politics & social media: an exploitation of trust?

Its nearly indisputable fact that the 2009 US Presidential election was the first election won using social media. President Obama's campaign utilized Facebook as no candidate had previously. I can almost say with certainty that campaign coordinators were also using services with user submitted content like Digg, Reddit and Mixx. Its only logical, and if the technology is there, why not take advantage of it?

That brings me to my point, however. Is politics utilizing social media to spread a message, or to exploit our naive trust of the social web? When I see content on the front page of Digg, I rarely think about who has submitted it, or why. Its been proven time and time again how easy it is to "game" the system and buy/trade votes on social bookmarking sites across the web.

Who's to say that Obama's permanent place on the Digg front page throughout the entire election was entirely natural? Honestly, if his campaigners were smart, they were voting up the positive stories and burying the negative ones. And if one thing was apparent through out the election, it was that Barack Obama's campaign understood and utilized social media in the most effective ways possible. Its hard to believe that they didn't game the system like so many other Digg users do everyday.

For me, this raises the question: are we too naive? Just because something hits the front page of Reddit or Digg--does that mean its good, solid information? As gaming spreads, even now to Mixx which was touted a refuge for those tired of Digg power users dominance, is not immune.

Recently, I came across a horribly written, outdated, and ultimately pointless post that gave a short description of each social content site. The English was broken, there were words misspelled, and the site offered absolutely no valuable insight beyond a short description of each. This blog post was also on the front page of Mixx. There is no way that could have come to fruition naturally, as anyone reading the post would right away dismiss it as a pathetic joke of an article.

How many other "pathetic jokes of an article" have we read, thinking that in fact the content was good and the research was solid? Are we critical enough of content found in blogs and on social submission sites? Or, are the same people we revolted against, the media conglomerates, spin doctors and talking heads, now using our own weapon against us?