“Journalists are souring on social media platforms”, wrote Jacob L. Nelson and Gregory P. Perreault in a recent article on changes in Nieman Lab predictions over time. While early predictions “placed a great deal of faith in social media platforms to aid journalists in their mission to monetize and engage with audiences,” the authors say, since 2023 “these predictions suggest that the journalistic community’s enthusiasm for social media platforms has waned over time.”

They add that “many within journalism increasingly see these platforms less as opportunities for audience building and engagement and more as challenges to journalism’s economic stability and its credibility among the public”.

This is just the beginning of a broader, and necessary, conversation. My prediction for 2026 is that journalists will pass the “souring” phase and start talking about a topic still taboo in our circles: our dubious relationship with Big Tech. It’s time that we, as a community, talk about how this relationship may have affected our role as watchdog for the people, while these companies amassed an unprecedented amount of power.

A recent exposé published as part of a transnational investigation led by Agência Pública in Brazil — of which I am the executive director — and Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodistica (CLIP), with 15 media outlets working in 13 countries, started to pull the veil on the ways in which some of the journalism programs offered by tech companies were designed to enhance dependence on their technologies, sediment political influence, and “divide and conquer” the media industry. Notably, we heard from former Google executives how the Showcase deals could be described as a “renting your enemy” strategy. Over 2,000 of these secretive deals were signed, many of these in counties where the government was trying to pass legislation that would regulate platforms or force them to pay for journalistic content these tech companies use for free. The Showcase deals include clauses that limit ancillary rights and prevent advocating or litigating for such rights, our investigation revealed.

The Showcase deals were just one of the strategies adopted by companies like Google and Meta to halt regulation in several countries. These strategies could be described as a “playbook“; they were decided on within the safe walls of Silicon Valley and rolled out in many countries around the globe.

Cozying up to journalists though sponsorships, grants, exclusive invitations to events such as Newsgeist, cherry-picking media partners to get more eyeballs through new products and hiring well-respected members of the journalistic community — these were all influence tactics that digital giants adopted as a way to ease criticism and avoid regulatory pressure.

Millions spent in training journalistic organizations on their tools helped seed dependency on their technology, just as these same tech companies refused to admit that journalism has economic value.

They, were, therefore, part of a much wider lobby strategy.

To be sure, media organizations have their share of blame; they were happy to get the deals, the grants, and the tools for free, and did not care about the lack of reporting on how this relationship grew more and more perilous. Think about this. This is a type of intertwined relationship the journalistic community would never have accepted from any other industry.

As the real-world harms of digital platforms become clearer, it is also obvious that our role as journalists is to cover these harms, and the responsibility of the decision-makers that allowed for such harms. After all, these are the most powerful companies in history — and their products affect every aspect of our lives, and our democracies.

And yet, we are still avoiding the conversation on the relationship between journalism and Big Tech. It is time we start discussing our role in shaping and allowing for Big Tech’s unregulated and unchecked power — and what we should do, moving forward.

Tough questions will have to be asked.

Have we self-censored on the pervasive societal influence of social media because Big Tech was self-styled as “defenders” or “friends” of journalism and democracy? Have news outlets avoided covering the Big Tech lobby because there was a conflict of interest — as they are often sitting at the negotiation table with them?

How much has the close relationship with their executives or trainers hampered our perception of the power plays taking place? Has the journalistic community fallen for the siren’s call of tech-saviorism when we should be investigating the pros and cons of every new development? Are we sufficiently covering the economic power, the political alliances, the health and safety consequences, of decisions made in Silicon Valley, all affecting the global majority? And if not, why?

The new AI craze, which already is causing terrible mental health harms and is fueling fears of societal impacts trough job losses, water stress, and energy use — apart from growing evidence that it’s a huge bubble that can burst anytime — presents a real “fork in the road” situation.

Right now, we see that outlets continue to accept tech accelerationist funding as well as programs to accelerate the use of AI in every newsroom, while some larger media institutions are suing to extract some payment for data that has been scraped illegally from media companies.

This time, however, I believe journalists will play a larger role. We have seen the consequences of unchecked balance of Big Tech, and we are prepared to critically review our relationship with them, providing the coverage our societies need.

Let 2026 be the year that this finally happens. It depends on us.