Almost All US Netizens Mistrust Online Information
Americans lack trust in information on the Internet as a new study shows. 98% of over 1,900 American adults who participated in the study conducted by Harris Interactive in late June said they have reasons to distrust information on the web, and 93% said their satisfaction with online information could be improved. But wait, it gets better: some Americans (2% of the adults, more men then women) would give up their spouse if that would lead to always finding the information they were looking for online.
How could this lack of trust be overcome? Well, nearly 3 in 5 people consider an improvement if they could trust the answers they find online and 54% stated an improvement would be if the answers always came from trusted sources.
Moreover, 94% of the respondents said that they believe bad things could happen to them as a result of acting on inaccurate online information. These most common negative consequences are waste of time (67%), get a computer virus (63%), lose money (51%), risk of fraud (51%), damage to one’s credibility (36%), get fired (14%) and loss of spouse/relationship (9%).
“These findings demonstrate that people want online information to be more credible than it is today, and that current web services just don’t cut it,” said Mattias Guilotte , Mancx CMO and Co-founder. “Mancx offers a solution by giving people a new way to find the answers they need by matching questions with a trusted source, and allows them to exchange answers and money in a trusted environment.”
The reasons why Americans distrust information on the web are, as mentioned on Mashable, too many ads (59%), outdated information (56%), information that’s self-promotional (53%), and unfamiliar forums (45%).
The lack of interest in online information is however a reason to worry. It is true that not any piece of information posted online – as an answer or any other type of material – should be trusted. In fact, any internet user should make the time to verify a piece of information, following a simple rule, the golden one of journalism: check the information using three different sources.
