KSHB 41 reporter Claire Bradshaw covers eastern Jackson County, including Blue Springs and Grain Valley. Share your story idea with Claire.
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Verifying information online has become increasingly difficult in today's digital landscape. A local frozen yogurt business recently became the latest victim of misinformation, highlighting the importance of fact-checking before sharing content on social media.
I woke up Thursday morning to a post announcing that all Yogurtini's nationwide locations were closing February 11. I was heartbroken until I learned — that wasn't true.
I visited the franchise location in Blue Springs to speak with the owner about how looks can be deceiving online and how misinformation can spread rapidly across social platforms.
Frozen yogurt comes in a lot of flavors — and so does misinformation.
"I woke up this morning in a social media frenzy," said Jacob England, the franchise owner of the Blue Springs Yogurtini.
England was referring to a Facebook post that appeared overnight across multiple corporate pages announcing all locations would be closing. After the post was shared in local Facebook groups, England had to respond quickly — but first had to verify the information himself.
"Getting on the phone with our corporate folks to find out, hey, what is going on, type of thing, because the entire brand went through the same thing. So there's multiple different brands, not just Yogurtini within the portfolios. Every single one of them in the middle of the night had that happen across the entire country," England said.
England is refrencing Mesh's brands, including Cherry Berry and U-Swirl. There are two Yogurtini's in the metro: Blue Springs and Tanger Legend Outlets in Kansas City, KS.
I did a similar verification process after seeing the post, along with a screenshot from an AI searchbot claiming Yogurtini was rebranding as Fifth and Emery, a Kansas City frozen yogurt brand. First, I reached out to Fifth and Emery's owner who confirmed it wasn't true.
That's when I saw England's comment telling residents it was a hacker, followed by a post from his local business page clarifying the situation.
"It just gets lost in the other tons of comments, and they that other comments continue to come in. So trying to stay on top of those, you know, replying directly to people," England said.
So how do we determine what is true online? I spoke with Sam Sapp, a cybersecurity expert, for guidance.
"What I think people miss sometimes with AI is it's just pulling in sources of data from across the internet," Sapp said. "You can go to the legitimate company website and double-check against that. Think, like, two verifiable sources of information."
Sure enough, log on to any of Mesh's brand websites and there is an alert telling customers their corporate social media was hacked. The company sent me this statement.
"Our locations are not closing. We have recently lost access to our social media pages and these posts are untrue. We are actively working on getting our access to these pages restored immediately."
England hopes this incident doesn't negatively impact his business and that people have seen that yes, they are open. He said the silver lining was seeing how many people cared about their frozen yogurt potentially closing.
"We're here. We're not going nowhere," England said.
Friday, Febraury 6 is National Frozen Yogurt Day — making it a good time to support your local frozen yogurt spot. England said to check your local Yogurtini page to find deals.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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