can you trust those music articles on your facebook feed?

By Jess Santacroce
Music Writer, Phoenix Radio

Each morning, you check your facebook page to see what’s new in the lives of your friends, family members, and coworkers. This morning there isn’t much. People are posting reports about their morning commute to work, pictures of food they made, political memes, events, and things they have for sale. A couple of your contacts shared Bible verses and prayers. More memes follow. Some are fitting. Others are confusing, as they seem to have nothing to do with any of your interests. Suddenly, you find yourself reading an article about one of your favorite musicians. Random articles about television stars, historical figures, writers, movie stars, and musicians seem to pop upon facebook at random. Some of these articles may be completely accurate, while others contain misinformation, or outright lies. That piece that popped up on your feed may be nothing more than the 2026 equivalent of those tabloids we used to see all over every supermarket checkout stand….only worse.

Those supermarket tabloids could only spread rumors about people who are fully prepared, often with legal teams, to have rumors spread about them. They wasted the dollar or two you spent on them, and the time you spent reading them. Their digital descendants may also be going for a lazy and dishonest payday, churning out “AI slop” to take advantage of facebook’s creator bonus program. The program rewards creators who get a lot of attention, not creators who do a particularly good job of researching, writing, and editing their articles. But they may also be attempting to spread malware that allows them access to your computer.

Avoid clicking on any links that take you outside of facebook, and do some independent fact-checking before believing anything you learn from articles with the following signs:



The hosting page has an odd, overly general, or untraceable name

Legitimate pages have names you can find someplace other than facebook. The name of the musician or band, for example, can be found on their official website. “The Metropolitan Opera” is a verifiable arts organization. Articles posted by ABC, NBC, or CNN were provided by that news organization. Pages that post spam or scam content often have random names. They may make little sense, such as “Fun music fun days,” or be vague like “Celebrity facts.” When you type the name into a search engine outside of facebook, the results either do nothing more than loop back to that same facebook page, or they bring up something completely unrelated. There is no music blog, magazine, podcast, or channel with that name and content.

Information that is common knowledge is presented as though it is something new

The Beatles consisted of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Elvis Presley was a famous American singer. The Rolling Stones were British. No kidding. If you have access to facebook, you have access to the internet. If you have access to the internet, you almost certainly live someplace where people have heard of the Beatles, Elvis Presley, and The Rolling Stones. If an article is full of common music knowledge, there is a good chance that it was placed there not to educate or inform, but to get you to open or share the article simply because it covers an artist you like. While the first sentence or even the first paragraph may be common knowledge, there is a chance that any specific information you find later in the article is untrue. 

Clicking on a link seems to be the focus of the piece

Links are normal. Constant prompts to click here for more information are a red flag that the only reason the article was posted was to get people to click on something, the ultimate clickbait. If all the content provider seems to be interested in doing is getting you to click on their link, the main goal was not to inform or entertain you. They just want you to click over to the page that link leads to, often to install malware on your computer.  Articles posted to serve as nothing but clickbait have no reason to be carefully researched, written, and edited for accuracy.


There is nothing specifically “wrong” about the article, but the tone is flat and generic

Technically correct grammar and perfectly acceptable word choice in an article that still manages to sound robotic and flat is the hallmark of AI generated content, known as “AI slop.” And while some of the content may be stolen from long-ago abandoned blogs or wikipedia articles or comments on sites like Reddit, the vast majority of this click-bait and creator-program exploitation content is indeed AI slop. When all you care about is either clicks or money or both, the fastest way to get content that is going to be clicked on and/or spread around is to use AI to generate it.


Your best weapon against this type of content is your lack of attention to it. Scroll past it as soon as you realize what it is. Avoid reading it, and as tempting as it may be, resist the urge to comment under the article informing everyone that this or that detail is inaccurate, or that your favorite artist would not appreciate being portrayed as they are in the article. The algorithm that rewards these dishonest content creators can’t tell the difference between flattering and critical attention. Any time spent reading the piece, any reaction button click, and any comment rewards them.