AI-generated woman in a navy blazer seated at an office desk beside a laptop.

A Scam in Plain Sight: How Foreign Facebook Pages Turn Political Outrage Into Cash

03.10.2026 11 Min Read

Patriotic branding, attractive AI presenters and fabricated scandals can all serve the same business. Investigations across Australia, Britain and the United States show how Facebook page operators turn attention into income, with political debate caught in the middle.

Analysis | thewokely | 26 September 2026

Imagine finding a video of an Australian politician making an outrageous statement. It comes from a page with an Australian name, and hundreds of people underneath are furious. Before you have checked whether the statement is real, you are being invited to react, vote in a poll or share it with your friends. For a commercial disinformation operator, that response is the point. Your anger provides the audience. The money can come from advertising on an external website or payments for eligible content on Facebook itself.

The invitation may begin more pleasantly, with an attractive woman speaking to the camera or a page celebrating the country you love. A friendly introduction gives you little reason to expect that the next post will ask you to believe something that never happened. Calling this a scam describes the deception at the heart of the business: fabricated events, borrowed identities and a misleading claim to public trust. It does not mean every overseas administrator is committing criminal fraud. Nor does it mean every political page earns money. But the documented operations deserve a much harder look than the harmless-sounding label “content creation” suggests.

Australia is already a market

In March 2026, ABC NEWS Verify examined 20 overseas Facebook pages publishing fabricated stories for Australian audiences. Most had administrators listed in Vietnam. Their material included invented political confrontations and false stories involving prominent Australians. Most of the pages directed readers to websites carrying advertisements.

The ABC also identified an AI-generated woman delivering an anti-immigration message in an Australian accent, alongside a near-identical British version. After the ABC approached Meta, the company removed most of the highlighted pages for violating its inauthentic behaviour policies. [1] By September, the ABC reported that Reset Tech had tracked more than 200 pages impersonating Australian political figures, linked to an influencer business in Sri Lanka. Roughly one in ten had been monetised.

The wider operation reportedly comprised 1,864 coordinated pages globally, including pages targeting the UK and US. Reset Tech described commercially motivated foreign influence; the reporting did not establish government sponsorship. [2] A page praising Pauline Hanson is not, on that evidence alone, a One Nation operation. Equally, an operator does not need a party contract to profit from promoting a politician or attacking their opponents.

Britain’s anger became a business opportunity

In November 2025, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented a Sri Lanka-based network targeting Britain. ISD identified 89 Facebook pages and 39 groups. Their combined following and membership totalled about 1.6 million, with possible overlap between audiences. The ten most-viewed posts accumulated 45 million views.

The content included anti-migrant material and false political claims, including a video alleging that Keir Starmer had resigned. Many pages had been created or repurposed in the preceding months. Researchers also found paid training in monetising political content and using AI imagery to attract audiences. [3] TBIJ linked the network to influencer Geeth Sooriyapura and his students. It reported an instructional video in which a screen appeared to show US$1,400 in monthly earnings from one page. That is a reported example, not an audited measure of the network’s income.

Sooriyapura told TBIJ that he did not encourage students to spread violence and that his teaching concerned Facebook monetisation and audience targeting. Meta said it removed flagged pages that breached its inauthentic behaviour policies. [4] The commercial pitch is revealing. An audience’s fear about its country can become a market to enter, alongside any other profitable subject. People sharing the posts may care deeply about immigration or public services. That sincerity offers no guarantee that the person supplying their daily outrage shares those concerns.

America offers a longer warning

This business predates generative AI.

Reporting on the 2016 US election exposed a cluster of websites in Veles, in what is now North Macedonia, publishing often-false pro-Trump stories and earning advertising income. Subsequent reporting by OCCRP and its partners complicated the familiar “teenagers with laptops” account, identifying involvement by partisan American writers as well. [5] The point is not that every operation was politically indifferent. Commercial opportunity and ideological commitment can coexist.

