Overseas creators are cashing in on Australian political outrage — thanks to Meta's own payment system
An Indonesian woman using the name 'Adira', based in West Java, is making money through Meta's creator program by posting political content in Facebook groups that support Senator Pauline Hanson, according to a Guardian investigation published on 9 August 2026 (The Guardian). Adira posts in a Facebook group called 'Team Pauline Hanson' which has almost 26,000 members.
The Guardian first reported in June 2026 that some of the biggest One Nation supporter groups on Facebook appeared to be run by overseas creators who monetise their content, with many based in Indonesia. That earlier investigation, published on 28 June 2026, found that much of the content across pro-One Nation Facebook groups was designed as 'outrage' or 'poll bait' — posts that ask yes-or-no questions to drive maximum engagement (The Guardian, 28 June 2026). One creator's Indonesian-language content showed Meta paying US$20 for two posts that reached 50,000 people.
Adira says she is not paid by any agency. Instead, she seeks payments directly from Meta through its creator program, which pays creators based on how much engagement their content generates. She says she receives no instructions about which campaigns or politicians to post about, and claims no ideological lean to the left or right.
The mechanics are fairly simple. Adira is part of Facebook and WhatsApp groups with other Indonesians where they share advice about which Facebook groups to post in. Some of these Indonesian groups have 'leaders' who supply videos and images and recommend which groups might be worth targeting. Creators also find new Facebook groups to post in through the platform's own recommendations, which appear after they post content.
Facebook Content Monetization is an invite-only program that lets creators earn money from their posts (Facebook Business Help Centre). Creators, publishers and third-party providers who monetise 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 program had grown 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 would reward creators who post original content with greater reach and monetisation, while deprioritising 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 also sits against a broader regional backdrop. In December 2025, The Guardian described an illicit, multibillion-dollar industry in South East Asia whose reach extends 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 monetisation 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 monetisation 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 monetisation 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.
