Who's behind the Facebook page posting hateful AI slop about the UK? The answer might lie in south Asia | Niamh McIntyre

Facebook feeds in Britain often contain accounts with union jack imagery and generic names that present themselves as British patriots. Many posts use AI-generated videos and nostalgic visuals to frame social changes as threats, including claims about local businesses avoiding pork and depictions of a supposedly lost English, first-world past. Other content includes anti-Islam memes, calls to treat Muslims as an invasion, and promotion of the great replacement theory. Investigations find that pages like these are frequently run by young entrepreneurial men from South Asia who show little interest in UK politics. The content can amplify far-right narratives and contribute to a more hostile environment, with comment sections featuring calls for deportation, fantasies of ethnic civil war, and celebratory reactions to migrant deaths. Financial incentives for producing this material are substantial.

"Scroll through any Facebook feed in Britain and, between the baby announcements and petty neighbourhood beefs, you're likely to come across an account with a union jack profile picture and a vague, generic name like Britain Today. These accounts and there are hundreds, possibly thousands of them present themselves as the work of British patriots. In one typical, AI-generated video, a middle-aged man claims his local cafe has stopped serving pork, bacon and sausages just to avoid offending people."

"Another post from the same account includes a sepia-tinted set of images of Victorian London, mourning a time when the city was English, first-world and beautiful. Alongside this type of reactionary nostalgia, it's not unusual to see memes that call Islam a cancer, decry Muslims praying in public as an invasion of the west or promote the great replacement theory (which claims that white populations are being deliberately replaced by non-white immigrants)."

"For the past seven months, I have been investigating who is really behind pages like these. The answer, it turns out, is often young, entrepreneurial men from south Asia. They tend to have zero interest in UK politics, but the content they create often boosts far-right talking points in Britain and contributes to the increasingly hostile atmosphere for immigrants and British Muslims. They're part of a booming cottage industry producing commercial AI slop."

"It's notoriously difficult to determine the extent to which people are influenced by what they see online. But after months of trawling through these Facebook pages, it's hard not to feel that they have a poisonous effect: look at the comments beneath these videos and you'll see accounts calling for all Muslims to be deported from the UK, fantasising about an ethnic civil war or commenting cry-laugh emojis on AI-generated videos of migrants drowning in the Channel. The financial incentives for creating this kind of content are huge, particularly for creators in the glob"

Read at www.theguardian.com