That ‘Breaking News’ About Your Favorite Star on Facebook? It May Come From an AI Spam Factory
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70+
Lead Stories Debunks by Late 2025
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54
Near-Identical Diner Stories
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62
Stars in One Fake Series Post
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Fooled Index
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AI-WRITTEN — The “breaking news” is fiction, and it links to a page full of ads.
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The fact-checking site Lead Stories has spent more than a year tracking a flood of fake celebrity stories on Facebook that it calls “Viet Spam.” The posts come from fan-style pages with names like Country Roots Revival and Working Man’s Anthem, and they link to websites packed with ads. Lead Stories says AI tools write the stories, and that the pages are almost always managed from Vietnam, according to Meta’s page transparency data.
The clearest case involves Micky Dolenz of The Monkees. In about three weeks of summer 2025, one page posted three “breaking news” stories about him: a terrifying fall at home, a collapse on stage, and an accident after visiting Texas flood victims. A Lead Stories editor happened to be sitting near Dolenz at a California restaurant while the third post claimed he was fighting for his life in a Texas hospital. Dolenz then posted a video on his real fan page. “Yes, it’s really me - and I’m just fine!” he said, and he asked fans to report the fake stories to Meta.
The motive is money. Each fake post carries a link to a website filled with ads, and the publisher gets paid when people click. Lead Stories says the spammers usually ask AI to write one fictional story that ties a long list of stars to a single event, which produces dozens of nearly identical stories with different names attached.
It hasn’t stopped. This year, Lead Stories debunked 54 near-identical posts saying Springsteen, Cher, Joni Mitchell, and others had bought a diner to feed 120 homeless people a day, a fake Netflix series said to explore the lives of at least 62 celebrities, and posts claiming dozens of artists, including Barbra Streisand and Barry Manilow, would take over the World Cup opening stage. A search of Google News found no matching reports for the diner story, and Springsteen’s own Facebook page had no such post.
Even Google’s AI Overview got fooled once. When Facebook pages posted a fake “Time 100 Most Influential People in Music” list naming Tom Jones, Willie Nelson, and Stevie Wonder, the AI Overview noted that no such list exists but still repeated the fake claims as fact. A fan page run from another country isn’t automatically fake, Lead Stories notes, but a new page pushing dramatic news from a Vietnam address is a red flag.
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The same story, a different star. Dozens of near-identical stories attach different celebrity names to the same quotes and events.
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No real news coverage exists. A news search found nothing, and the star’s own page never mentioned the story.
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The page is new or renamed. Meta’s page transparency data shows when a page was created, whether it was renamed, and where it’s managed, and many of these pages were made only weeks earlier.
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The link leads to an ad site. The publisher is paid for every click, so the story only has to be shocking enough to get one.
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🚨 AI-Written Clickbait
These are not real news stories about your favorite stars. They are AI-written fiction posted by fan-style pages to sell ads, and real stars like Micky Dolenz have had to tell their fans they’re fine.
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Those Seniors in Clever Halloween Costumes on TikTok? ‘Basin Creek Retirement Village’ Is AI, and It Says So
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Last Halloween, videos of “residents” of a retirement home in clever costumes took over TikTok. A woman with spice jars taped to her sweater said she was a “spice girl,” and a man with watches strapped to his waist said he was “a waste of time.” One video passed 15 million views. All of it was AI. The account, Basin Creek Retirement Village, says so in its bio, “a fictional world made with AI and a lot of love,” and its website says the residents, staff, and stories are entirely fictional. Even so, many of its 63,000 followers believed it was a real home, and PolitiFact and local TV stations had to set the record straight. A year later the account is still posting, recently had about 67,000 followers, and links to a gift shop. It is a gentler case than the celebrity spam because it told people the truth, but it shows how easily one line in a bio gets missed.
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YOUR REALITY DETECTOR TOOLKIT |
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Today’s Skill: Check the Page Before You Believe the Post
Who is posting often tells you more than what the post says.
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Open the page’s transparency information
Facebook shows when a page was created, whether it was renamed, and where it’s managed. A brand-new fan page full of “breaking news” is a red flag.
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Search a few words from the story
The diner story turned up word for word about dozens of other stars. If the same quote fits a lot of different names, it came from a template.
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Look for real coverage and the star’s own page
Micky Dolenz had to post his own video to set the record straight. A real emergency or announcement gets coverage from real news outlets and from the star’s verified page.
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