‘We are seeking dollars,’ one Indonesian content creator says of posting content about Australian and US politics. Composite: Victoria Hart/Guardian design/Getty Images/Facebook View image in fullscreen ‘We are seeking dollars,’ one Indonesian content creator says of posting content about Australian and US politics. Composite: Victoria Hart/Guardian design/Getty Images/Facebook Social media Inside a meme factory: meet one of thousands of Indonesians trading political outrage clicks for Facebook cash Exclusive: Adira says she doesn’t know much about her target countries or even know who their leaders are. Instead she’s chasing money from Meta, which pays for engagement
Prefer the Guardian on Google From her home in West Java, Adira* often starts the day with a Facebook post about coffee and the busy day ahead. Then she gets to work.
In a Facebook group called Team Pauline Hanson, she shares a photo of the Australian senator and One Nation leader and asks its almost 26,000 members for thoughts about Hanson’s comments about Islam and Australia’s way of life.
She shares an AI-generated image of a child in a hijab, like the one she wears in her account’s profile picture, in a Facebook group for Charlie Kirk fans. The little girl is holding a sign that asks if it’s OK to serve bacon in school if Muslim students are present.
She posts in groups with titles including “I love the USA!”, “JD VANCE 2028” and “Pete Hegseth Fans” but also others focused on creating AI-generated images of attractive pilots.
In June, the Guardian revealed that some of the largest One Nation supporter groups on Facebook appeared to be run by and full of overseas creators who monetise content – many based in Indonesia.
Read more To better understand these meme factories, the Guardian has spoken to Adira, whose account is among the most prolific in one of the largest groups.
Adira says she is not getting paid by an agency – instead she is chasing money from Meta , which can pay for content engagement through its creator program. Nor, she claims, is she getting instructions about which campaigns to post about.
“We don’t follow politics overseas, we don’t want to be involved,” she says. “We just, you know, try to earn more dollars. There is no intention to the right or to the left.”
According to her explanation of the ecosystem, Adira is in groups on Facebook and WhatsApp with other Indonesians where advice is shared about which groups to post in.
Some of these groups have “leaders” who can provide videos and images and give advice about which groups might be worthwhile to post in – although Adira does not answer questions about who these leaders might be and who they might work for.
The creators also find groups to post in through platform recommendations. “If I post something, suggested groups will show up,” she says. “I saw the Pauline group and the dollars were good, then you look for other groups with Pauline.”
Sometimes she slips up. In Team Pauline Hanson in July she shared a post about a Muslim woman leaving the US because of “Trump’s hate for Muslims” rather than content tailored for an Australian audience.
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