In August 2024, Forbes reported on more than 100 Facebook pages organised around American patriotism. Thirty-three were run from North Macedonia, while others operated across 23 additional countries, including Vietnam. Some continued to feature political subjects such as trans rights and critical race theory. [6] A patriotic name can help a page appear familiar before readers know who operates it. But foreign administration, by itself, proves neither dishonesty nor a hidden political sponsor. The evidence has to connect the page to deceptive conduct, rather than treating a country listing as a verdict.

How the money actually moves

There are two main payment routes in the investigations above.

The first uses Facebook to send people elsewhere. A provocative post leads to an article on an advertising-funded website. The publisher earns from advertising activity associated with the traffic. The Facebook post supplies the hook; the website supplies the opportunity to make money.

The second keeps the audience on Facebook. Meta’s Content Monetization programme pays participating creators for eligible content across formats including videos, photos and text posts. Meta describes payments as performance-based, with attention to qualified views, watch time and engagement. [7]

These routes should not be confused. A page linking to an ad-filled website is not necessarily receiving creator payments from Meta. Likewise, a viral post is not proof that its author has been admitted to a monetisation programme. Nor is there a universal price for an angry comment. Eligibility and qualified performance matter. A million views cannot responsibly be converted into a precise earnings figure without further evidence. There can also be money in teaching the model. The British investigation documented a training business around audience targeting and monetisation. In that arrangement, the prospect of profitable political pages becomes something to sell to aspiring operators. [3][4] The reader may never hand over a dollar. Their attention still helps make the transaction possible.

Sex sells. So does outrage.

Anger is only one way to make someone stop scrolling. These operations also use attraction. According to the ABC’s reporting on Reset Tech, some pages drew audiences with AI-generated images of attractive women, animals and Australian scenery before turning to politics. Researchers separately identified sexualised images and videos of female politicians. [2] Those findings describe different tactics. One builds an audience through appealing imagery. The other turns a real woman’s identity into sexualised material. Combining them under “sex sells” should not obscure that difference.

An attractive presenter is not automatically sexualised, and a woman’s appearance tells us nothing about her honesty or expertise. The relevant questions concern fabrication and disclosure: does this person exist, who is scripting her words, and is the audience being misled about either? The synthetic woman speaking in an Australian accent in the ABC’s March investigation illustrates the problem. A near-identical British version carried a similar anti-immigration message. [1] The supposedly local speaker was something the operator could adapt to another market.

This helps explain the commercial appeal of synthetic presenters. The operator can manufacture both a person who catches the viewer’s attention and the grievance she appears to hold. Viewers may think they are hearing somebody’s lived experience when they are watching a scripted fiction. We cannot put a reliable dollar figure on the contribution of sexual appeal to these networks’ earnings. The evidence supports its use as an audience-building tactic, not a precise calculation of its profitability.

But the ethical question does not depend on an earnings estimate. A fictional woman presented as a real political participant offers the audience no accountable speaker to question. Sexualising a real politician introduces a further harm: her likeness can be used to invite ridicule or attention she never agreed to provide. Women should be able to take part in public debate without having their bodies treated as material for someone else’s content business. That principle applies regardless of whether we agree with their politics.

A convincing face is no substitute for evidence

The Australian accent in a fabricated video is especially telling. It gives the viewer a cue of familiarity without supplying any reason to trust the speaker. A generated scene can imply that a confrontation happened. A politician’s likeness can give an invented claim the appearance of evidence. The same question applies whether the image is flattering, threatening or sexually suggestive: what, exactly, is being passed off as real?

The deeper problem is what the viewer is being asked to believe. Satire, illustration and openly fictional work are different from presenting a fabricated incident as news. Political disagreement also requires room for exaggeration, argument and criticism. None of that requires inventing a statement and putting it in someone else’s mouth. For readers, the question is whether the event or claim can be verified. A convincing face and voice cannot answer it.

Profit can still produce political harm

The investigations establish substantial distribution of deceptive material. They do not establish how many people changed their votes because of it. That limit should be stated plainly. Views, followers and comments measure different things, and none is a direct measure of persuasion. Even so, electoral conversion is too narrow a test of whether the practice deserves scrutiny. Public debate depends on people being able to distinguish a real event from an invented one.

