Must it be this way? Where did we go wrong? How do we fix it?

These are the questions we ask as we roll out Media.com, frame by frame, feature by feature. Our fundamental thrust being that ignorance of a given technological force causes trepidation and the sense that the force controls us. We’re here to provide a better way than social media has provided so far — not only to connect with each other, tell stories and keep informed, but also to quench the thirst so many of us have for reliability, accountability and transparency in the content we consume.

We consider this to be a glaring void the internet’s many pioneers overlooked in their great race to connect billions of nodes to each other – real or not, identifiable or anonymous – as they sought eyeballs or at least potential eyeballs, at almost any cost.

Perhaps initial generations of social media failed in this regard. Disorder was the rule. Connection was the pitch. Engagement was the measure. Advertising revenue was the bottom line. Comprehension came later.

We the innocent consumers saw the shiny new thing and hopped in. We drove and drove until the thing broke down, in the middle of nowhere, with ominous clouds approaching. And here we are: anxious. Unable to fix the thing because, yes, it turns out selfies and untraceable incendiary comments don’t fix much. We’ve gone a little cybersick in the process, within a media metaverse that lacks the coherence to calm itself down.

We aim to learn from and repair the era that brought us here. We seek to rediscover optimism about how the internet and social media might enhance, but not dictate, our personal and business lives. Doing so requires full comprehension and discussion of social media’s effects and mechanics.

Simple. Coherent. Authentic. Trustworthy. Mature. Anxiety-free.

These are some of our guideposts. This is where a new way to think about “social media all grown up” begins — with intention.

Certainly a more mindful internet is possible, following in the tradition of a medium built to find improvements from within, as media and tech build atop each other, new version after new version. That’s our position — for the record. We can do this.

The first challenge: verification

Generations raised on smartphones and online networks seem to grasp these pitfalls more candidly than most. Internet ethnographer Katherine Dee describes the current era as shaped by “an internet-native sadism” where depression, nihilism and sleeping with one’s phone is a common experience for many under 40.

Indeed, millions now bear battle scars from a system that was perhaps never built to manage the forces of online exploitation. We often blame smartphones, but a smartphone is just hardware — a portal to the internet, wired by media in all its forms. We’re addicted to the content, not the device. A television is only as powerful as the shows and content it broadcasts; otherwise, it’s just an inert plastic box. A phone is the same.

In developing our vision for a next-generation social media platform, we prioritized verified identity. We examined how open systems can be exploited and concluded that anonymity — and the bots that feed on it — had to go.

We also implemented an age threshold (18) and built trust and safety into the foundation of our platform. Our Trust Center is at the core of this effort, ensuring oversight on issues such as: dangerous organizations, adult sexual abuse, hate speech, misinformation, copyright laws and high-risk users. See our Trust Center for more details.

Verification is our first step toward a trusted online universe. Many online seem to think anonymity is a fundamental reason to be online; we don’t question that this is attractive. Anonymity has its place, especially for those caught in oppressive societies and situations. But that’s not us. We are the first major social media community to validate each and every user. We understand the need for a safe anonymous space for some, but the other guys have that covered.

For individuals, a valid government-issued photo ID (a passport or driver’s license) is required. For a business profile, we verify an authorized officer before pursuing additional documentation under “Know Your Customer” and “Know Your Business” standards.

This means every piece of content on Media.com has a traceable source. We believe candid conversations and provocative content can coexist with this model. We believe internet commerce and social engagement online function better when humans — not bots — are in control. And we insist that a town square isn’t a town square if it’s full of cardboard cutouts with fake names pretending to be human. After all, isn’t that what computer games are for?

This is real social media, built on trust, safety, opportunity and imagination. A space where fragmented apps, paranoia about online interactions, and distrust dissolve into a sustainable joie de internet — a love of the internet. Yes, we believe it’s possible.

A higher-quality engagement

Susannah Page-Katz, our lead on content moderation, previously served as director of trust and safety at Kickstarter, where she drafted its AI guardrail policy. Crucially, this policy didn’t take a black-and-white stance on AI content creation; instead, it acknowledged AI as a media tool while ensuring creators remained transparent about its use.

The idea was to exercise control over a whiz-bang technology, while implementing a flexible approach that respects a creator’s inherent freedom to create as well as protect work from those that would steal or plagiarize. To control bot software, not bow to its supremacy. The internet is full of short cuts, safe to say — to fame, knowledge, art, journalism, wealth, etc. Page-Katz has been working on many forthcoming tools that address fact-checking and identity.

