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Know-It-All Robot Shuts Down Dubious Family Texts (wsj.com)
Biting your tongue at yet another questionable article shared in your message group? Add artificial-intelligence fact-checker Meiyu, she will jump in with 'False.' From a report: The artificial-intelligence bot will interject in real time when she detects posts about the news, pointing out factual errors and alternative interpretations. The technology, created by Taiwanese developers, is a step ahead of most fact-checking apps, including versions offered in Brazil and Indonesia, which don't jump into conversations. Other popular fact-checkers, such as Snopes in the U.S., are public databases that users consult for reviews of news items. Meiyu quickly became hot in Taiwan, which had just gone through divisive local elections and is rife with rumors of China's interference in social media. The bot now has more than 110,000 users on the Japanese messaging app Line, which covers about 90% of the mobile-messaging market in Taiwan.
Scientific Consensus would be argumentum ad popolum if it was true that consensus determines facts, however, it does not. It merely flags particular theories as known-to-be-accepted-in-the-mainstream.
Science is a process, not a set of theories or conclusions. Therefore, you identified the correct fallacy in the argument, but in the wrong part of the argument. Where they're engaging in argumentum ad popolum is when they're saying that because there is a "scientific consensus," therefore the body of the consensus is also correct, or worse, sometimes they'll even want to call it "proven." But science does not and can not attempt to "prove" things. Science is merely a process by which you can attempt to repeat things; the personal goal of scientists is often to discover the "why" of things, but science doesn't actually do that. And the good ones know it! Their personal goal of understanding "why" is separate from their professional goals of taking additional steps in a process. But conclusions are not one of the steps that is even part of the process, so consensus about what the current-best-answer is doesn't even touch on or support coming to conclusions about it!
"I think, therefore I am" is a complete failure, but because the lesson is valuable (if I don't exist it doesn't matter if I'm wrong, if I do exist but believe I don't I won't be motivated to survive, therefore belief in existence is the only answer with potential utility) we also value scientific consensus; not because it is ever correct, or capable of being correct, but because it supports additional attempts at understanding.