Fake news has come to college football.
More specifically, fake news has come for Penn State football.
No, your least favorite Penn State beat writer isn’t writing takes that you disagree with. There appears to be at least two fake Facebook pages pushing wildly false information about the Nittany Lions.
The concerning part – much like any political fake Facebook news pages – is that people are buying and engaging with it.
Since Oct. 31, the Facebook page “Nittany Nation Updates” has been posting downright bizarre content all of which is related to the Penn State football program and while a few posts blend in as relatively true information, the account is largely spewing utter nonsense.
This page however, appears to not be the only one as “Blue & White Central” is also posting completely untrue information.
A common thread relates to made up quotes by the likes of Drew Allar, James Franklin and Jedd Fisch. There’s even an entire arc about Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones having interest in hiring Franklin.
Some of the images also appear to leverage AI generation and spew sexist things about various media members and Penn State influencers. The posts also link to an extremely sketchy website with varying URLs like purefire.net and newszen.net. These are clearly not legitimate websites and should not be trusted.
The “Nittany Nation Updates” account has more than 5,000 followers and many of those posts, mostly the more fictitious ones, have a decent number of comments from very real people who seem to be falling for this information. Some posts have more than 500 comments and even more reactions. This only amplifies the page deeper in Facebook’s algorithm, which helps spread the false information more and more.
What’s concerning is the pages do occasionally throw in true stories. For example, Chaz Coleman did commit to Penn State recently. It should be also noted the graphic used in the post is what The Daily Collegian typically posts as the main image when there is a commitment for Penn State.
While the direct push of false information seems to be new in the college football and Penn State world, vague Facebook pages have popped up around Penn State football news before. Last year, I noticed several posts from the “Penn State Nittany Lions Fan HQ.”
OK weird thing happening over on Facebook. Got a couple of posts from this page about Penn State.
— Darian Somers (@StuffSomersSays) November 8, 2023
It's just straight up stealing stuff from @PennLive, @NittanySN and @BSDtweet, among others. pic.twitter.com/UBPPoGKoZB
That page was linking to articles on its own hosted website called news.fanrecap.com. However, once you get to the site, you quickly realize the content is from popular Penn State outlets like PennLive, Nittany Sports Now, The Altoona Mirror and others.
It’s a bizarre effort with its reasons and intentions being unclear. However, it does appear to be getting more broad as one known fan controlled Facebook page has pushed one of these stories posted further.
Overall, Penn State fans should be wary of these pages and only trust reputable pages within the greater Penn State community. Avoid commenting or engaging with the posts. Meanwhile, the most direct action you can take against them is reporting the pages to Facebook.
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