Imagine scrolling through Facebook on a quiet evening and coming across a post that makes your blood boil. A news page claims the Prime Minister has just called a well-known TV presenter an “insult to Australian values.” You feel the injustice, the outrage, and before you even think to question it, you share it with your friends, maybe add an angry comment. But here’s the hard truth: the entire story is fabricated, the quote was never spoken, and the page that published it is not run by Australian journalists, nor even by anyone in Australia. It is managed by people in Vietnam, thousands of kilometres away, who have learned that triggering Australians is an effective way to earn money online. This is not a one-off mistake or a satirical page gone wrong. It is a coordinated, ongoing foreign disinformation operation, and it is deliberately targeting Australian social media users with made-up breaking news stories designed to exploit their trust, their values, and their political passions. One such page, called 365 Daily News, began posting about Australian politics in August, and Facebook’s own transparency details reveal that it is managed by users in Vietnam. It does not hide its origins, but that has not stopped thousands of Australians from believing its content and sharing it as if it were a legitimate news source.
The mechanics of this deception are as simple as they are cynical. The pages frequently fabricate quotes from Australian politicians and media personalities, placing them in attention-grabbing headlines that are designed to provoke outrage. They repeatedly target a handful of well-known figures: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, TV presenter Peta Credlin, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, and independent senator Fatima Payman. By focusing on these polarising names, the pages know they can tap into existing political tensions and get people arguing, sharing, and clicking. And clicking is the whole point. The posts themselves often direct users to an ad-laden website, where every click generates advertising revenue for the page operators. It is a modern form of digital begging, but with a vicious twist: the currency is not spare change, but anger. The posts are not original either. They are duplicated by a network of more than a dozen foreign disinformation pages, all sharing near-identical text, images, and fake quotes, making it look as though many independent sources are confirming the same story. Worse still, the text is often copied and shared by Indonesian users who have discovered that monetising traffic from outraged Australians is a lucrative side hustle. As reported by Guardian Australia, Indonesia is a known hub for spammers who deliberately target Western audiences with contentious social media posts, and this operation fits that pattern perfectly. The result is a web of fake news that spans countries, languages, and platforms, all working together to deceive ordinary Australians.
One particularly egregious example came on September 26, when 365 Daily News posted a claim that Mr Albanese had called Ms Credlin an “insult to Australian values.” The post suggested that Ms Credlin had been forced to respond on her News24 program, and it featured a composite image of the two figures, artificially merged to look like a still from a television interview. Beneath the post, a comment linked users to an ad-strewn website that expanded on the false claims in detail. But the quote attributed to Mr Albanese was completely fabricated. There is no credible record, no video, no transcript, no news article from any legitimate outlet showing that he ever said such words. Yet the post spread across Facebook, carried by a network of similarly foreign-run pages with names like Mood Space, Open Diary, Grounded Politics, Open Signal, The Viral Brief, Daily Observer, The Daily Brief, Zypher Brief, Future Cinema, Australia Times, Emerald Chronicle, and Gaming Video. These pages all shared the same fabricated story, giving it the appearance of widespread coverage. Even more troubling, several Indonesian Facebook accounts reposted the exact same text in April, months before the supposed event, proving that the content was pre-made and ready to be deployed whenever it would cause maximum damage. This is not journalism. It is industrial-scale disinformation, aimed not at informing the public but at exploiting it.
The pattern is repeated with alarming regularity, and the targets are chosen deliberately to maximise political division. On September 9, 365 Daily News published another fabricated story, this time claiming that Senator Pauline Hanson had questioned Senator Penny Wong over an $82 million “government funding controversy” during Senate Estimates. The post described a dramatic scene, claiming that “Canberra erupted into political controversy” after Ms Hanson raised “explosive questions” about overseas grants, consultancy payments, taxpayer-funded programs, and oversight. It included images of both senators and, once again, a comment directing users to an ad-laden website with more fake details. But the whole thing was invented. Senate Estimates hearings did not even take place in September, according to official transcripts, and there is no record at all of Senator Hanson questioning Senator Wong about any such funding controversy. Despite this, the story was picked up and republished by a network of other foreign-run pages, including Aussie Vibes, American Political Review, Australia Diaries, Pacific Ledger, Capital Current Files, Veridox Press, and The Daily Brief. These pages, with their vaguely neutral-sounding names, exist solely to lend false credibility to recycled propaganda. And the deception is working. Many Australians who came across the posts genuinely believed the scandal was real. One user shared the claim with the comment, “More Labor corruption!” not realising that the entire story had been manufactured thousands of miles away by anonymous operators with no interest in Australian democracy, only in advertising revenue.
The impact of these operations cannot be measured simply by the number of posts or clicks. The real cost is borne by ordinary Australians, who are increasingly exposed to a poisoned information environment. Every fake quote, every fabricated headline, every doctored image chips away at the trust that holds a democracy together. People who believe these stories are not stupid; they are simply human, and humans are wired to react emotionally to threats and injustice. The disinformation operators know this, and they exploit it with cold precision. They create stories that match pre-existing fears and prejudices, so that when a reader sees the headline, it feels true because it fits the story they already believe about the world. This is the deepest danger of the foreign-run pages: they do not need to convince anyone with evidence, they only need to reinforce suspicion, anger, and division. And when the truth finally comes out, when the article is debunked and the quote is proven fake, the damage is already done. The false story has already been shared, the anger has already spread, the political opponents have already been condemned in the minds of thousands. Correcting a lie on social media is like trying to put toothpaste back into the tube, and the operators of these pages know that too. They are not trying to win an argument; they are trying to make money by making Australians hate each other, and the business model is working.
This is why the work of independent fact-checking organisations is so vital, and why platforms like Facebook must do far more to stop these operations before they reach people’s feeds. AAP FactCheck, which exposed these specific examples, is an accredited member of the International Fact-Checking Network, and it has previously debunked numerous posts by foreign-run pages spreading disinformation about Mr Albanese, Senator Hanson, and Senator Wong. But fact-checkers are always playing catch-up, racing to correct lies that were designed to go viral. The real solution lies in prevention: stronger transparency requirements, faster removal of fake pages, and greater accountability for platforms that allow anonymous operators to target voters with impunity. For ordinary Australians, the first line of defence is themselves. Before sharing a shocking news story, take a moment to check the source. Ask whether the page has a verifiable editorial team, whether the quote appears anywhere on a legitimate news site, and whether the story feels too dramatic to be true. That last question is important, because foreign disinformation operations rely on drama, on outrage, on the adrenaline rush of a breaking scandal. The more emotional a story makes you feel, the more you should pause. The people behind 365 Daily News and its network of copycat pages do not care about Australia. They care about clicks, and about the money those clicks bring. By refusing to share their lies, by checking the facts and demanding better from the platforms, Australians can deny them their reward and protect the integrity of their own public conversation. In a world where anyone can publish anything, the greatest defence is not silence, but scepticism.