Credibility on the Internet

While the amount of money and time put into shopping sight unseen had increased with the introduction of internet vendors, the thought behind the spending has not, and this is a problem. Someone in the late 1800s ordering a stove from the Sears catalog could depend on the reputation of the company in a way that someway putting their credit card information into an obscure website cannot, and yet they make the purchases with the same amount of trust. Studies have shown that 88% percent of online shoppers will trust a review like they would trust the recommendation of a friend.

Shopping sight unseen is not a new concept. People have been using avenues of communication, such as establish mail systems to order off of mail order catalogs or newspaper ads for hundreds of years. With the introduction of the internet to the equation this method of shopping has increased drastically in volume, with millions of companies and sellers available for consumers to order from.

People giving unfounded trust to vendors and anonymous reviews is only part of the problem. While the possibility of getting scammed is horrendous, the implications of this mindset have more far-reaching problems. For example, a naive internet user could read a mommy-bloggers article about how vaccines give children autism and then her child could die of the measles, or mindless hate could be harnessed against innocent people because of faulty facts that people read on the internet and assumed to be reputable when though they never really checked the source or truth of the information. While in today’s culture it isn’t uncommon to see people joke about how “everything on the internet is true” it is surprising how most people seem to unconsciously believe that if a website has a good layout and looks professional that means it be believed without question and hlding ourselves to higher credibilty standards when dealing with the internet is something as a society we need to change.