“Now the fascinating thing about the Internet is that it has in theory made it easy to take a verification step and check source information instead of cascading based on others’ actions….But the Internet has also made it that much easier to spread unverified information with a single click (reblog, retweet, like). The state of the art today is that spreading is easier than verifying which means that we are getting more, not fewer information cascades. That is especially true because with social networks we are observing the actions of friends or at least people we know (instead of random strangers) and are thus more likely to copy their actions.” – Albert Wenger
Unfortunately, the metrics used in measuring success conflict with the notion of verification. Verification slows down the number of “shares”. Worse, the interfaces within the sites offering these voting gestures (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Hacker News, Google, etc) make it far more difficult to verify and the make the gesture – than to just make the gesture.
Then again, this issue only exists for people using these sites. In the same way, the MPR interrupting regular programming with a pledge drive is only an issue for listeners.