Charting a path out of the slop bucket

Forgive me if you’ve heard this one before: News organizations have a difficult relationship with social media. For more than a decade now, we’ve been trying to chart the right path to survive in an ecosystem where reader attention is dominated by a handful of Big Tech apps. We’ve pivoted to video, pivoted back again, we’ve written short posts, long posts, we’ve attached images, we’ve detached images, we’ve stopped including links to our actual content — all in a bid to please the unknowable algorithmic gods. In 2026, there is, maybe, a hope of an escape hatch.

AI-generated video is here. It’s increasingly realistic and quick to generate. The big tech companies are embracing it, seemingly unbothered by the idea of serving their users a mix of the real and unreal. While we can all enjoy an infinite stream of cute kitten videos, what happens during a natural disaster? An active shooter incident? It feels inevitable that, at some point in 2026, there will be a major news event and social media feeds will be flooded by very convincing fake coverage, authored both by politically motivated actors and straightforward trolls.

When you can’t trust what you’re watching, one of the few reliable indicators you have left is checking the author. And even people most ideologically opposed to the “mainstream media” would have to concede that, no, CNN isn’t going to post an unverified fake video to their profile. There’s an opportunity for news organizations to shine as uniquely reliable and trustworthy sources in a feed that’s overflowing with slop.

But that’s only half the problem. The algorithms prize engagement above all, and a fake video of a suspect fleeing a crime scene is always going to be more engaging than a real video stating the boring truth about the slow progress of an ongoing investigation. The aim should be getting users out of the slop bucket altogether. Persuading social media users to download your app has always been an uphill climb, but once you have “the stuff in here is actually real” as a differentiator, maybe things will change?

I’m not deluded. I know that “users abandon social media en masse and trust legacy media brands again” is wishcasting, to say the least. But I do believe the trust relationship users have with their social media feeds is changing, and the news organizations that lay out their best welcome mat stand to gain. That means adapting to fit what people are used to. Yes, vertical video. People looking into the camera! Free to watch, supported by ads. No, we’re not going to replace social media apps. But maybe, just maybe, we can once again become a destination people seek out with purpose.