There’s a quiet revolution in how millions of Americans decide what’s real. Trust is slipping away from traditional institutions—media, government, and higher education—and shifting to individual voices online, among them social-media creators. The Reuters Institute reports that this year, for the first time, more Americans will get their news from social and video platforms—including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and X—than from traditional outlets. According to Pew Research, one in five adults now regularly turns to influencers for news.
For anyone who cares about credible information, this is a potentially terrifying prospect. Social media rewards virality, not veracity. Spend five minutes scrolling TikTok or Instagram and you might encounter influencers “educating” you about a global elite running the world from “hidden continents” behind an “ice wall” in Antarctica, or extolling the virtues of zeolite, “a volcanic binder for mold” that will “vacuum clean all kinds of toxins” to lift brain fog, prevent cancer, and remove microplastics from testicles. (Link to purchase in bio.) It’s an environment perfectly engineered to scale both misinformation and slick grifts.
And yet the popular notion that social media is just a dumpster fire of viral lies misses something vital: Millions of people still care about truth. They are seeking facts on social media from credible voices they can trust. They just aren’t always sure where to find it or from whom.
I know because I interact with these people every day. I was among the first independent journalists to bring news reporting to Instagram; today my outlet, News Not Noise, spans Instagram, YouTube, a podcast, Substack, and other platforms. In my years of directly engaging with an on-platform audience, the question I receive more than any other remains simply, “Is this true?”
I’m here to tell you the truth isn’t dead. Thousands of people like me operate online as what I call “evidence-based creators.” We’re journalists and specialists who use expertise, original reporting, and reliable sources to refute misinformation, add context to breaking news, and answer the endless questions flooding our DMs. The topics we cover range from redistricting to medical misinformation, beauty fads to whether that viral health-food trend might actually kill you.
The work is an uphill battle. My cohort is not John Oliver–level media personalities with PR teams, production crews, and a research staff to fact-check the punch lines. We are independent voices operating without safety nets. I like to think of us as the digital equivalent of artisanal chefs working in a factory for mass-produced junk food. The very things that make us valuable—our obsession with facts, our commitment to nuance, our hours spent answering audience questions in the apps—put us at a profound disadvantage in the attention economy. What does it take to produce a slick video claiming that beef tallow is nature’s Viagra? Fifteen minutes with an iPhone and zero regard for reality. While we’re still sourcing assertions and trying to make complex ideas both accurate and engaging, the bullshit factory has already pumped out six more viral falsehoods.
Our secret weapon isn’t production value or algorithm hacking; it’s trust. When I debunk a viral lie, I’m not a faceless institution. I’m the person who’s been with my audience while they brush their teeth every morning, the person who’s been in their ears during commutes, the person whose face they’ve studied through hundreds of 90-second windows into complex issues. This isn’t an audience of passive consumers. They’re hungry for more—more reporting on more topics, more conversations with experts, more explanations that break things down but don’t treat an audience like idiots. “Can the Supreme Court disbar an attorney?” “Will the military disobey unconstitutional orders?” “Do I need another measles vaccine as an adult?”
All of this leaves evidence-based creators in a strange limbo. We’re clearly valued; Substack, for instance, is proving that audiences are willing to stop scrolling and financially support “verifiers” they trust. But we’re still largely disconnected from the resources and collaborative frameworks that could multiply our impact. We’re working so hard at the work itself that we have little opportunity to build the scaffolding required to create a durable new model in digital publishing—one that includes tools such as high-powered marketing and growth engines to reach new audiences, editorial oversight to help with difficult judgment calls, and shared research that would prevent each of us from having to build expertise from scratch with every breaking story.
I see this obstacle as an opportunity. History shows us that industries facing technological disruption tend not to simply collapse—they transform. Look at what happened to the music industry when Spotify and its streaming cohort crashed the party. In the old days, musicians lived and died by album sales and radio play, with major labels acting as gatekeepers. Then streaming blew the doors off.
The revolution was messy. Many artists found themselves with more listeners than ever but paychecks that wouldn’t cover a month’s worth of ramen. What helped the music industry find its footing wasn’t nostalgia for CDs or vinyl. It was new infrastructure: playlist curation that helped listeners find their next obsession, analytics tools that told artists who was actually listening, distribution services that got music onto platforms, and business models that went beyond streaming royalties to include direct-to-fan revenue and merchandising.
Artists still face challenges, but now labels are investing heavily in data to understand trends, offering artists different types of deals, and using their marketing muscle to help artists cut through the digital noise. The industry evolved by creating tools that complemented streaming algorithms instead of fighting them—helping artists understand their audiences, not just pray for a decent playlist placement.
In our current information ecosystem, we’re stuck in the awkward adolescence of a media revolution. The need for innovation couldn’t be more urgent. Local newspapers are dying like mall food courts—2,500-plus have shut down since 2005. Traditional media outlets are under assault by the Trump administration. And AI is flooding us with convincing fake content, making human truth tellers all the more necessary.
Conversations about the press and the tech revolution often get stuck on the problems with or the inadequacy of any solution. It’s time that changed. So I’ll take the leap and propose some imperfect innovations. First, audiences could benefit from an independent, off-platform certification system to help them discern which independent voices adhere to journalistic standards. Not to be all “Papers, please” about it, but audiences need signals about who’s committed to accuracy versus who’s just chasing likes. One solution: a nonprofit voluntary opt-in LEED-type certification that awards something like a blue check mark—but vetted far more rigorously—to creators who use agreed-upon trusted sources, check their facts, and reveal when their content is sponsored. I’m aware that any credentialing system risks backlash from those suspicious of “gatekeeping.” But people shouldn’t be disparaged for “doing their own research” if they aren’t offered the tools to tell reality from fiction.
Second, evidence-based creators need support. Imagine a fractional-ownership model where like-valued creators buy into a shared professional framework. With an economy of scale, we could collectively share in things such as legal protection and sophisticated audience-development tools designed specifically for evidence-based content. We could sign sponsors who understand the unique value of trusted voices. We could offer bundled subscriptions to help audiences find more of us at once. This could create sustainable revenue streams without compromising integrity.
Finally, legacy media, please stop viewing creators as a threat. We don’t have to be competitors—we can be the connective tissue between trusted journalism and the platforms where people now consume most of their information. Traditional media outlets can stay relevant in the new digital reality by partnering with us. But first, it’d help if they’d allow for the possibility that what’s happening isn’t just the death of an old system—it’s the messy, complicated birth of a new one. And like a newborn, it needs more than good intentions in order to thrive.
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