Social news's trustworthiness problem

It’s hard to quantify, but we’ve all seen stories on Digg whose popularity are simply baffling.
Niall Kennedy did some good spadework on a specific story that did very well indeed on Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, and del.icio.us which was clearly boosted by votes from interested parties. Digg and others are working hard to deal with this kind of abuse. But until it is eliminated, the credibility of social news sites will be in question.
Our research shows that consumers see social news sites as less trustworthy than news media or portal sites — by a fairly wide margin. Stories like this tell us it’s going to take a while for social news aggregators to win the trust they need to be more than a fringe source for most consumers.
I took a look at consumer interest in social news in reports on social news aggregators and trustworthiness, both of which were released last week.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.