Young Asian entrepreneurs profit from hateful AI content on Facebook
An investigation by The Guardian uncovered a global factory of hateful content. Hundreds of Facebook accounts with the British flag and names like Britain Today
A Guardian journalist investigation has revealed a global scheme for spreading hateful content. Hundreds of Facebook accounts posing as British communities are actually managed by young entrepreneurs from South Asia who use AI to generate toxic content and monetize it. This is not ideological warfare — it's money.
Who's behind the accounts
Facebook accounts like Britain Today, Britannia News, English Voice look like organic communities of concerned Britons. In reality, they are content factories. Behind them are young people from Sri Lanka and Pakistan who neither live in Britain nor care about its politics. Their interest is simple: figure out Facebook monetization and launch a system that makes money. Language, flag, and ideology are just tools.
What content AI generates
Videos that look like statements from real people. A man complains that his café stopped serving bacon to avoid offending Muslims. Pictures of Victorian London with text "when the city was English and beautiful." This nostalgia seems like harmless criticism of change. But alongside it — open hatred. Memes calling Islam cancer. Posts about Muslims praying on the street as an invasion. Spreading the great replacement theory. Together, these posts work like microtoxins: each looks like an opinion, but in the stream they slowly poison.
Money in hatred
On Facebook, views are monetized: the more engagement, the more income. Young people from Asia discovered arbitrage — create hateful content in English (a high-income market) and publish it through a network of fake accounts. One successful account gets 10 million views a month. This is money that gets transferred back to South Asia. With this money you can live, hire operators, expand the factory.
- Creating content through AI (almost no costs)
- Publishing through a network of dummy accounts (looks organic)
- Monetization through Facebook (payments in dollars)
- Withdrawing money to low-cost countries
Why it works
Facebook optimizes for engagement — reaction, not truth. Hatred triggers reaction: people click, comment, share in anger. Algorithms amplify such content, pushing it up the feed. The platform only blocks obvious violations (direct calls for violence). As long as an account looks organic, the content stays.
What it means
Tools (AI for creation, platforms for publishing, payments for monetization) allow anyone to turn emotions into a commodity. Creators don't believe in ideology. But the consequences are real: content stokes phobias, divides societies, poisons discourse. Platforms choose neutrality over responsibility.
*Meta has been recognized as an extremist organization and is banned in Russia.