In an age where disinformation is rampant, the importance of revamping traditional media has become increasingly urgent. In the old days, a handful of media publications like “The New York Times” would have full control over the narratives, deciding which angle to tell, and which side of the story to cover. This centralized form of news feeding has become a great source of biases, leading to questions of integrity. 

The way to expose all gray areas that often go unnoticed is the decentralization of media by telling the facts as they are. One media publication is spearheading this movement: The Verge. 

If you visit their website, it’s nothing like what old-fashioned news outlets and publications do. They use an integrated global media ecosystem that’s built upon touchpoints through a Twitter-like feed. This innovation allows everyone to distribute information without the involvement of middlemen. Through this, people can have access to verified information from a 360-degree angle of user-generated content. In layman’s terms, no corporation or site administrator can modify, edit, or polish content from authors.

Let me explain it further…

Driven by Individual Creators

By now, you may have noticed the radical change in how people consume content. In the old days, media used to be strictly from TV, radio, and newspapers, delivered by big titans in their respective outlets. Now, content consumption is scattered across multiple channels, and the number of channels is continuously growing by the minute. From TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, to Instagram, a myriad of platforms give content creators the freedom of speech to deliver information without strings that control their movement.

The ownership of these channels is handled by individual creators free from higher ops that dictate which stories to tell and how they should be told. The increased user control only means one thing: there’s no central authority that assigns rules. Information is now completely handled and distributed by independent creators across the globe.

Censorship Resistance

One of the biggest controversies that arose in recent times is the censorship of media content. This includes sanitation of news and filtering facts, resulting in diluted stories that would eventually be consumed by readers. Traditional media censorship is backed by a number of cons: from misconstrued news, clickbait, to lack of context, which are huge factors for disinformation.

You know what they say: don’t believe in everything you read. That sentiment is inspired by traditional publications trying to censor stories to protect their brand, and not necessarily to fully inform readers. Decentralized media eradicate this through direct ownership of content from creators. There’s no censor police to pull you over; you just present news as it is.

The Gen Z Influence

Known as the most tech-savvy and progressive generation, Gen Z has greatly influenced several publications to restructure their models by shifting to a more decentralized platform. They promote free speech and user control, and they’re the biggest consumers of preference-based content. In a nutshell, this age group is the future that will continuously and profoundly affect multiple publications.

A forward-thinking company like The Verge clearly knows what this generation needs and they remodeled their entire platform to cater to this demographic. This adaptation is not just for the sake of achieving relevance, but also to epitomize what the future in media looks like.

Do you agree with the movement of decentralizing media? What do you think the next steps are for traditional media?