<p>Paradigmatic echo chambers are widely thought to be epistemically unhealthy communities, but there is little agreement about what, exactly, makes them epistemically unhealthy. C. Thi Nguyen argues that echo chambers manipulate members into distrusting outsiders by preparing them for criticism in advance, a form of preemptive distrust. I argue that this kind of trust manipulation is neither necessary nor sufficient to identify the problem with echo chambers. Instead, I argue that the problem is that they exhibit a different kind of trust manipulation: nihilistic distrust. The problem stems from two related issues. First, echo chambers exhibit asymmetrical trust relationships within the group, in which authority figures are highly trusted and critics are distrusted. This distrust is reactive rather than preemptive and is not directed at outsiders as such, so it is not best understood in the terms provided by Nguyen’s account. Second, by distrusting criticism, authorities in an echo chamber abandon the norm of being open to learning from one’s mistakes. By prioritizing the internal power dynamics of the group over their own epistemic standards, echo chambers exhibit a kind of epistemic nihilism.</p>