Baseball fans are facing an onslaught of phony AI content on Facebook,  pushed by a clickbait network in Southeast Asia capitalizing on interest in the lead-up to the sport’s World Series, an AFP investigation has found.With names like “Dodgers Dynasty” and “Yankee Nation,” the pages mimic genuine fan accounts, but link to websites that are full of ads and phony AI-generated articles meant to draw clicks — and payouts for the site creators.”The goal of pages and operations like this is to earn money, and so whatever is going to work in terms of messaging, in terms of content, in terms of tactics they will do,” journalist Craig Silverman, who has investigated similar clickbait, told AFP.Experts warn that this strategy of pulling in users, sometimes with innocuous content, can be used to grow accounts that are later sold or rented to more nefarious disinformation campaigns.Lies meant to elicit rage — such as false claims US President Donald Trump plans to jack up prices for games featuring Major League Baseball’s sole Canadian team, the Toronto Blue Jays — have long been used to attract social media engagement. But seemingly innocent posts are also drawing thousands of likes.One features an AI image of Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani surrounded by puppies, lauding him for purportedly building a $5 million dog sanctuary. Another post praises the Japanese standout for tipping a struggling waitress hundreds on a $60 check, an act of unverified generosity that was also ascribed to New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge and Boston Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran. “Scammers are learning to be better storytellers,” said Luke Arrigoni, founder of Loti, an AI tool used to protect the reputations of public figures. He said AI is allowing those creating false narratives to more easily make posts that appear genuine.- Under investigation -AFP presented Meta with a list of 32 Facebook pages pushing baseball-linked phony AI content and asked if the falsehoods run afoul of platform rules. The pages had attracted a combined 248,000 followers.A Meta spokesperson said: “We are investigating the pages and admins in question and will take action against any that violate our policies.” Page transparency data shows the accounts are managed from Southeast Asia — mostly Vietnam — despite listing US phone numbers and addresses. The numbers reached entities unaffiliated with the pages, including a motel and a California physician’s office. AFP also matched the addresses to a salon and restaurant.The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which studies disinformation, previously found clickbait networks were “generating substantial revenue for the people behind them, relative to average incomes in Vietnam.”- Lack of labels -While the Major League Baseball playoffs boosted engagement with these pages, the network also targets fans of American football, ice hockey and basketball.An individual page or claim on its own may not appear concerning. But Silverman, who focuses on digital deception for Indicator, a site he co-founded, said AI is enabling groups to scale rapidly.More divisive content, including false quotes attributed to athletes on LGBTQ issues or the assassination of US conservative activist Charlie Kirk, have also gained traction.And AFP found these tactics are not limited to English-language content. As part of Meta’s fact-checking program, AFP has debunked falsehoods on pages targeting tennis fans in Serbian and Formula One supporters of Max Verstappen in Dutch. In the United States, Meta replaced fact-checking labels with a Community Notes program intended to allow users to flag false content.AFP examined hundreds of claims published since the start of the baseball playoffs and did not find any carrying visible notes — even as some users posted page reviews warning about fake content.”They’re building a bigger and bigger foothold,” Silverman said of the phony accounts, warning that without moderation the networks will only continue to grow.

Every five years, the fading US town of Taft puts on a days-long “Oildorado” festival to celebrate its glory days at the center of California’s black gold rush.Thousands flock to its parade of cowboys on horseback, antique cars and floats featuring oil pumps — a hat tip to the Wild West of yore.This year, nine months into Donald Trump’s second term, the tone has shifted from reminiscence to renaissance.Shrugging off climate change concerns, the US president has embraced fossil fuels with a stated goal of “unleashing American energy” and removing “impediments” to domestic energy production.Some of Taft’s 7,000 residents are anticipating a comeback for the petroleum industry in California, which has pledged to abandon oil drilling by 2045 to meet its climate goals. “I’m 100 percent satisfied with President Trump,” Buddy Binkley told AFP, a minority view in a heavily Democratic state. “And as for the state of California, I think he’s putting a nice pressure on them to hopefully turn around their prejudice against oil.”The 64-year-old retired maintenance supervisor with oil company Chevron sported a red cap with the words “Make Oil Great Again,” a play on Trump’s MAGA motto and a slogan featured on several parade floats. “The oil industry in California is suffering due to political reasons,” Binkley said. But with Trump in power, “I think it may go back the way it was.”- ‘Great hopes’ -Located about 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of Los Angeles, Taft was founded in 1910 atop California’s most extensive oil field. Today, Kern County — where Taft is located — contributes more than 70 percent of California’s total oil production. Its rural landscape is dotted with thousands of oil pumps.A giant wooden oil derrick serves as a central landmark in Taft, which finances its schools, fire department and police force with oil revenues.   Festival-goers can compete for the title of best welder, crane operator or backhoe loader — or be crowned the “Oildorado Queen.”Despite its pageantry and pride, the town is in decline.California oil production has been waning since the 1980s and has more recently been pinched by the push for cleaner forms of energy. Some of the town’s residents have moved to Texas, where drilling is less regulated.Many in Taft are delighted that Trump has pulled out of the Paris climate accord and removed obstacles to drilling on federal lands while handing out billions in tax breaks for the oil industry.”I have great hopes,” said Dave Noerr, Taft’s mayor. “We have all the raw materials. We had the wrong direction, now we have leadership that is going to unleash the possibilities.”- ‘Stuck in the past’ -Trump’s administration has slashed federal funding for renewable energy and climate science, and he wants to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.  Like the president, Noerr is a skeptic of “quote, unquote, climate change.””We need to question the narrative, and we need to update those things with the existing science,” he said.Yet California is increasingly vulnerable to the extreme weather produced by climate change. Earlier this year, 31 people in the Los Angeles area died in fires spread by hurricane-force gusts of 160 km/h (100 miles per hour). “If everyone around the world behaved like the US, the world would be on pace for four degrees centigrade of global warming by 2100,” said Paasha Mahdavi, a political scientist specializing in environmental policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.Agriculture remains the top employer in Kern County, and “would be dramatically affected by increased incidence of drought, and unprecedented heat waves that are already hitting the region,” he added.That worries Taylor Pritchett, a 31-year-old dog groomer in Taft who frets about air pollution in the area.”If I were to have a child, I wouldn’t want to raise them in Kern County,” she said. “I would like to go somewhere cleaner.”She believes that “we need to get away from fossil fuels.” But in Taft, she acknowledged, “we’re stuck in the past a little bit, you know, like, very unwilling to change.”