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| - For example, a March 16 Facebook post read, "Boycott: Many people are boycotting Kurt Russell after he said that children should not be exposed to cartoons featuring LGBTQ themes. He argued that children should be raised according to "traditional values" and that adults should simply allow kids to enjoy their childhood as children."
The claim spread across Facebook in the following days, and Snopes readers contacted us to ask whether the rumor was true.
(Facebook page News Story)
We first used search engines such as Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo to locate possible evidence from credible sources about Russell's supposed statement and the boycott that followed. If the story was true, journalists with reputable news outlets, such as The Associated Press or Reuters, would have widely reported on it.
That was not the case. Instead, we found an article listing 11 celebrities who made anti-LGBTQ comments (Russell was not on the list). The searches revealed that social media posts were the only sources spreading the rumor, and a Google reverse image search found a suspiciously similar claim whose only difference was that the supposed boycott targeted rapper 50 Cent instead of Russell.
The rumor about Russell (and 50 Cent) was fictional.
The earliest example we found was posted to a Facebook page called News story on March 16. The page's output showed it used artificial intelligence tools to create shocking, fictitious stories about public figures.
Therefore, we've rated this claim false.
Creators of such content capitalize on social media users' willingness to believe and share the made-up stories, profiting from advertising revenue on external websites to which the posts link. (Snopes has previously reported on the business strategy.)
We contacted a manager of the News Story Facebook page to ask why it had created the false story about Russell without a disclaimer to note its inauthenticity. We will update this story if we receive a response.
Many posts spreading the false rumor about Russell's alleged statement and its supposed backlash included links in the comment sections to articles on unreliable blogs posing as news sites. Such blogs often are filled with advertisements, and replace certain English letters (generally the letters "n" and "u") with similar but distinct characters from non-English alphabets.
That article had several indications of being AI-generated text, including incredibly vague wording and a very rigid structure commonly present in AI-generated responses. GPTZero, a tool that aims to detect AI-generated text, determined with 80% certainty the article was AI-generated.
Furthermore, software that screens images for signs of AI, such as Sightengine, determined the image used alongside the post was likely created with similar generative tools. Running the image through Google Gemini revealed it contained a SynthID watermark, an additional piece of confirmation that it had been edited or created by AI.
Let us note here: These types of AI detection tools are fallible. Snopes cautions people against using them for definitive answers on media's authenticity without supporting evidence.
Snopes has debunked similar rumors about celebrities supposedly making anti-LGBTQ comments. For example, in February 2026, we traced the source of a false story spreading via similar methods about American figure skater Alysa Liu, who won gold in the event at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
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