At this point the script is always the same, only the name on the doorbell changes. First Fabrizio Corona’s profiles disappear, then, as in a domino effect that takes no prisoners, the Instagram account of Ivano Chiesa, the former paparazzo’s legal historian, is also obscured. A quick suspension, which occurred on the afternoon of Saturday 7 February and returned later with the reactivation of the profile. But the damage – media, polemical, flammable – was already done: because when history can no longer fit within the perimeter of the courts, it ends up being rewritten by the platforms. And there, we know, no one holds the pen: an algorithm writes, and you can only shout.
Chiesa didn’t take it philosophically. On the contrary. He publicly denounced the suspension, speaking of a violation of Meta’s standards and defining what happened as an “even more serious” act of censorship than what – in his opinion – would have affected his client. The personal motivation is clear and, in some ways, even linear: «I only talk about judicial matters – he declares – obviously with the necessary methods, and therefore I consider it an act of censorship». Translated: if even a lawyer who works in the field of judicial reporting is silenced, then it is no longer a question of “uncomfortable” content, but of control of the story.
The point, however, is that the “unofficial” version reported by Open takes the story onto another track, much more modern and much less romantic: not censorship as a choice, but suspension as a consequence. The profile was reportedly stopped because the contents created a “viral crisis.” In other words: the problem would not be “who you are”, but “what you unleash”. The platforms, in these cases, would automatically intervene when an account becomes a multiplier of reputational risk. It doesn’t matter if you are the author of the content, the protagonist, the defender, the friend, the shadow: if the profile is read as an accelerator of chaos, the safety lever is triggered.
It’s an idea that, told like this, is scary because it is perfectly impersonal. And the impersonal, in 2026, is often the most effective form of power. You don’t need a flesh and blood enemy, you don’t need a phone call “from above”, you don’t need someone’s direction. All it takes is one parameter that lights up. And you, who feel censored, instead find yourself “moderated” for technical reasons. The difference, for those who suffer, is almost irrelevant: the effect is identical. The microphone turns off.
In the middle, as was predictable, another typically Italian dynamic slipped in: the suspicion of the instigator. In fact, many immediately thought of an external “paw”. Mediaset, however, flatly denied any insinuation and – from what is reported – specified that it had nothing to do with the suspension of the lawyer, that the profile would never have been reported and that, in any case, the final decision on suspensions and removals lies with the platforms. One way of saying: look elsewhere, you won’t find the smoking gun here. And if the gun isn’t there, then the room remains: the one in which an automated system decides when an account has become too “problematic” to remain turned on.
The suspension of Chiesa’s profile comes, not surprisingly, after the barrage of blackouts that hit Corona. First the social pages and the YouTube channel, then an attempt to land on X with a page that is no longer accessible. A presence that turns on and off like a faulty light: you are there, you are not there, you reappear, you disappear. In the meantime, the judicial matter continues to move forward, with a double speed: that of the courts – slow, formal, marked by dates and documents – and that of the internet, which burns everything in real time.
And here comes the other part of the story, the one that Corona uses as communication fuel: the maxi civil lawsuit worth 160 million euros and the entire clash with various well-known faces on television, in addition to the provisions and ordinances that in recent days have raised the temperature further. On a narrative level, the message is always the same: “they want to silence me”. On a technical level, platform replication is equally simple: “it’s not personal, it’s procedural”. And when two such irreconcilable versions collide, the result is a perfect short circuit: controversy becomes news, news becomes weapon, weapon becomes content.
The last piece, to close the circle, is the post attributed to a new account that appeared in the following hours, which comments on the lawyer’s suspension in very harsh tones, calling Mediaset and Berlusconi into question and speaking of “shameful censorship in a democratic state”. It is a text that works because it is extreme, because it is absolute, because it does not allow for nuances. And above all because it turns the tables: it does not discuss the alleged “viral crisis”, it does not go into the merits of the standards, it does not accept the idea that the platform can act autonomously for reasons of risk. He just says: it’s dictatorship. End.
The knot, however, remains there, and it is not a knot of sympathy or antipathy. It is a node of power. Because when the public voice of a person – be it a celebrity, a lawyer, a reporter or a simple user – depends on the automatic interpretation of a reputational risk, the boundary between rule and arbitrariness becomes thin. The story of Ivano Chiesa’s account, which was darkened and then reactivated, is only apparently small. It’s actually a signal: the digital ecosystem isn’t “punishing” someone, it’s protecting itself. And when a system protects itself, it doesn’t ask permission, it doesn’t explain too much, it doesn’t argue. Simply: turn it off and on again.
Meanwhile, as profiles come and go, Corona announces it will bring The most false at the theater, with a tour already scheduled. As if the message were this: even if you close one door to me, I open another. Even if you turn off a channel for me, I find a stage. The problem is that here we are no longer in the field of spectacular provocation, but in the – much more serious – field of managing public discourse. And the question, now, is inevitable: if the “blackout” can also affect those who, by profession, defend and speak about judicial documents, then who really decides where freedom of expression ends and where the “viral crisis” begins? And above all: who establishes when a rumor is information and when it becomes a risk?
If you want, I can also redo the previous piece by integrating this update into a single newspaper version, always with a minimum of 6000 characters, without losing rhythm and with a nastier edge in the passages in which “the algorithm” becomes the true protagonist of the story.
date: 2026-02-08 15:37:00