Pro-One Nation Facebook groups appear to be run by foreign ‘meme factories’ that monetise content

Posts on the One Nation supporter Facebook pages are designed to provoke outrage and engagement. Much of the content is Islamophobic and AI-generated Illustration: Facebook/Guardian Design View image in fullscreen Posts on the One Nation supporter Facebook pages are designed to provoke outrage and engagement. Much of the content is Islamophobic and AI-generated Illustration: Facebook/Guardian Design Pro-One Nation Facebook groups appear to be run by foreign ‘meme factories’ that monetise content Exclusive: Guardian analysis suggests several groups with thousands of members run by what expert calls ‘engagement farm’ operations in south-east Asia Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Some of the largest One Nation supporter groups on Facebook appear to be run from overseas by foreign digital creators who monetise content. Guardian Australia examined 14 of the largest pro- One Nation public groups with at least 8,000 members, and found most were created this year. While some groups appear to be longstanding and set up by genuine supporters, the majority are full of content overwhelmingly fed by what digital media researcher Timothy Graham said appeared to be “a foreign-run, predominantly Indonesian, for-hire engagement farm operation”. Many of the administrators and top posters in these public groups are tagged as “digital creators” and offer subscriptions, meaning they may be making money through Facebook programs that allow forms of content to be monetised. “The people who comment, by contrast, are overwhelmingly genuine, established Australian accounts,” Graham, an associate professor in digital media at Queensland University of Technology, said. “The operation therefore harvests a real Australian audience for engagement and money.” Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email One of the largest groups with more than 117,000 members is run by at least two administrators whose personal profiles indicate they speak Indonesian and are based in south-east Asia. They are tagged as digital creators. Australia undergoing historic decline in support for multiculturalism amid rising fear and pessimism, poll finds Read more On their personal profiles, some of these administrators post images from Meta’s back-end, including charts in Indonesian that show their content is popular in Australia. Others post clips that show their Facebook earnings based on views of their content, and lament slow months. One creator, who has posted content about whether the burqa should be banned in Australia, shared a screenshot in Indonesian showing that Meta would pay US$20 for two posts that reached 50,000 people. Much of the content across these groups is designed to be what Graham called outrage or “poll bait” – asking yes or no questions, such as “Was Pauline Hanson right to scold this journo?” or “Should Sharia law be banned in the Australia?” Other posts are reactive, with some of the account