Snopes is fundamentally trafficking in "trust". People refer to them with the question if something heard or seen should be trusted. Plagiarism is fundamental

Snopes is fundamentally trafficking in "trust". People refer to them with the question if something heard or seen should be trusted. Plagiarism is fundamentally a violation of trust: it represents work as original when it is not. If trust is violated in the production of the work, why would you believe that the facts presented are themselves trustworthy? Even if the plagiarist doesn't desire to mislead factually, they've already taken shady shortcuts to save some time... why wouldn't they also take shortcuts on diligence or verification? The problem is once trust is lost, you can't take for granted any measure of reliability given that trust verification is their product.