Your Anti-AI Outrage Has Priorities
Foreign-based networks are leveraging AI-generated rage bait to target Australian migrant communities for profit within the growing outrage economy
- Incident date
- Mar 2026
- Target
- Australian migrant communities
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has identified the rise of an "outrage economy" as a significant strategic risk to national social cohesion. Foreign-based networks are increasingly deploying AI-generated, offensive content to exploit existing social tensions and drive engagement for financial gain.
What happened
Recent investigations, including findings by AAP FactCheck, have uncovered networks targeting Australian audiences with intentionally triggering videos that are entirely synthetic. This follows a broader pattern observed by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which in November 2025 identified 126 Facebook pages operated from Sri Lanka that reached over 1.6 million people with anti-migrant and anti-government AI content. Researchers concluded these operations are primarily profit-driven, with network participants even selling courses on how to monetize social media posts using these tools. Experts such as Professor Mark Andrejevic of Monash University note that the online environment lacks the social controls necessary to temper such behavior, allowing platforms to profit from the distribution of inflammatory, deepfake-driven material.