Internet con artists have been a bane of modern life, but, in their favor, they do make for excellent fact-based dramas, from WeCrashed (about WeWork) to Inventing Anna. Now comes Apple Cider Vinegar, a self-described “true-ish story based on a lie” that documents the rise and fall of Australian wellness blogger-cum-scammer Belle Gibson, who built an influencer mini-empire on the back of claims that clean eating enabled her to live a normal life despite having a terminal brain tumor—which, of course, she didn’t.

There are many similarities between Gibson and Anna Delvey: Both were attractive young women from modest backgrounds (which they did their best to obscure), who created glamorous, successful fantasy personas for themselves, and, with a good deal of business acumen and determination—plus being expert manipulators and liars—brought them into being. Even more than money, both women seem to have been in it for the validation that they were special and admired.

But where Delvey’s activities defrauded largely people with substantial wealth, Gibson did not deprive her followers of their money so much as threaten their health: Many who believed her were cancer patients for whom the clock was ticking and so did not have the luxury of wasting time on dubious nutritional “cures.”

The series is as much about the difficulty of determining the truth in an age of unregulated social media, a landscape where a poster’s opinions count for as much as a research expert’s evidence and...

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