There was no way that anyone on the other end of the line was going to pick up.
It was a phone number on a random Facebook page, spewing nonsensical and blatantly false information about Penn State football.
Why did I even think it was a legitimate number? Nothing about the page looked legitimate but yet there was a phone number.
I punched in “8-1-4”, a familiar area code to Penn State fans, the same area code that State College and University Park are in.
Could someone in the central part of Pennsylvania be doing this? Was I about to get the answers in my Pablo Torre-ian-like quest to find out about these fake Facebook pages this easily?
The tones for “2-3-1” echoed in my office.
There was a high probability that the number I was in the midst of entering wasn’t even in service, let alone another human that’d be willing to talk to me about why they created a fake Facebook page that’s been content farming bizarre stories.
“0-9-0-0”
My thumb nervously tapped the green call button at the bottom of the screen.
It rang.
I don’t recall when I first started noticing the posts but I’ve slowly started to become fascinated with them.
In fact, over the course of the last few weeks, months and even now years I’ve taken hundreds of screenshots.
It was the bye week and I had extra time on my hands. I had questions. I wanted answers.
Why are those fake Facebook pages popping up?
Why are people falling for those fake posts with unequivocally false information, spreading like wildfire through the home base of Penn State’s online community, Facebook?
Why are they so outlandish? What happens when you click on an article linked to them?
Does Penn State know about them?
And would anyone, someone, be attached to an email or a phone number linked on one of those pages?
So I set out on a mission to find those answers.
Kelley Cotter is an expert in algorithms, particularly those on social media and in artificial intelligence, that impact people’s media consumption. She has a PhD from Michigan State in information and media on the matter.
She was also a real, live, actual human willing to talk to me about this topic.
“Those kinds of images are likely going to grab attention to some degree, because people are going to recognize a face that they know and they might be interested in,” Cotter, who is also an assistant professor in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology, said. “So there might be enough kind of pausing on the images for that reason alone and then trying to make sense of what they’re seeing.
“There’s a little bit of trying to unravel confusion or maybe even cognitive dissonance when you look at the image and you’re like, ‘wait, this is James Franklin with Robert Redford. What is happening here?'”
What is purported to be happening here in a post still up as of Tuesday, Sept. 23 is that Penn State’s head coach decided to express his thoughts about the legendary actor’s death, not in “words but a song – a ‘final ballad for the friend I could never let go.’”
I assure you that at no point during Franklin’s various media availabilities or appearances since the death of the star of The Natural has Penn State’s head coach sung any song. You can check the transcript of his most recent press conference here yourself.
In fact, there is – and I can’t believe I have to say this – no known connection between Franklin and Redford. There’s probably a real chance that Franklin doesn’t even know that Redford died as Franklin has been locked in on the 2025 season.
But that’s how utterly bizarre so many of these posts are.
Prior to the announcement that College GameDay was coming to Happy Valley for the Nittany Lions’ game with Oregon, several pages had posted that the ESPN show would be in town for the Villanova game.
And not only that but Taylor Swift – a Pennsylvania native – would be the guest picker. While it remains to be seen who will be this week’s guest picker, College GameDay went to Knoxville for the Tennessee-Georgia game the same day that Penn State played Villanova. Candace Parker, a Lady Vols legend, was the guest picker that day.
Other posts seem to inflame along the political lines.
Just a day after right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk was shot in Utah, a Facebook page called “Lions United Victory” posted that “CEO of the Penn State Nittany Lions” Pat Kraft pledged to pay expenses for Kirk’s two children.
Of course, this did not happen, and the post has since been removed from the “Lions United Victory” page.
But six different posts from that page as of the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 23, still exist related to Kirk and Penn State. One has more than 4,000 reactions.
Every single one of them is false.
“Nittany Tradition,” another one of these pages that seems to be sharing similar rhetoric, has 11 posts actively up that tie Penn State’s football program to the Kirk news. None of those 11 are factual in any fashion either.
In particular, one post alleges that Penn State will leave an empty seat “in memory of Kirk.”
While these pages are largely populated by high numbers of bot followers, many of those interactions on the posts do come from real people. The Kirk chair post has more than 2,900 reactions, 117 comments and 191 shares.
It is also completely made up.
Meta’s algorithm effectively assigns a score to every single piece of content that could potentially appear in your feed each time you log on to Facebook.
Factors like comments, shares and reactions from similar users factor in. But even things as simple as time spent viewing the post also contribute to how likely it will appear higher in the feed.
While most Penn State fans who are interacting with these pages don’t like or follow the pages spewing the fake news, the content appears because Meta needs to fill in gaps left after users view content from pages they do follow and people they are friends with.
The virality of these posts can make some of them appear in feeds to fill that void. Real interactions — even ones that are done with the intent of informing others the information is fake — exacerbate the situation.
“These are all going to be signals that are just going to tell the algorithm that this is content people are interested in by interpreting their engagement as interest,” Cotter said. “So the best thing is probably just a scroll by. But like I said, I think there is a kind of natural impulse in seeing a novel image of something that you’re just not… you see some things that are familiar, but you’re not totally sure what to make of it. That’s going to grab attention regardless, but at the very least, avoiding more deliberate engagement with it.”
Penn State fans aren’t alone in this as well.
When I dug deeper into these pages, I noticed that many of the suggested pages posted similar messages, only tailoring it to different teams and schools.
