The news: Facebook sent nearly $3 billion to around 16.2 million monetized accounts in 2025, per Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News Verify, which found some of that money reached pages that appear to violate Meta platforms’ own content rules. That could result in risk for Meta advertisers if branded content appears on those pages.

ABC identified several Australian accounts collecting checks through Facebook’s invitation-only Content Monetization program. 

• Hugo Lennon has earned revenues from the program since September 2025. He was recorded shouting anti-India expletives at Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi outside a Melbourne hotel in July; his recent videos cover replacement theory and remigration themes. 
• Anti-vaccine campaigner Monica Smit of Reignite Democracy Australia also signed on in September 2025.
• The far-right outlet The Noticer, which was banned from X this month for violating that platform’s policies, joined Meta’s program in November 2025. 
• An anti-immigration group, March for Australia, registered a page in December 2025. 

Meta declined to comment on the pages, but told ABC News Verify that it has “clear policies” for monetization tools and that “it is not Meta’s role to police offensiveness.” However, its rules prohibit monetization for misinformation and misleading medical information and state that it restricts monetization for debated social issues, strong language, and objectionable activity.

Why it’s worth watching: Meta once barred payment for content its fact-checkers flagged as false, but that rule became moot when the company ended its Third-Party Fact-Checking Program in January 2025. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) says Meta’s shift to a community notes-style system lacks the evidence to work as a standalone safeguard against misinformation.

Implications for advertisers: Brands running Meta campaigns should request adjacency reporting specific to Content Monetization partners, not just standard placements.

For marketers, this is a brand-safety topic where ad dollars and creator payouts can end up funding extremist or disinformation content, even when a platform’s terms of service say otherwise. 

Brands running Meta campaigns should demand clearer enforcement data from partners and treat platform self-reporting as a starting point, not proof of compliance.

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