Testimonial Injustices and Credibility Scores on Social Media: A Response to Regina Rini

To stop the proliferation of fake news, Regina Rini proposed the creation of a clear norm of accountability by assigning publicly visible credibility scores to social media users, calculated using the number of fake news the users previously shared (2017). In this paper, I argue that the potential harm these scores could impose onto underprivileged members of society, through the emergence of testimonial injustices and alienation, justifies discarding Rini’s proposal. I then devise a modified proposal which consists in assigning credibility scores to pieces of news, thus avoiding testimonial injustices while combatting the spread of fake news.