The trend is moving in this direction. A 2023 YouGov survey of 1,000 adults, cited by Bloomberg Law, found that 62% of respondents believe platforms should require real names and identity verification. Europe leads with tough policies Media.com follows, and several American states have enacted laws to “prohibit impersonation for purposes of harassment, intimidation, threat or deception to facilitate contact.”

Freedom of speech being a respected pillar within our approach, within reason. Does an anonymous burner-bot have the right to say whatever it wants? Not really. Not in our space. We’d have to point out that such entities don’t really “speak” at all. They mimic speech; they fake it. And that is not a protected right, last time we checked.

“These laws aren’t an attempt to limit what anyone can say,” wrote Bruce Heiman, a partner at the law firm K&L Gates, for Bloomberg. “They aim to prevent false identification.”

Page-Katz echoed Heiman. “We’re verifying the individuals behind the account, not the information they might share,” she said. “That’s the safety piece.”

Christy Grace Provines, our global head of brand, encourages new visitors to explore the Trust Center to gain a comprehensive understanding of our approach. Having led high-profile campaigns like Tinder’s 2023 global rebrand, Provines emphasizes that every feature we introduce is designed to “do less harm” and “be less toxic.”

“Our Trust Center outlines our reason to exist,” she said. “And verification matters because there are no bots on the platform. That’s our aim.”

We’re building a platform where engagement is higher quality, with fewer trolls, less spam and reduced toxicity. Hate speech, doxing and threats will trigger oversight. The goal is to create a digital space where accountability, trust and meaningful interactions thrive.

Bit by bit, we’re on a mission to redefine social media. We’ve identified the void and have set about filling it. We’ve established a safe online space and we invite you to be a part of it. We hope you’ll join us for our mission.

But who actually saw it?

For a significant chunk of digital advertising spend, the honest answer is: nobody. Because nobody was there.

The Fake Audience Problem Is Bigger Than Most Advertisers Realize

The scale of fraudulent activity in digital advertising has been an open secret in the industry for years. Bots click on ads. Fake accounts inflate engagement metrics. Sophisticated fraud networks generate convincing-looking traffic from audiences that exist only as lines of code.

Estimates vary depending on the methodology, but independent research has consistently suggested that a meaningful percentage of all digital ad traffic is non-human. Some analyses put the figure considerably higher for certain platforms and formats. The money lost to ad fraud globally runs into the tens of billions every year.

What makes this particularly awkward is that the platforms selling the advertising inventory have historically had very little commercial incentive to clean it up. Fake impressions still generate real revenue. Inflated engagement figures make their platforms look more attractive to buyers. The fraud often sits several layers removed from where the transaction happens, making it easy to attribute poor campaign performance to creative or targeting rather than the integrity of the audience itself.

Marketers have largely absorbed this as a cost of doing business. They probably shouldn’t.

What Brand Safety Actually Costs

Fake audiences aren’t the only problem. Unverified platforms create brand safety risks that go well beyond wasted impressions.

When anyone can create an account under any identity and publish any content, advertisers have no reliable way of knowing what their ads will appear alongside. Brand safety tools have improved, but they remain reactive by nature — they identify problematic content after it already exists, and the category lists they operate from are always chasing the problem rather than getting ahead of it.

The reputational cost of appearing alongside harmful content isn’t theoretical. There have been enough high-profile examples of major brands pulling spend from platforms after their advertising appeared next to extremist content, graphic material or coordinated disinformation campaigns to make this a boardroom-level concern.

The underlying issue in every case is the same. Unverified platforms create unverified environments. And unverified environments are, by definition, unpredictable.

The Verification Advantage for Advertisers

The proposition for advertisers on a verified platform is fundamentally different.

When every user has been authenticated as a real person against official records, the audience data actually means something. A million verified users is a million real human beings — with genuine interests, authentic behaviour patterns and actual purchasing intent. Not a million accounts, some unknown proportion of which are bots, duplicates or inactive profiles being counted to inflate a number.

For performance advertisers, that means metrics that reflect reality. Click-through rates, engagement figures and conversion data drawn from verified human behaviour are genuinely useful signals. The same numbers on an unverified platform could mean almost anything.

For brand advertisers, it means something arguably more valuable — an environment with built-in accountability. When content is tied to verified identity, the nature of what gets published changes. Users are accountable for what they say and share. The kind of content that creates brand safety nightmares on anonymous platforms becomes considerably harder to produce when anonymity isn’t an option.