“Bulldog Fandom Hub” strikes a similar tone as the Franklin posts but focuses on Georgia. “The Blue Streak” posts about the WNBA’s Chicago Sky with an incendiary tone. Last year when we wrote about this, several others noted their colleges were also targets of these pages. Awful Announcing even noted a rise in the viral posts related to Kirk from NFL pages this month.
Fake news is nothing new in the world of Facebook but has seemed to have reached a new level with the increased accessibility to generative AI, which many posts on the Penn State pages use.
But in the case of Penn State, many of the pages start out by posting relatively true things. Many of the Penn State ones stole graphics and videos from either Penn State’s official Facebook pages or other Penn State media outlets.
One post on “Blue & White Pride” features an image of Joe Paterno walking the practice fields at the Lasch Building with text overlay that says “On January 22nd, I looked up to the heaven to ask ‘Why’ … but then I stopped and smiled when I remembered the sky is blue and white.”
This post, referencing the day Paterno died, has more than 2,400 reactions, another 314 comments and 158 shares, including from several people that I’m mutual Facebook friends with.
Other posts are slightly more believable in order to mine some favor in the algorithm. “Nittany Tradition” posted a happy birthday message to Drew Allar on Sept. 12, getting nearly 1,000 reactions.
However, Allar’s birthday is on March 8.
Paterno, in particular, is also often celebrated in birthday shoutouts to generate those initial interactions. However, one post showed a picture of Paterno running on to the field with a birthday wish for Franklin. It was posted on Sept. 6. Paterno’s birthday was Dec. 21 and Franklin’s is Feb. 2.
Several key Penn State figures like Allar, Kraft and Franklin are generally in the crosshairs of these posts. But other posts mention Penn State media personalities like Steve Jones, Todd Blackledge and Matt Millen. Some posts also promise explicit images of players’ girlfriends, female Penn State fan influencers and cheerleaders.
The purpose of the pages – aside from spreading misinformation with intention – seems to be relatively financial. Each post is linked to a spam-like URL. In the case of the Franklin-Redford post, the gentleshadow.org is the primary link shown.
But it redirects to a site with the URL amazing.livextop.com.
There, an aggressive number of traditional website ads showed up that, without an ad blocker plugin, nearly ground my computer to a halt. Each ad generates impressions for real businesses running ads on display networks that give a kickback to the sites hosting the ads.
With the ad blocker on, however, there is a relatively detailed story about Franklln’s song for Redford. Curiously, any time the letter “n” is used, the article displays the font’s character for Pi.
Additionally, all of the text within the article that isn’t a headline is actually uploaded as an image, which also helps to slow down computer speeds.
The article is full of more wildly false information.
“Franklin later confirmed that he plans to record the song, not for public sale, but as a private gift to Redford’s family.”
One section includes made-up quotes, such as “I never knew James Franklin could sing,” “The bond between Franklin and Redford shows us that friendship transcends professions,” and “This was a man laying his heart bare for the world to see.”
None of them are attributed to a person, nor was the article’s author noted.
“Some of the AI imagery that I’ve been seeing is interesting and maybe, some of it kind of feels like, even the ones you sent me, I guess some of it kind of feels like fanfiction that you would get for TV shows, but it’s for reality,” Cotter said in our interview. “And I think that’s really confusing right now. But I could imagine a future where it’s not as confusing, where people just want to revel in the reality that they create or invite other people into their imaginations of a possible world, which could have entertainment value. I mean, that’s what we do with TV and movies, oftentimes going about in a very different way.”
| (A Few) Facebook Pages Pushing Fake PSU News |
|---|
| Blue & White Central |
| Lions United Victory |
| Nittany Tradition |
| Forever Nittany |
| Blue & White Pride |
| Nittany Lions Central |
| Victory Valley |
While the posts aren’t real, they have generated some buzz among Penn State fans.
Several Penn State beat writers noted that fans reached out to them regarding rumors of Jerry Jones hiring Franklin when we posted about this last season. There were never any rumors related to Franklin and the Cowboys, to be clear.
Even that buzz has reached Penn State’s athletic department.
“We are aware of the posts and have reported as necessary,” Penn State associate athletic director for communications Kris Peterson said in a comment provided.
And while that did satisfy my quest to know that even Penn State football itself is aware that this is a thing, I still felt the urge to try to track down any answer or comment from the other side of this story.
I successfully forced Facebook’s algorithm to show me multiple of these posts each time I logged on – so much so that I earned a “rising fan” badge Facebook offers to incentivize more engagement with them.
When I dug in more closely, several of the pages listed emails. Naturally I wrote an email to as many of them as I could find.
Every single one of them yielded an error message from GMail that the address I was trying to reach doesn’t exist.
I also cross-referenced a few of the mailing addresses listed. One was Penn State’s Old Main building itself. Another was the Hintz Building, where the Penn State Alumni Association is headquartered.
In a final attempt to reach someone on this side of the story for comment, I texted one phone number with a Mississippi area code but got nothing back. When I called that number, I was alerted that it had been a disconnected number.
Another page, called “Blue & White Central,” however, listed that holy grail of an 814 number. Refusing to give up hope and refusing to give up journalistic responsibility to find the answer, I decided to dial it.
It rang once while I held my breath in anticipation. With a final dash of hope, my heart leapt before I could realize a friendly, automated voice had answered.
“Thank you for calling Chick-fil-A Happy Valley…”
Fooled by the fake Facebook pages once again.
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