SEATTLE, WA – OCTOBER 16: Hazel Mae interviews Vladimir Guerrero Jr. #27 of the Toronto Blue Jays after Game Four of the American League Championship Series presented by loanDepot between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Seattle Mariners at T-Mobile Park on Thursday, October 16, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
MLB Photos via Getty Images
For Toronto Blue Jays fans, Hazel Mae has become one of the most familiar voices during broadcasts and faces in the dugout.
As a key part of the team’s broadcasting crew, Mae has become a celebrity in her own right, with fans curious to follow updates on her personal life. And for many Blue Jays fans, that has meant sharing condolences in response to concerning health updates on social media.
“In the absence of legitimate news on Facebook, a plethora of purported fan sites have engaged in clickbait by publishing outright lies with hallucinated quotes to fill that gap,” Spiro Papuckoski reported for the Toronto Sun. “In another example, what appears to be a Blue Jays fan page posted a story in April that the team’s reporter and host Hazel Mae is cutting back her workload this season due to ‘undisclosed health issues.’”
Last week, when a misleading health update popped up on X, Mae addressed the ongoing wave of online claims that had circulated about her health.
Toronto Blue Jays Reporter Hazel Mae Pushes Back On Online Health Concerns
“Think of you at this time and wishing you a speedy recovery!” an X account posted on Sunday.
“Recover from what?” Mae replied.
That social media interaction gained attention as Mae is often linked to claims that she’s struggling with a significant health concern. But she followed up on her X reply to acknowledge “multiple fake AI articles” on Facebook that drive fan concern and outreach.
“I heard about those,” Mae added. “I usually just check the sources when I see those types of articles. Hard to tell what’s true these days.”
Toronto Blue Jays Fans Wrestle With AI Generated Social Media Claims
The broader environment has made the problem particularly difficult for Canadian sports fans. It has been nearly three years since Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Threads, blocked links to news articles from being shared on its platforms in Canada, following the institution of the country’s Online News Act.
That legislation requires certain digital platforms to compensate news organizations when their articles appear on their services, creating a complicated relationship between traditional media and social-media companies.
In that environment, fabricated sports pages can fill the void with attention-grabbing material that looks like news but lacks the reporting behind it. The Blue Jays and Mae are not alone among prominent Toronto sports figures that have become the focus on misleading social media content among local fans.