Humans rely on social consensus to assess the credibility of information. Confidence in a claim can be influenced by repeated exposure to the same source (dependent consensus), which can create an illusion of consensus. This study investigated whether people differentiate between dependent consensus and consensus derived from multiple independent sources. In two experiments, participants rated their confidence in a claim after exposure to an increasing number of supporting claims within a mock social media environment. Results revealed that although dependent and independent consensus were weighted similarly when exposed to a small number of claims, independent consensus carried greater influence as claim exposures increased, regardless of the claim’s valence. These findings were further supported by analysis of free-text justifications of responses using large language models (LLMs). Our findings show that people differentiate between the epistemic weight of different consensus types on social media, where repeated exposure to claims is common.