The future tense is an odd way to talk about 2017.

Cause people are too lazy to fact check? Like trust some outrageous claims and form cults like anti-vaxxer, flat-earther, etc? That's an education problem not a blog/new self-publishing problem. Even our news agencies often time present biased information?

Writing your piece doesn't mean others has to trust you, doesn't mean you don't have to cite source directly from government or org press release, if you do investigative piece you have to list your data source and how you get it, that's the "normal" way. Instead, our news are often linking from one to another and sometimes just refer social media in embeded blocks( which can be changed or taken down if removed api access or account is ban/deleted.)

To be honest, like button or upvote/downvote is probably the worst invention of internet. I can understand how pre-internet propaganda or public psyop worked cause access to information was very limited and slow. And now people have quick access to tons of information but lack the will to fact check or critical thinking is astounding. Like if you see some controversial topic on reddit and see how many people just "follow" the train cause those are most upvoted comments are sickening, all while different opinion gets downvoted to oblivion. Some of the garbage comments make me question the worth of humanity.

I wrote the above to the comment mentioned small player can't pay the link fee to new agencies, be it blog or their own community website etc. It's targeted to people that actually wanted to write something but does not belong to a new agency. You would still need to link to government or whatever publicly available info as source, that way you don't fall into a "rumor" site and you can do your own piece at your own pace and investigation. Everyone needs to start somewhere.

We are at the age where the entry to publication is very minimum, but to gain regular viewer/audience is hard. (on top of having to combat AI generated garbage that are search engine optimized. )

Honestly. everyone should "check source" and not blindly read and eat up all the spoon fed stuff, cause many times a article is an influence piece, not a report that just layout the facts and information. From how the agency decides the title, how they quote or present information, and how they know many people don't actually want to know details and just want to throw upvote or have a fake emotional outlet by complaining in the comments.