Vietnam-Based Facebook Pages Target Australia with AI-Generated Misinformation

A network of Facebook pages managed from Vietnam has been capitalizing on Australia’s polarized political landscape by spreading false information disguised as sports and news content, an AFP investigation has revealed.

The pages, which initially appeared as fan accounts for athletes like Australian swimmer Mollie O’Callaghan, have been posting fabricated claims—including that O’Callaghan would boycott future Olympics if transgender athletes were allowed to compete.

Over a dozen such pages have been identified by AFP, with many shifting from sports coverage to Australian politics while linking to websites filled with AI-generated articles and advertisements. Some posts garnered thousands of shares before Meta, Facebook’s parent company, removed 13 pages in March for violating site policies after AFP inquired about them.

“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.”

This operation represents the latest in a series of misinformation campaigns traced to Vietnam, where low labor and electricity costs have fostered an industry of social media click farming. Last year, AFP uncovered more than 30 baseball-themed pages, mostly operated from Vietnam, that were publishing false political claims ahead of the World Series.

Experts suggest that Australia’s increasing political polarization 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.”

The pages have exploited recent tensions within Australia’s opposition coalition and the rise of Pauline Hanson’s far-right One Nation party. One widely circulated false claim alleged that Hanson had filed a $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-heavy websites with content in several languages, including Vietnamese.

Analysis using AI detection tools—including one co-developed by AFP—found that the articles were “likely machine-generated.” Despite listing contact details associated with American hotels and casinos, Facebook transparency data revealed the pages were managed by administrators in Vietnam.

A spokesperson for One Nation condemned 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 scheduled 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 such polarizing content “can sway electoral behavior” at the local level “because it’s much less entrenched.”

Vietnam enacted legislation in March to regulate artificial intelligence—becoming the first Southeast Asian country to do so. The law requires companies to clearly label AI-generated content and applies to developers, providers, and deployers of the technology operating within the country.

Despite these efforts, the problem persists. In mid-February, a new Facebook page called “AU News Today” began publishing Australian political news similar to the pages identified by AFP. The Australian Associated Press later uncovered a related Vietnam-based network of accounts disguised as news outlets that remained active through March.

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

As AI technology becomes more sophisticated and accessible, the challenge of combating such misinformation campaigns continues to grow, posing ongoing threats to political discourse and electoral integrity in Australia and beyond.