Many users are drawn to social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to stay up to date on news.
However, people are increasingly complaining about misinformation and AI slop cluttering their feeds. Worries about trust have also grown, especially in light of lawsuits against Meta related to harming young people and concerns over the ownership of American TikTok. (Trust in traditional news outlets has also eroded: a Pew Research study from October found that just 56% of U.S. adults say they have a lot of or some trust in national news media.)
Enter SaySo, a new short-form video app designed to deliver curated news from vetted creators and independent journalists. It launched for iOS users in the U.S. and Canada this month after a private beta that began in November.
The app aims to set itself apart from other platforms by offering a more intentional and personalized news experience that avoids endless scrolling.
One of SaySo’s standout features is Daily Digest. Upon creating a profile, users can choose topics of interest such as politics, social issues, public health, or crime, and the app curates a set of videos for them each day. This selection refreshes every 20 hours.
To explore a broader range of topics, there is an Explore page where users can discover additional content from different creators. SaySo also includes typical features such as the ability to follow others, like, save, comment, and share.
Notably, SaySo requires creators to include sources of information directly within their videos, aiming to build trust with users. The app also combines human and AI moderation with source validation to ensure content integrity.
“Content doesn’t auto-publish,” Dion Bailey, co-founder and CTO, explains to TechCrunch. “Everything goes through a moderation queue, so most problems are caught before they reach readers. If something slips through and gets flagged, we investigate, address it directly with the creator, and take it down if it crosses the line.”
Additionally, SaySo is developing a “community notes” feature, allowing users to participate in the accountability process through a crowdsourced fact-checking approach similar to that of X and TikTok.
At its launch, SaySo onboarded approximately 30 creators. Among them is Nico Agosta, who first gained attention with his “Stocking the Capitol” video series, where he dives into the financial dealings of U.S. Congress members. There’s also Dr. Victoria, who focuses on topics related to racial justice and social change, and Isabel Ravenna, an independent journalist with bylines in outlets like National Geographic.
On the question of creator pay, Ramin Beheshti, SaySo’s CEO and co-founder, says that “many [creators] have come on as founding partners and are receiving a stipend from day one. Over the coming months, we’ll be building out the full monetization infrastructure, and when that revenue flows, the vast majority goes directly to creators.” He declined to provide specifics on the monetization infrastructure or what the revenue split will be.
Beheshti previously served as chief product and tech officer at Dow Jones.
SaySo is the flagship app of Caliber, formerly known as The News Movement, which was founded in 2022 and rebranded in 2025 to focus on social, short-form journalism.
“We wanted to build a new breed of news product that helped people, rather than add to the familiar overwhelm so many of us experience,” says Beheshti. “Overlay that with what building Caliber has taught us about creators and the changing shape of modern media, and we believe we’ve unlocked something very special.”
Looking ahead, the company plans to launch SaySo in the U.K. in the summer, with further expansion into additional markets throughout this year and 2027.
