We are drowning in solutions to problems we created by implementing previous solutions.
Look around at the current media and information landscape. We have newsletters about newsletters. We have fact-checkers fact-checking fact-checkers. We have platform accountability advocates launching new platforms to hold existing platforms accountable. Each new entrant promises to be the one that finally gets it right, the one that strips away the noise and gives us what we actually need.
They're all making it worse.
The real opportunity belongs to whoever has the courage to subtract, not add. The winners in the next decade won't be the ones building the next layer of complexity. They'll be the operators who look at the current mess and ask: what can we actually remove?
Consider how we consume political news. A decade ago, the complaint was that cable news was too sensationalized. So we got digital-native outlets promising substance. Then those outlets needed engagement, so the substance started resembling cable news. Then we got newsletters promising curation. Then we got newsletters about newsletters. Then we got verification services to check which newsletters were trustworthy. Now we're told the real solution is a decentralized social network where you control your own algorithm.
Each layer was built with genuine intentions. Each solved something real. And each created new problems that spawned new solutions.
The pattern repeats across institutional life. City governments create programs, which spawn oversight committees, which require reporting systems, which need compliance staff, which demand training programs. Decades later, when someone finally clears away three layers of bureaucracy, productivity mysteriously improves.
This isn't actually controversial. Everyone understands it intuitively. We all prefer simple things. We all admire minimalism. Yet our institutional impulse remains to add.
Why? Because building is visible and subtraction is invisible. When you launch a new initiative, you get credit. When you eliminate something that no one notices is gone, you get nothing. The person who says "we should get rid of this" is a risk-taker. The person who says "we should add this" is a problem-solver.
But this calculus is backward. The actual problem-solvers are the ones willing to consolidate, streamline, and eliminate.
This matters acutely for information and media because we're at a particularly bloated moment. We have so many ways to consume news that consuming news has become exhausting. We have so many fact-checkers that determining which fact-checker to trust is itself a fact-checking problem. We have competing narratives about narratives about narratives.
The operators who will win are the ones who understand this fatigue and respond by offering genuine simplicity. Not simple branding around complex systems. Actual simplification.
That might look like: a news source that covers fewer things, but covers them well. A verification system that makes fewer claims but stands behind them absolutely. A social platform that does one thing reliably instead of seventeen things poorly.
The contrarian insight here is that this approach seems like it would lose. Simplification appears limiting. A newsletter that covers only three topics a week seems like it would have a smaller audience than one covering everything. A platform with fewer features seems weaker than one with more.
But we're living the counterintuitive proof otherwise. The products and services that gain genuine loyalty aren't the ones with the most features or the broadest mandate. They're the ones that have decided what they're actually good at and eliminated everything else.
The information ecosystem needs someone willing to be radically unfashionable about this. Not to create a new platform, but to actually make existing systems leaner. Not to add a verification layer, but to reduce the number of things claiming authority.
Whoever does this first won't get credit immediately. The media will likely call it limiting. Competitors will claim they're leaving value on the table.
But they'll have built something people actually want to use. And in a landscape of infinite choice, that's its own kind of revolutionary act.