Trains cancelled over fake bridge collapse image

From 1950 - 2005(ish) there were a small number of sources due to the enormous moat required to become a broadcaster. From 2005 to 2021, you could mostly trust video as the costs of casual fakery were prohibitive. Now that the cost to produce fake videos are near zero, I suspect we will return to a much smaller number of sources (though not as small as in the pre YouTube era).

There will be people who care about trusted and reliably accurate news sources, and at least some of them are willing to pay for it. Think 404 Media.

But there are people who don't want their news to be "reliably accurate", but who watch/read news to have their own opinions and prejudices validated no matter how misinformed they are. Think Fox News.

But there are way way more people who only consume "news" on algorithmically tweaked social media platforms, where driving "engagement" is the only metric that matters, and "truth" or "accuracy" is not just lower priorities but are completely irrelevant to the platform owners and hence their algorithms. Fake ragebait drives engagement which drives advertising profits.

We're also seeing a barrage of commercials featuring AI generated animals talking like people. It's getting old.

You’re seeing commercials?

There’s your problem.

Some of the “smaller sources” also distorted facts.

We might even have fewer than before - between Internet commentators and loss of confidence from AI, real journalism may not be as highly valued as it was before the Internet…

OTOH product placement is your "friend".

Suppose that I care about trustworthy and reliably accurate news sources and am willing to pay. How can I distinguish which ones are trustworthy and reliable? No offense to the folks at 404 Media, but I've never met a single one of them, and I have no reason to believe that they wouldn't lie to me for money. You clearly have your own prejudices and biases about which media organizations are honorable and which are not, which you're wrapping up as if it's about a "truthfulness" that you couldn't possibly actually verify.

It will entirely be about trust. I don't think fakery is worth it for any company with > $1B market cap as trust is such a valuable commodity. It isn't like we are just going to have a single state broadcaster or something like that (at least, I hope not). However it is going to favour larger / more established sources which is unfortunate as well.