ABSTRACT
Social media content is not typically encountered in isolation, but is instead encountered alongside the reactions of other users. This chapter argues that the social evidence furnished by other social media users’ reactions might in principle be used to better determine the accuracy of online content, thereby mitigating the threats of misinformation. It is argued, however, that the power of such social evidence is compromised by multiple factors. First, reactions like likes and shares are often ambiguous. Second, social media users often have reason to react to online content in misleading ways—for example by liking or sharing content they do not take to be accurate. Third, social media platforms are partly inhabited by fake persons—in the form of trolls and bots—whose reactions cannot be taken at face value. It is argued that these challenges for the weight of social evidence cannot be mitigated by individual epistemic virtue alone.
