I've seen this in some sci-fi stories, it makes a lot of sense, but I have a personal hunch that setting up a filtering solution on various feeds of mostly-crap

I've seen this in some sci-fi stories, it makes a lot of sense, but I have a personal hunch that setting up a filtering solution on various feeds of mostly-crap is going to be too much effort for most people, and they'll just slowly abandon the crap-feeds for anything beyond the most trivial sorts of entertainment. And then you could see something like a move from commenting on Twitter about news articles linked out to going back to going directly to the source and discussing things with other "verified subscribers" (whether paid or otherwise verified) there. Even in a "free, but ad supported" world it wouldn't surprise me to see outlets push for more "I'm a real reader and commenter" verification to keep their ad rates up.