Truth and social media posts may be regarded as having only a passing acquaintance. Perhaps as a consequence, social media posts are regarded with some distrust, and much research and political effort has been expended in trying to determine truth from falsity in the digital realm. The issue is taken to have great significance for the management of misinformation in times of natural disaster, political crises, or societal debate. However, what if this focus entirely misses the point? Truth is never determined by social interaction alone, which is the stock-in-trade of social media. Failure to understand this deep philosophical and psychological issue has beset human endeavour—indeed, the endeavours of most social species, long before the advent of digital communication.

An anecdote may illustrate the problem and illuminate what has come to be known about digital information transmission. Long before the advent of social media, on 4th November, 1988, Nigel Lawson, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer for the United Kingdom, gave a private briefing to a group of journalists. His remarks were meant to be an off-the-record heads-up about policy development, but they were widely reported, causing concern, if not outrage, across the political divide. The Chancellor then roundly denied the media reports, characterising them as a: “farrago of invention”1 (concocted in “a tent”, no less). The journalists defended their reporting by pointing to both consensus (claiming that they had all heard the same thing) and that other people, who were not there, also had the same information independently. Despite the weight of consensus (the Chancellor versus a pack of journalists), nobody knew the truth of what was said then, and we still don’t know now.

This is not an isolated political incident, and it doesn’t amount to very much in itself, except that it prompted analyses of the criteria for truth2 that have implications for our........

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