The problem of mainstream media concentration was no stranger to pre-digital times. But social media networks have extended the reach and audiences to a global scale, deploying tools and business models that retain people's attention and introduce significant new distortions in information’s flow and consumption. While claiming not to be publishers, they undermine business models and sustainability of many media, and concentrate immense gatekeeping powers into a few corporations largely beyond the reach of regulators. This is directly relevant to the G20’s focus on information integrity.

The current efforts to mitigate the problem of information integrity focus on trying to make Big Tech players behave. However, how ‘integrity of information’ or the ‘truth’ is navigated and defined in social systems is a complex, open-ended, and wider process. An effective response must address the full breadth and complexity of the issues, by ensuring an interoperating plural digital media ecology, replacing the current concentrated Big Tech social media space.