ReportFacebook's Own Payouts Are Fueling AI Fakes of Australia's LeadersAired September 9, 2026 at 12:05 PM UTCWritten September 9, 2026 at 12:07 PM UTCRead the write-upThis storyTranscript · LOADING0:00Facebook's own payouts fueled a network faking Australia's political leaders.0:04More than 200 pages impersonated the Prime Minister and opposition figures, part of0:08an operation reaching nearly 6 million people across seven countries.0:12The operators were not activists, they were being paid.0:15The question now is whether anyone stops them.0:18The research is from Reset Tech, an independent nonprofit that maps digital harms0:23led by its chief research officer, Dr.0:25Rice Farthing.0:26After eight months of tracking, the conclusion is blunt.0:29This is commercial, not political.0:31Foreign influence for commercial motivations, and a foreign distortion of Australian0:35political discourse.0:36The team explicitly rejects the assumption that such networks are state-sponsored0:40interference.0:41The operators, they found, iterate on whatever generates clicks and revenue,0:46regardless of whom it damages.0:47One in ten of the network's pages had been monetized through Facebook's scheme that0:51pays content creators the same incentive that pays any page owner for engagement,0:56whatever the content.0:57The Australia-focused pages are one slice of a coordinated network.1:011,864 pages in total, reaching an estimated 5.9 million users.1:06The same Sri Lanka-linked operation ran in France, Italy, the United Kingdom, the1:11United States, Canada, and Mexico.1:13Because the same monetization engine was firing at six other democracies at once,1:17the enforcement gap is not an Australian problem alone.1:19The pages impersonated Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, opposition leader Angus1:24Taylor, One Nation leader Pauline Hansen, Senator David Pocock, Senator Fatima1:29Payman, Allegra Spender, and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.1:32Some summaries also name former Prime Minister John Howard.1:35They ran under mass appeal names like I Love Australia and Beautiful Australia,1:40built to look like Australia itself, before turning political.1:43Some pages began as bait, then shifted to politics.1:46The content came mostly as short reels, nationalistic, anti-migrant, and anti-Muslim1:51messaging, bogus polls to drive engagement, and sexualized AI images and videos of1:55female politicians.1:56One fake clip showed Senator Fatima Payman asking not to be deported to Afghanistan.2:01Another showed Senator David Pocock claiming he had joined forces with One Nation.2:05Across the targeted Australian posts, researchers observed only one in three carried2:09an AI label and just one in 33 was deleted.2:12Even though the content broke Facebook's own rules on inauthentic behavior, hate2:16speech, and AI deepfakes, a small research team mapped the network with relative2:19ease.2:20The researchers questioned why a platform with far greater resources could not.2:24No removals had been confirmed when the report was published.2:29Pocock said his team has been sent a bunch of deepfakes of him over the last few2:34months and that he is concerned they genuinely undermine the democratic system.2:38Their business model, he said, is based on outrage, on eyeballs on the screens for2:42as long as possible, and on clicks.2:44Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke himself targeted by the same network said he has2:48seen videos and interviews of colleagues saying things they never said and urged2:52Australians to check their sources.2:54So far, no Australian authority, whether the eSafety Commissioner, the Electoral2:58Commission, or the Home Affairs Department has announced an investigation or3:01referral.3:02Whether this network is treated by Meta as a policy violation or by governments as a3:06security threat remains the open question.Explore with HeyDexFollow via RSSThe shortThe short ↗