Howdy and welcome to your Thursday FOIAball.
No need to pontificate here. I do plenty of it down below.
On Monday, Futurism wrote about a horrific trend on Meta platforms. I know the tech giant sinks to new lows every other week, but this time it went down to Death Valley.
Figuratively and literally.
According to Maggie Harrison Dupré (who does incredible work on the AI beat), a new format is growing in popularity: AI-generated videos of teenage gymnasts being molested by coaches.
If it sounds awful, I assure you, it’s so much worse.
(Just a heads up, this story describes, but doesn’t link to, embed, or use images of any of the material discussed.)
These entirely AI videos tend to feature older male adults groping young athletes as they stretch, watching as they open their legs, running their hands across their groins, and slapping their rear ends as they walk by.
When I read Futurism’s piece, I noticed something in the background of one of the videos that didn’t get a mention: Painted in purple on a wall in the background was the phrase “Geaux Tigers.”
So I started looking. And across Instagram, numerous prominent women’s college gymnastics programs are having their logos and branding used by freaks who want to create fake videos of teenagers being sexually assaulted by older men.
And Meta is letting it happen.
I don’t need to tell you, but this isn’t some fun little LARP. Women’s gymnastics has a long and awful history of abusive male coaches who prey on athletes.
These videos embrace that evil for … lolz? Jack-off material? Crypto scams? Identity theft? Meta allows any number of immoral activities to fester on its platforms, so take your pick.
Given its prominence in the sport right now, it’s no surprise that many of these malignant AI perverts pretend to be LSU gymnasts. The Tigers won a national championship in 2024, and one of their recent graduates is one of social media’s biggest stars.
Faux accounts that all seem to be based on a pretty obvious prompt are all over Instagram: AI-generated blonde gymnasts who claim in their bios to be LSU student-athletes. Some have built up extremely large followings. One figure, across three different accounts, has almost 300,000 followers. Another character has 89,000.
These videos get big audiences. One, which calls itself an “LSU Gymnastics Girly” (and includes “07” in her bio to… well… you know why, do the math), has 11 videos that each have over a million views.
These videos are hyperrealistic simulacra of pretty much every aspect of LSU’s gymnastics program. Many are set in a practice facility, complete with slogans, logos, and SEC championship and national title banners hanging in the background. Like all AI nonsense, the dates are wrong.
In the videos, coaches grope athletes in LSU leotards while helping them stretch, running their hands over intimate body parts. Teammates make out with one another. In one video, set in LSU’s locker room, a group of girls walks directly over a coach lying on his back, looking up at them.
It’s horrendous. But Meta didn’t bother to take any action when Futurism used a generic Facebook profile to report the videos it watched. The tech giant responded a week later, saying most of the accounts did not violate the site's rules.
Only when Futurism reached out before publication did Meta remove the ones they cited.
And their story didn’t touch on the rampant abuse of numerous universities’ intellectual property. This format exists for pretty much any school you can name.
I found videos of gymnasts at Florida, Alabama, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, UCLA, Clemson, Georgia, Utah, and others. AI-generated video after AI-generated video of coaches, wearing university-branded hats and university-branded polo shirts, forcing themselves on their student-athletes. Many have captions that further insinuate sex acts.
And if that was it, it would still be one of the worst things ever. But what’s so upsetting is just how much Instagram is pushing these accounts in its search function.
I’d never looked at this stuff, and the first time I searched “LSU gymnastics,” nine of the first 12 hits were sexualized AI videos. The same goes for other schools.
Just think about this: You’re a high school gymnast with an Instagram account, and you want to learn more about a college program. You type the school into search. Because Meta allows and promotes this garbage, that’s what you see. You’re served up video recreation after video recreation of your future self being abused at a college you are thinking about attending.
I’d say burn in hell, but when hell was created, crimes this awful didn’t exist. We need a new, worse hell for these people.
Here’s where I’m supposed to say I reached out to Meta for comment about this, but I didn’t. I’ll let you in on a little media secret. When reporters email Meta to flag specific examples of problematic content on their platforms, they immediately delete it. Not only does it undercut your story’s premise, as it’s harder to point to an issue when it’s been removed, it gives them the ability to say they immediately did the right thing.
Sorry, chumps. We don’t play that game here. Plus, I spent my time devising a better solution.
College athletics is broke. Schools need money. Meta is letting users take universities’ names, logos, and intellectual property and insinuate that their employees are committing acts of sexual abuse and pedophilia on their students.
Meta’s market cap is $1.5 trillion.
That’s enough to pay players. That’s enough to fund every Olympic sport. That’s enough to buy out every terrible coach. That’s enough money to give every fan free tickets to every single event. That’s exactly what we need.
Schools must band together and sue Meta into oblivion. We can save college sports by destroying Mark Zuckerberg.
Win frickin’ win.
Meta doesn’t need your money or your eyeballs. I do.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see ya next week!
Mark Zuckerberg via Finn Gomez / Staff / Getty
