While I agree with your general point, the value of citations, depending on their form, is limited.

Footnotes alone are rarely checked because it takes reading a (long) article or book to verify the author's text.

Better to quote from a source, then (in this order) attributing it in the text, or linking to the source, or footnoting the source.

Readers have to balance the degree of verification they need with the time they have to invest in verifying.