The Premium Audience Shift Is Already Happening

There’s a broader shift taking place in digital advertising that the industry hasn’t fully reckoned with yet.

As AI-generated content becomes ubiquitous and the distinction between real and synthetic audiences becomes increasingly difficult to establish on traditional platforms, the value of verified human attention is going to increase significantly. Advertisers who are already thinking carefully about audience quality — rather than just audience volume — are ahead of where the whole industry is heading.

Premium publishers have always commanded premium rates because they offered something the open web couldn’t: a known, engaged, quality audience in a controlled editorial environment. The verification layer applies that same logic at network scale.

Reaching a verified human being who is genuinely engaged with credible content is worth more than reaching an unverifiable account on a platform optimized for maximum engagement regardless of quality. That gap in value is only going to widen.

What Advertising on a Verified Network Looks Like

Media.com is building the advertising environment that the industry has been theoretically asking for without anywhere to point to.

Every profile on the platform is verified against official records. Every contributor is a real, authenticated person or organization. The audience that brands access through Media.com is, by definition, human – because the infrastructure makes anything else impossible.

For advertisers, that means genuine reach, trustworthy metrics and an editorial environment built from the ground up with accountability at its core. No bots inflating your impression count. No fake engagement distorting your performance data. No anonymous content creating brand safety exposure you didn’t sign up for.

The billions being wasted on audiences that don’t exist isn’t an inevitability. It’s a consequence of building advertising infrastructure on top of unverified platforms, and assuming that problem belongs to someone else to fix.

It doesn’t have to work that way.

Media.com is a verified media network dedicated to rebuilding trust online.

James Mawhinney, founder and CEO of Media.com, began his career in digital marketing at the age of just 17.

After travelling to the United States to learn digital marketing, he returned to Perth and co‑founded one of Australia’s first such firms alongside his father.

He later studied law and investment finance and established a personal investment group. A regulatory investigation in 2020 triggered litigation that “thankfully is getting close to concluding.”

From that experience arose his conviction that the digital world lacked a trusted, transparent space for real people – a conviction that became the foundation for Media.com.

“I experienced firsthand the harm that can be caused by anonymous profiles and fake profiles,” said James Mawhinney, Founder & CEO, Media.com.

Verified Identity

Mawhinney draws a comparison between financial systems and social media: just as banks require identity verification to protect money, social networks should require it to protect information.

“When we publish content online, we’re publishing a form of currency,” he said. “Others are consuming it or they’re using it … being transmitted to others.” Without verification, “that content’s coming from unverified and therefore untraceable sources.”

On Media.com, every user – whether individual or business – undergoes identity verification using the same Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) procedures used by banks. The checks typically take 90 seconds to two minutes and cover over 200 countries.

With verified identities, users are more likely to “think twice about what you’re going to say,” leading to “a far more … not just safer environment, but more enjoyable environment.”

Online Harms

Mawhinney argues that many of the problems plaguing current social networks stem from anonymity – trolling, cyberbullying, misinformation, disinformation and untraceable interactions.

He recounted his own experience of having a fake account created in his name, posting harmful content, and escaping accountability because no one knew who the perpetrator really was. On Media.com, where identity is confirmed, there is “someone to hold accountable.”

As a result, the platform could reduce the incidence of harmful behaviour, promote responsible posting, and create a community grounded in real identities.

Growth Path

Development of Media.com began in early 2023. The company has built a waiting list of users from more than 130 countries – including unexpected registrations from remote regions such as Antarctica.

The desktop version of the network is already operational. In the coming weeks, Media.com will submit its mobile application to app stores. Mawhinney expects a strong uptake early next year: the platform will support a familiar social‑media experience, including a feed, long‑form and short‑form content, and – by first quarter next year – a video‑shorts feature.

The key difference, he says, is identity verification.

Users will know “you can trust at least the identity of the people that you’re engaging with.” In an era increasingly concerned with AI‑generated content, this clarity will make it easier to distinguish between human and machine outputs.

Regulatory Signals

Mawhinney believes Media.com’s verification-first model could guide future regulation.

He points to legislation such as the European Union’s Online Safety Act, which introduced optional profile verification. Over time, he expects that social networks may be required to know who their users are, much like banks must know their account holders.

In that envisioned future, platforms built with verification from the start – like Media.com – would be better positioned to comply.

“As of 24 hours ago, Australia’s implemented the under‑16 social media ban,” said Mawhinney. “We believe that what we’re building is a next‑generation network where having every profile verified since inception is going to solve a lot of the online harms associated with misinformation, disinformation, trolling.”