Real Fakes: The Epistemology of Online Misinformation

Abstract

Many of our beliefs are acquired online. Online epistemic environments are replete with fake news, fake science, fake photographs and videos, and fake people in the form of trolls and social bots. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the threat that such online fakes pose to the acquisition of knowledge. I argue that fakes can interfere with one or more of the truth, belief, and warrant conditions on knowledge. I devote most of my attention to the effects of online fakes on satisfaction of the warrant condition, as these have received comparatively little attention. I consider three accounts of the conditions under which fakes compromise the warrant condition. I argue for the third of these accounts, according to which the propensity of fakes to exist in an environment threatens warrant acquisition in that environment. Finally, I consider some limitations on the epistemic threat of fakes and suggest some strategies by which this threat can be mitigated.

Liars Know They Are Lying: Differentiating Disinformation from Disagreement

“…These examples also highlight how difficult it can be to identify a single true state of the world. This difficulty has been reflected in recent academic debate about what constitutes misinformation and how it can be reliably identified (Acerbi et al, 2022;Adams et al, 2023;Harris, 2022;van Doorn, 2023;Yee, 2023aYee, , 2023b. However, this must not distract from a crucial point: the difficulty of clearly identifying mis-or disinformation in all cases does not mean that we cannot identify it in many cases.…”

Liars and Trolls and Bots Online: The Problem of Fake Persons

“…Fallis effectively treats what I call deceptive threats, skeptical threats, and epistemic threats as "epistemic threats" in his sense. In a discussion of online misinformation, Keith R Harris (2022). follows Fallis in using "epistemic threat" in this relatively encompassing way.…”