fact that he did not understand, when he was president, in the years in which the phenomenon of social media that his White House has largely ridden exploded, “how susceptible we were to lies, to theories of the conspiracy, despite being the target of disinformation myself for years “. “We must control social media not be controlled by it” The speech in California confirms that Obama has chosen to engage in a real crusade against disinformation, after the speeches of the same held in recent weeks at the University of Chicago and in a meeting with the editorial staff of The Atlantic. “In the end, the Internet is a tool, as are social media, tools don’t have to control us, we have to do it,” he said again in his speech, asking to review the algorithm systems to ensure this control. “If we do nothing, I am convinced that the trend will only get worse – he concluded – if we do not set standards, the implications of this technology for our electoral and legal systems, for our democracy and the entire social order are frightening. and deep “.