Industrial Disinformation Campaign Targets Australian Political Landscape

Vietnamese-run Facebook Pages Spread AI-Generated Political Misinformation in Australia

A network of Facebook pages managed from Vietnam has been capitalizing on Australia’s increasingly polarized political climate by spreading fabricated news stories and false claims. These pages, which initially presented as sports fan accounts, have evolved to focus on Australian politics while promoting AI-generated content designed to generate profit through advertising.

The pages, with names like “Swimming Secrets” and “Tennis Triumph,” began in mid-2025 as seemingly innocent fan accounts posting updates about athletes. However, these posts were interspersed with falsehoods, including claims that Australian swimmer Mollie O’Callaghan would boycott the next Olympics if transgender athletes were allowed to compete.

According to an investigation by AFP, many of these accounts later pivoted entirely to Australian politics, linking to websites filled with AI-generated articles and advertisements. The investigation tracked more than a dozen sports and human-interest pages that mixed actual news with fabricated content, with some posts garnering thousands of shares.

“The websites display almost industrial level forms of misinformation,” said open-source intelligence analyst Giano Libot. “It’s designed for the algorithm in search engines to pick up.” Libot added that the lack of policy around such content in Southeast Asia has contributed to the problem.

After being contacted by AFP, Meta removed 13 pages in March, citing violations of its policies. This network represents the latest in a string of misinformation campaigns originating from Vietnam, where low labor and electricity costs have fostered a thriving click-farming industry via social media.

Last year, AFP uncovered more than 30 baseball-themed pages operated primarily from Vietnam that published false political claims ahead of the World Series, which also prompted removals by Meta. Similar disinformation campaigns have targeted politicians in the Netherlands.

Experts suggest that the surge of AI-generated political clickbait is a relatively new phenomenon for Australia, attributable to the country’s increasing polarization. “Often the purpose of disinformation is not to benefit a particular party, but to destabilize communities and create an era of distrust,” explained Jeannie Paterson, co-director of the University of Melbourne’s Centre of AI and Digital Ethics. “Australia is an ideal place at the moment for this sort of destabilization exercise.”

The recent in-fighting within Australia’s opposition coalition and the rise of Pauline Hanson’s far-right One Nation party have provided ample material for these misinformation campaigns. One widely circulated false claim alleged that Hanson had launched a US$12 million lawsuit against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party.

These identical posts appeared across multiple Facebook accounts focused on swimming and tennis, linking to ad-laden websites with content in several languages, including Vietnamese. Facebook transparency data revealed that the pages were managed by administrators in Vietnam, despite listing contact details associated with American hotels and casinos.

Another fabricated story claimed Hanson had read Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s record “on live TV” on CNN, prompting commenters to cheer the senator and suggest it was time for Wong to “go home.” Analysis using several AI detection tools, including one co-developed by AFP, found these articles were “likely machine-generated.”

A One Nation spokesperson described the pages as “a clear case of foreign interference in domestic Australian politics.” Prime Minister Albanese’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

While Australia’s next federal election isn’t until 2028, state-level elections are approaching in Victoria this November and New South Wales next year. Ika Trijsburg of the Australian National University warned that the proliferation of polarizing themes online “can sway electoral behavior” at the local level “because it’s much less entrenched.”

In March, Vietnam became the first Southeast Asian country to enact legislation regulating AI technology, requiring companies to clearly label AI-generated content. The law applies to developers, providers, and deployers of the technology, whether Vietnamese organizations or foreign entities operating in the country.

Despite these efforts, the flow of AI-generated misinformation continues. In mid-February, a new Facebook page called “AU News Today” began publishing Australian political news that mirrored the pages identified by AFP. A separate investigation by the Australian Associated Press uncovered a similar Vietnam-based network of accounts disguised as news outlets that continued publishing through March.

Shaanan Cohney, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Melbourne, noted there is “a leveling-up of the skills in the disinformation world, which makes it a cat-and-mouse game. Even if things were easy to detect before, it gets harder to bring down these networks.”