In 2025, Media Needs to Take Community Back From Platforms

The way we communicate and share our passions has drastically evolved in the past two decades. Social media platforms, operated by large tech companies, have become the central hubs for discussions on a myriad of topics, from technology to automobiles.

It shouldn’t have been this way. Media companies should own their audiences. They’ve allowed tech companies to steal their content and monetize it by providing a platform for readers to discuss it. How absurd is that? The only value add that tech companies have layered on top of the content paid for by media organizations is to shove it through a system optimized for engagement, which usually means the most polarizing and hate-read-worthy stuff gets the most eyeballs.

Now, they’re letting AI companies get away with this. AI companies, like OpenAI and Anthropic, are hoovering up massive amounts of media content, paid for by media companies, that AI platforms can then reformat into an information system to provide a new experience for the same readers who would have gone to the source for that information.

Let’s be clear, this is entirely the fault of media companies, who should have been thinking like tech companies all along and leveraging AI for their benefit instead of allowing OpenAI to take their content and raise billions off of it. Where are the tech R&D labs inside media companies? Why are they constantly 10 steps behind? Whether the reason is snobbery, hubris, or a combination of both, they failed to see the path of their salvation right in front of them. Instead, they allowed others to take their business and grow it exponentially, and without a dime to show for it.

While it seems they’re about to get mugged by OpenAI, another opportunity for media companies has emerged. Today, social media is in decay. Media companies could use this opening to take their communities back. Many social media users are now longing for a return to a more specialized, intimate form of online community. There’s a desire to return to the days when conversations about specific interests were held on dedicated media websites, where affinity and expertise, rather than algorithms, drove the discussions.

Read the full article at ON_Discourse