Everyone agrees—at least in principle—that content authenticity is a Good Thing™. I have yet to meet anyone dying for more deepfakes, bot-churned spam, or “synthetic” news. Still, the path from principles to wide-spread adoption is fraught. When was the last time (or even the first time), you saw the content credentials mark? Has content credentials helped you to distinguish an authentic image or video from a deep fake?
We might say, content authenticity is here–it’s just not evenly distributed.
But then we have to ask, what might spur widespread adoption. Regulations? Perhaps. A galvanizing event? More likely.
Recall the SolarWinds Sunburst attack. In 2018, Russian hackers compromised SolarWinds’ Orion platform, infiltrating thousands of organizations—including Fortune 500 companies and multiple U.S. government agencies. Malicious code was inserted into software updates and distributed to roughly 18,000 customers. For months, the hackers had access to some of the most sensitive networks in the world.
The aftermath was severe. In 2023, the SEC charged SolarWinds and its Chief Information Security Officer with fraud and internal control failures, alleging the company misled investors about cybersecurity practices and known risks. The breach galvanized an entire industry: billions of dollars in venture capital and enterprise spend now flow into securing code and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. The ROI is clear because the costs of failure are immediate, tangible, existential.
It’s hard to imagine a SolarWinds-style attack on the media supply chain. An election perhaps? Half the internet goes down, and the rest loops deepfakes of one candidate in “compromising situations”? Malicious actors systematically compromising content distribution systems, injecting false narratives at scale, masquerading as trusted sources.
Luckily, content authenticity has yet to have its SolarWinds moment. There’s been no single breach that made every CMO, newsroom, or regulator drop everything to demand immediate safeguards. Instead, authenticity exists in a liminal space: “everyone agrees it matters,” but “no one knows the business case.”
What would the ROI look like for content authenticity? What would excite a CFO? The benefits are mostly defensive: preserving brand trust, protecting reputation, and safeguarding public discourse.. All important—but none as immediately quantifiable as “$500M lost because hackers infiltrated our supply chain.”
This gap creates an odd dynamic: progress is driven less by economic incentive and more by noblesse oblige. Adobe, Microsoft, and the C2PA consortium are advancing adoption because they should, not because shareholders demand it. Content authenticity feels less like aspirin for an urgent pain and more like vitamins—good for you, easy to ignore, until one day you wish you hadn’t.
Information wants to be free—it multiplies, replicates, and diffuses into a Baudrillardian simulation of every possible reality at once. Authenticity, by contrast, has to be scarce. Scarcity is what gives it value. If all content is stamped, signed, and certified, authenticity becomes baseline, not a differentiator. If only some content carries proof of origin, scarcity becomes the signal.
Perhaps content authenticity isn’t a vitamin or an aspirin at all. Maybe it’s some kind of gold standard: not universally required, but deeply valuable when rare. A marker not of necessity, but of trust, prestige, and credibility. As we move to a taste economy, perhaps markers of authenticity will become more valuable.
The question for the industry isn’t whether authenticity matters—it clearly does. The real question is what value system will crystallize around it: regulatory compliance, reputational differentiator, or a quiet background utility noticed only when it’s missing.
Until then, content authenticity will remain what it is today: obviously important, strangely elusive, and waiting for its SolarWinds moment.