I logged onto Facebook after far too long and was immediately greeted by the digital equivalent of a carnival barker—spam, but with a sinister, uncanny valley twist. It seems these accounts, now wielding AI like a loaded meme gun, have found a new target: die-hard football fans. The game has changed, and not for the better.
A disturbing trend has emerged: clusters of Facebook accounts masquerading as fan pages for various National Football League teams. A cursory scroll reveals a toxic blend of misinformation and disturbingly realistic AI-generated imagery. What’s truly unsettling is the apparent gullibility of some users, judging by the comments and likes, who seem to accept these fabrications as gospel.
Consider this example: a Pittsburgh Steelers fan account, boasting 11,000 followers, posted a bizarre claim that a former player, unnamed, retired from football to join the Pittsburgh Police Department, eager to “wear Pittsburgh colors once again.” This was accompanied by an AI-generated image resembling former wide receiver Adam Thielen in a police uniform. Thielen *did* recently retire and briefly played for the Steelers; however, there’s absolutely no evidence he’s traded his cleats for a badge.
When AI “Kills” a Journalist: The New Low
The deception doesn’t stop at fabricated career changes. One Denver Broncos fan account, “Wild Horse Warriors,” with over 6,000 followers, targeted Broncos reporter Cody Roark. The page posted an AI-generated image depicting Roark holding a child and falsely claimed he had died following a domestic violence incident, leaving behind a fictitious 5-year-old. Roark, thankfully, is alive and well, and childless. This is no longer a game; it’s a calculated attack. Social media has become a loaded weapon.
“Usually you see that happen to, like, high-profile celebrities,” Roark told The Denver Post. “For that to happen to me was just really weird.”
Meta has since shut down the “Wild Horse Warriors” account after The Denver Post inquired about the disturbing post. During its short two-month lifespan, the account reportedly spread a torrent of misinformation about Broncos players, including the false assertion that wide receiver Courtland Sutton refused to wear an LGBTQ+ solidarity armband during a game. While “Wild Horse Warriors” is gone, similar accounts continue to thrive. “Broncos Stampede Crew” echoed the same false claim about Broncos quarterback Bo Nix and the LGBTQ+ armband. The phone number associated with that account traces back to Vietnam.
How Are These Accounts Monetized?
These accounts, cloaked in team colors, operate with a familiar playbook: each post links to an article on a website designed to mimic legitimate news sources, like “ESPNS” or “NCC News.” The aim is not journalism but revenue. Think of it as digital sharecropping—harvesting clicks and selling them to the highest bidder.
“Spam Pages largely leveraged the attention they obtained from viewers to drive them to off-Facebook domains, likely in an effort to garner ad revenue,” Harvard researchers wrote in a study from 2024. These websites are usually “heavily ad-laden content farm domains—some of which themselves appeared to consist of primarily AI-composed text.”
What Other Motives Are in Play?
Other accounts may be playing a longer game, patiently cultivating an audience and currying favor with the Facebook algorithm. The goal: to build a platform for future exploitation. It’s a classic bait-and-switch, where sensational (and fake) news stories are used to attract followers before pivoting to selling goods, promoting clickbait websites, or even shifting to political propaganda.
“It could be that these were nefarious pages that were trying to build an audience and would later pivot to trying to sell goods or link to ad-laden websites or maybe even change their topics to something political altogether,” Georgetown researcher Josh Goldstein told NPR in a 2024 interview about AI spam accounts on Facebook.
Can These Accounts Be Stopped?
Identifying and eliminating these AI-driven spam factories presents a formidable challenge. Meta’s automated systems and human moderators wage a never-ending war against these bad actors, but the spammers are constantly adapting, evolving their tactics to evade detection. It’s a digital arms race with no clear end in sight. Platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) are perpetually playing catch-up.
The deeper question is: how can we, as consumers of online information, become more discerning?