Back ten years ago, before the term was hijacked by a certain elected official and his followers who want you to think anything negative about him or them shouldn’t be trusted, “Fake News” was a true online scourge. Social media was filled with fiction, designed to try to sway your vote in the 2016 election.
Today’s version is different.
Just scroll Facebook and you’ll see it, from pages you don’t follow and accounts that are unfamiliar. But the headlines are inviting, often positive. It’s the kind of nice stuff you wish was true. These days, they’re often about sports.The AI-generated images, when scrolling, can look, even for a split-second, legitimate.
Just in the past week, I have seen content shared about a Detroit Lions player and his girlfriend donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to schools to pay off kids’ lunch bills.
But it’s fake. School kids in Michigan now get free school lunches. It’s in the state budget.
A friend shared a post about the Detroit Lions ownership hiring homeless people to clean up Ford Field.
That’s also fake. For some reason, there are many posts about many sports owners around the country “doing” the same thing, all with the same AI image superimposed over various stadium shots.
Last weekend, I saw a post shared lauding the Detroit Tigers signing legend Kirk Gibson to a contract to work for the team.
That’s fake too. Gibson just opened a new center to treat Parkinson’s Disease. That’s where he’s spending his time.
The list goes on. In fact, just about every day, Facebook shows me posts from an account called “Comerica Crew.” Everything posted to that page is false. I’ve reported it to Facebook, to no avail. As much as I voraciously consume everything about my favorite baseball team, I want all it to be true.
So beware fake sports news on Facebook, as it’s an epidemic. If you see some news, even if you think it’s really nice, about sports figures being exceptionally philanthropic or your team signing a star, or someone breaking down and crying (as retired Tigers manager Jim Leyland supposedly did about the teams re-signing Justin Verlander – also fake!), don’t like, comment, share or follow it before checking it out first. Traditional news outlets, even with all of their contraction and consolidation, still devote resources to sports. Do a Google News search or think to yourself “Have I ever heard of this page?” If you don’t see it in a real news outlet and it’s just on some no-name account, it’s probably fake.
What I can’t figure out is what the scam is here. What’s the endgame? Why do they want your engagement? How will they sell something?
I really don’t want to know first-hand. I just want it out of my feed and want to help you stop sharing it.