Consider what the business asks its audience to do: become angry about a statement that may never have been made, distrust someone because of fabricated conduct, or treat a synthetic crowd as evidence of public feeling. Migrants and Muslims feature prominently as targets in the Australian and British findings. [2][3] When a business uses those communities as material for inflammatory fiction, the ethical objection does not disappear because the operator’s motive is income. Nor should this become an excuse to distrust Asian people, overseas workers or migrant communities. Geography is relevant to investigating a page’s claims about itself. It is not a substitute for evidence. An Australian operator selling the same deception would deserve the same scrutiny.

Meta has rules. Where is the financial accountability?

Meta says it is acting against this behaviour. In April 2025, the company announced measures to reduce the reach and monetisation of spam networks and accounts manipulating engagement. It said it had removed more than 100 million fake pages involved in scripted follows during 2024. That number concerns a broad category of platform abuse. It should not be mistaken for 100 million political disinformation pages. [8]

In March 2026, Meta announced further efforts to reward original content and reduce the distribution of copied material. [9] These measures are relevant. But originality and accuracy are separate questions: a newly generated falsehood can be original. A convincing response to commercial disinformation therefore needs to address both distribution and payment. Removing an exposed page answers only part of the problem. The public should also be able to understand whether it was monetised, how enforcement affected its earnings and whether related operations remain eligible for payments.

Disclosure also needs to be useful at the moment someone encounters a post. An obvious label identifying a fictional presenter would give viewers information they could act on. It would not verify the presenter’s claims, but it would make the pretence of personal testimony harder to maintain. Legitimate creators deserve to be paid. They also deserve a system in which fabricating news and impersonating people are not effective ways to compete for attention.

My view is that Meta should publish clearer reporting on monetised deceptive networks, including the action taken against connected accounts. It should also offer meaningful appeals, so enforcement against fraud and impersonation does not become a convenient way to suppress controversial but authentic speech.

Check the claim, then stop feeding the page

Readers should not have to investigate every post. But checking a claim and withholding attention can interrupt this business. Look for the original recording or announcement through an independent search. Facebook’s Page transparency information can also reveal earlier names and administrator locations, although overseas management alone proves nothing. [10] Once you recognise manufactured outrage, resist the temptation to leave an angry reaction, post a sarcastic reply or watch the video again to pick it apart.

Facebook has described reactions, comments and shares as ranking signals. Its 2025 transparency report also explains that recommendations consider viewing behaviour, including time spent on a post, video completion and interactions with comments. [11][12] The practical concern is that an argument can supply more of the activity these systems measure. A critical comment is not guaranteed to boost a post, and Facebook uses many signals, including measures intended to reduce low-quality content. But expressing disgust underneath a video is not the same as telling Facebook you want less of it. There is a financial connection too. Meta says creator payments depend on eligible content performance, with emphasis on qualified views, watch time and engagement. Avoiding unnecessary viewing withholds attention that could contribute to earnings; avoiding external clickbait links also withholds traffic from advertising-funded websites. Neither every view nor every comment produces a payment. [7]

Give Facebook a clearer signal

Use the post menu to select “Not interested”, previously called “Show less”. Meta says this feedback temporarily lowers ranking for that content and helps shape recommendations. Hiding a post, unfollowing a page or snoozing its updates are further ways to manage what appears in your feed. [12][13] For a page repeatedly publishing deceptive material, the practical response is straightforward: stop watching, avoid reacting or arguing, and use those controls. Report content where it appears to breach platform rules.

These actions primarily affect your own experience. They do not guarantee that Facebook will suppress the page for everybody or remove its monetisation. The reasonable inference is narrower: when fewer people supply views, engagement and website visits, operators have fewer opportunities to turn that attention into income. Correcting a falsehood can still be worthwhile. Consider sharing a reliable explanation separately, or sending it to someone who encountered the claim, instead of repeatedly returning to the original thread. That lets you challenge the claim without continually directing people back to its publisher.

Apply the same standard when a story flatters your politics. A flag, an attractive face and a familiar accent cannot establish that an event happened. You do not owe an outrage merchant a rebuttal beneath every post. Sometimes the most useful response is to deny them the audience they came for.

Your convictions deserve better than being somebody else’s clickbait.

References

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