Vietnam-Based Facebook Pages Spread AI-Generated Misinformation in Australian Politics

A network of Facebook pages managed from Vietnam has been identified spreading fabricated political content targeting Australian audiences, according to an investigation by AFP. What began as seemingly innocent sports fan accounts has evolved into an organized effort to disseminate AI-generated misinformation on Australian politics.

The pages, with names like “Swimming Secrets” and “Tennis Triumph,” initially appeared to be sports fan accounts posting athlete updates when they launched in mid-2025. Over time, they began inserting falsehoods into their content, including claims that Australian swimmer Mollie O’Callaghan would boycott the next Olympics if transgender athletes were allowed to compete.

Several of these accounts—operated by users in Vietnam and amassing tens of thousands of followers—eventually pivoted to focus exclusively on Australian national politics. They now regularly link to websites filled with AI-generated articles and advertisements designed for profit.

AFP has tracked more than a dozen sports and human-interest pages promoting this hybrid content that mixes actual news with fabrications. Some posts have received thousands of shares, amplifying their reach across Australian social media.

“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,” he added, noting that Southeast Asia currently lacks robust policies to address this issue.

After being contacted by AFP, Meta—Facebook’s parent company—removed 13 pages in March for violating site policies. However, this network represents just the latest in a pattern of misinformation operations originating from Vietnam, where low labor and electricity costs have fostered a cottage industry of social media click farming.

A previous AFP investigation uncovered more than 30 baseball-themed pages operated from Vietnam that published false political claims ahead of the World Series last year. Similar disinformation campaigns have targeted Dutch politicians, according to AFP fact-checkers who work in 26 languages as part of Facebook’s fact-checking program.

Experts suggest Australia’s increasingly polarized political landscape makes it an attractive target for such operations.

“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.”

Recent political tensions, including 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 networks. Among the most widely shared fabrications was a claim that Hanson had launched a $12 million lawsuit against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party.

Analysis using several AI detection tools—including one co-developed by AFP—found the articles were “likely machine-generated.” A spokesperson for One Nation told AFP the pages represent “a clear case of foreign interference in domestic Australian politics.”

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

In March, Vietnam became the first country in Southeast Asia 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 they are Vietnamese organizations or foreign entities operating within the country.

Despite these efforts, new iterations of these disinformation networks continue to emerge. In mid-February, a Facebook page called “AU News Today” began publishing Australian political news mirroring the content patterns identified by AFP. A separate investigation by the Australian Associated Press discovered a similar Vietnam-based network of accounts disguised as news outlets operating through March.

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