An ABC News Verify investigation found Meta's invitation-only Content Monetisation program — which paid nearly US$3 billion to an estimated 16.2 million accounts in 2025 — funneling ad revenue to creators posting rage-bait and extremist material, exposing how a payout model tied to engagement rewards outrage over quality.
2026-08-12 · by Moe Ameen
An investigation by ABC News Verify, the Australian public broadcaster's fact-checking unit, reported in early August 2026 that Facebook's invitation-only Content Monetisation program has been paying advertising revenue to several controversial creators — including accounts tied to far-right and neo-Nazi networks and to anti-vaccine activism. The pages examined appeared at times to be in direct violation of Meta's own monetisation policies, which state that misleading medical information is ineligible for ad revenue and that some debated social issues face reduced or restricted monetisation.
The reporting named specific accounts: Hugo Lennon, a far-right agitator who has been photographed with and interacted with known neo-Nazis, receiving revenue through the program since September 2025; a page for the anti-immigration group "March for Australia," which registered in late 2025; and Monica Smit, founder of the anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine group Reignite Democracy Australia, whose page joined in September 2025 and carried vaccine misinformation. These are examples surfaced by the investigation, not the full scope of the program.
The scale is the context that makes it a story. Meta's Content Monetisation program distributed nearly US$3 billion to an estimated 16.2 million monetised accounts during 2025, paying creators based on the performance of eligible public content — reels, photos, stories, and text posts. Because the payout is metered by engagement, and because outrage is one of the most reliable ways to generate engagement, the model creates a financial incentive to post provocative material. Right-wing extremism researcher Kaz Ross told the ABC that Meta's "financial model is to reward content creators who get engagement," and that rage-bait and extremist material are among the most effective ways to get it.
Meta responded that creators who breach its Community Standards face temporary or permanent suspension of their revenue, and that it distinguishes between offensive speech and content that enables real-world harm. The company did not dispute the program's scale. The episode lands amid a broader, contradictory moment: the same platforms paying for engagement are simultaneously rolling out crackdowns on "AI slop" and engagement-bait, leaving creators to navigate incentives that reward outrage and enforcement that punishes it.
The uncomfortable takeaway from this story is that the fastest money on Facebook right now rewards the worst content — and that is exactly the trap to avoid, because the same platforms paying for engagement are tightening the screws on rage-bait and slop at the same time. The durable move is the opposite of chasing one feed's outrage payout: build a distinctive body of work and put it everywhere, so no single platform's incentive structure owns your business. That diversification-and-quality problem is what [Kompozy](/) is built to solve.
Concretely: you bring your real expertise — a talk, a client story, your own footage, a point of view — and, governed by your [Persona Brief](/glossary/persona-brief) so it reads like you rather than median-prompt filler, Kompozy generates the full spread from it: captioned [Persona Shorts](/glossary/persona-shorts), brand-exact carousels and quote cards through [HyperFrames](/glossary/hyperframes), [Blog Articles](/glossary/output-buckets), and newsletters. [Autopilot](/glossary/autopilot) then schedules and publishes all of it behind a per-post review gate across the eight social platforms plus blog and email — so Facebook is one destination among many, not the platform your income depends on. If the outrage economy is a race to the bottom, the way out is producing enough genuinely good, on-brand content that you never have to enter it, and reaching an audience that follows you wherever you post rather than whichever page the algorithm is paying this quarter.
Not by design, but in effect. An ABC News Verify investigation found Facebook's invitation-only Content Monetisation program paying ad revenue to creators posting rage-bait and extremist material. The program does not pay for outrage explicitly — it pays for engagement, and because outrage reliably drives engagement, the model creates a financial incentive to provoke.
Meta's invitation-only Content Monetisation program distributed nearly US$3 billion to an estimated 16.2 million monetised accounts during 2025, paying creators based on the performance of eligible public content such as reels, photos, stories, and text posts.
Meta said creators who breach its Community Standards face temporary or permanent suspension of their monetisation revenue, and that it distinguishes between offensive speech and content that enables real-world harm. It did not dispute the program's scale.
It is a fragile strategy. The same platforms paying for engagement are cracking down on engagement-bait and AI slop, so leaning on outrage raises your risk of reach penalties or suspension, and it ties your income to one platform's formula. A diversified, quality-first approach — distinctive content published across many platforms — is more durable.