Indonesian creators monetise One Nation Facebook groups via Meta's creator program
An Indonesian woman identified as 'Adira', living in West Java, is earning money through Meta's creator program by posting political content in Facebook groups supporting Australian senator Pauline Hanson, according to a Guardian investigation published on 9 August 2026 (The Guardian). Adira posts content in a Facebook group called 'Team Pauline Hanson' that has almost 26,000 members.
The Guardian revealed in June 2026 that some of the largest One Nation supporter groups on Facebook appeared to be run by and full of overseas creators who monetise content, many based in Indonesia. That earlier investigation, titled 'Pro-One Nation Facebook groups appear to be run by foreign meme factories' and published on 28 June 2026, stated that much of the content across pro-One Nation Facebook groups was designed as 'outrage' or 'poll bait' content, often asking yes-or-no questions (The Guardian, 28 June 2026). A creator's Indonesian-language content showed that Meta would pay US$20 for two posts that reached 50,000 people.
Adira stated she is not paid by an agency but instead seeks payments from Meta through its creator program, which pays for content engagement. She claimed she receives no instructions about which campaigns to post about, saying there is no intention toward the political right or left.
The mechanics are straightforward. Adira participates in Facebook and WhatsApp groups with other Indonesians where advice is shared about which Facebook groups to post in. Some of the Indonesian groups she participates in have 'leaders' who provide videos and images and give advice about which groups might be worthwhile to post in. The creators find Facebook groups to post in through platform recommendations shown after they post content.
Facebook Content Monetization is an invite-only program that lets Facebook creators earn money from their content (Facebook Business Help Centre). Monetizing creators, publishers and third-party providers on Facebook must comply with Facebook's Partner Monetization Policies and its rules for making and receiving payments (Facebook Business Help Centre).
Rest of World reported in February 2026 that Meta's Facebook creator monetization grew to 12 million accounts, with Indonesia the largest non-English market, and that creators were paid $2 billion in 2024 (Rest of World). Meta announced in March 2026 that it is rewarding creators who post original content on Facebook with greater reach and monetization while deprioritizing non-original content (Meta, March 2026). Separately, Meta's Creator Fast Track program pays $1,000 a month to creators with at least 100,000 followers on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube (CNBC).
This sits against a broader regional backdrop. In December 2025, The Guardian described an illicit, multibillion-dollar industry in South East Asia whose tentacles reach into state institutions in an article titled 'Age of the scam state' (The Guardian, December 2025).
The broader context here is what happens when a platform's monetization incentives collide with its content moderation obligations in a political context. Adira's account is not one of covert foreign interference in the style of state-backed disinformation operations. She describes an improvisational hustle: no agency, no ideological direction, just a creator chasing engagement payments in whatever Facebook groups the algorithm recommends. That distinction matters for how we frame the problem, but it does not make the outcome benign.
When the platform's own recommendation engine feeds creators into partisan political groups, and the monetization structure rewards whatever generates engagement, the result is a financial incentive to produce outrage-bait political content aimed at Australian audiences from overseas. The 'Team Pauline Hanson' group with almost 26,000 members is not a grassroots community organically built by supporters; it is, at least in part, a venue where engagement is manufactured for profit. One Nation did not set this up, and the creators posting in it have no apparent brief from the party. That is almost beside the point for the people scrolling past this content in their feeds.
Meta's March 2026 announcement that it would reward original content and deprioritise non-original material is a platform-level policy response, but it does not address the structural issue at play. Content can be original, genuinely created by the person posting it, and still be foreign-manufactured outrage content designed to monetise Australian political divisions. The policy lever Meta has pulled addresses duplicate or repurposed content, not the geographic origin or the political intent of monetised content.
For anyone working in Australian politics, this is worth sitting with. The content reaching voters in key marginals or in One Nation's heartland is not necessarily produced by anyone with a stake in the outcome. It is produced by someone with a stake in the engagement metrics. Adira says she has no ideological direction, left or right. She is simply following what the algorithm serves up and what the WhatsApp group leaders recommend. That the platform connects those two things is the actual story.
The Guardian's 9 August 2026 profile, titled 'Inside a meme factory: meet one of thousands of Indonesians trading political outrage clicks for Facebook cash', frames Adira as one of thousands. If that number is right, the scale of this is not trivial. It is a parallel content economy running underneath Australian political discourse, invisible to most voters, uncontrolled by any party, and incentivised entirely by Meta's own payment structure.
The question for the Electoral Commission, for parliament's social media inquiry, and for anyone running a digital campaign strategy in the next federal cycle is whether the current regulatory framework treats this as a problem at all. Foreign donations to Australian political parties are banned. Foreign-funded content amplifying Australian politicians, routed through a US tech platform's monetization program and produced by creators chasing per-view payments, is not covered by that framework. That is a gap, and it is one the platforms have no obvious commercial incentive to close.
