Will there ever be a season of The Bachelorette that isn’t marred by a contestant’s horrifying social-media presence? Evidently not. The show’s most recent outing has barely begun, and already its front-runner, medical sales rep Garrett Yrigoyen, is under fire for apparently liking some very offensive social-media posts—ones that mock immigrant children, trans people, and others, as well as a post supporting the “crisis actor” conspiracy theory about Parkland survivor David Hogg. This has, of course, happened before, and not long ago; last year, contestant Lee Garrett drew ire for his old racist tweets.

But while Garrett eventually went home, it’s likely that Yrigoyen will be around until the end of The Bachelorette’s new season. After all, Bachelorette Becca Kufrin did give him her first-impression rose—and as JoJo Fletcher pointed out during Monday’s premiere, three past first-impression rose recipients all went on to win their respective seasons. As the franchise continues to face increasing scrutiny, these ongoing off-screen controversies only add more fuel to the fire—even as viewers question the level of control producers have over what happens on screen.

Over the years, the second screen has been a boon to Bachelor Nation. Online chatter surrounding the show, particularly on social media, has transformed the franchise into a fully immersive experience. But the rose of Internet engagement comes with a thorn: it’s become increasingly easy for devoted fans to dig up unflattering information about contestants. Just ask Garrett, whose racist, misogynistic, and homophobic tweets quickly became a source of drama off-screen in the summer of 2017, even as his on-screen feud with a black contestant, Kenny Layne, clumsily took over the show itself for several episodes.

In Garrett’s case, it was hard to imagine how producers could have missed his offensive posts, which were publicly available online even before he was cast. The ire this season surrounding Yrigoyen’s now-deleted Instagram account presents a more difficult dilemma: it was Yrigoyen’s likes that were troublesome. The brouhaha could mean that producers will have to screen contestants even more carefully in the future. Gone are the days when they were merely looking for criminal records and existing marriages; now, there’s no limit to the horrors that can lurk in a contestant’s social-media past.

And difficult as it may be to flag every questionable element across every platform, shrugging these social-media warts off is not really an option anymore—particularly as ever-savvier viewers closely scrutinize precisely how producers are shaping each season’s narrative.

This Monday’s chatter surrounding Yrigoyen’s Instagram arose at the same time as another dispatch from Bachelor Nation: an empathetic profile of last year’s Bachelor, Arie Luyendyk Jr., in GQ. The story portrays Luyendyk as earnest and highly trusting—qualities that might have made him particularly susceptible to producers who already have a reputation as master manipulators. Perhaps most important, Luyendyk alleged that producers convinced him to let them record his brutal breakup with eventual Bachelor runner-up Kufrin, and air the entire excruciating process. Though the show claimed that the resulting sequence, as aired, was “the first completely unedited scene in reality-television history,” Luyendyk said it actually left out one crucial detail: though Luyendyk wanted to leave the increasingly uncomfortable scene—where a broken Kufrin was crying in the bathroom—producers, he said, would not let him.

The Bachelor and its various offshoots have weathered several controversies in recent years that have called the role of producers on the show into question. Some fans were alarmed that Chad Johnson was allowed to stay on The Bachelorette Season 12 for as long as he did, despite a belligerent nature that appeared to make him a legitimate safety threat. Then there was Rachel Lindsay’s season of The Bachelorette, which included a seemingly forced—and poorly executed—ongoing discussion about racism. Last summer came perhaps the worst incident of all: an incident of alleged sexual misconduct on the set of Bachelor in Paradise, which prompted an internal investigation as production was suspended.

After all that, and the exploitative decision to air Luyendyk and Kufrin’s breakup in its entirety, it appeared that The Bachelorette had found a solution to its image problem, by leaning into the cornier aspects of the franchise. But these off-screen controversies will be far more difficult to rein in. On screen, it appears producers exercise far too much control; off-screen, they appear ineffective at weeding out bad eggs and preventing spoilers from leaking. (This season, for those curious, appears to have already been spoiled, as have multiple Bachelor and Bachelorette seasons before.) For all the conversation surrounding their hand in on-screen drama, perhaps the more important question is actually whether they can seize any control over what happens outside the mansion. Because that, it seems, could be a far bigger threat to fans’ belief in a happy ending.

Representatives for ABC declined to comment on Yrigoyen’s social-media activity or Luyendyk’s allegations; representatives for Warner Bros. declined to comment as well.