Foreign-run Facebook groups artificially boost support for Australia's One Nation party

Investigation reveals suspicious activity

An analysis by Guardian Australia examined 14 of the largest public pro-One Nation groups, each with at least 8,000 members, and found most were created this year. While some appear to be genuine supporter groups, the majority feature content overwhelmingly sourced from what digital media researcher Timothy Graham described as a “foreign-run, predominantly Indonesian, for-hire engagement farm operation.”

Many administrators and top posters in these groups are tagged as “digital creators” and offer subscriptions, potentially earning money through Facebook monetization programs. Graham, an associate professor at Queensland University of Technology, noted that commenters are overwhelmingly genuine Australian accounts, meaning the operation harvests a real Australian audience for engagement and profit.

Content characteristics

The content is dominated by outrage-inducing questions such as “Was Pauline Hanson right to scold this journo?” or “Should Sharia law be banned in Australia?” Many posts are replicated across groups, sometimes by the same accounts. As ABC Verify found, much of the content is AI-generated. There is a strong Islamophobic theme, including an AI-generated image of a woman in a niqab holding a sign reading “Do you really want to deport us?”

Foreign operators

One of the largest groups, with over 117,000 members, is run from Southeast Asia by administrators whose profiles indicate they speak Indonesian. Some share screenshots from Meta's backend showing their content's popularity in Australia and complain about slow months. One creator shared a screenshot showing Meta would pay US$20 for two posts that reached 50,000 people.

Two accounts running another group with nearly 40,000 followers appear to be based in India. They previously posted in Hindi about Indian politics and selfies before shifting to Australia-centric content.

Expert insights

Crystal Abidin, a professor of internet studies at Curtin University, explained that for many Southeast Asian meme factories, politics are entirely divorced from profit: “They are for hire.” These accounts may use political posts to demonstrate reach for brand contracts or to profit via monetization schemes on platforms like Meta and TikTok.

Impersonation and fake accounts

The group “One Nation Supporters Australia,” with over 135,000 members, is moderated by an account impersonating federal MP David Farley. Created on May 30, it uses photos from Farley's campaign page but promotes a financial scheme advising people to withdraw assets from “crashing banks” and invest in cryptocurrency, along with AI-generated content supporting Hanson. After Guardian Australia approached Meta for comment, the account was removed. One Nation media adviser Richard Henderson declined to comment.