DRAPAC 2024: How Is Social Media Monetization Fueling Disinformation In Asia? And What Should We Do About It?

Whether it’s YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, X or Snapchat... more and more people across Asia have moved to monetizing their social media activity.

Social media monetization has become a critical source of revenue for many - and we want it to continue to be that way - but it has also become a major driver of dis and misinformation in the region.

Over the last few years, Asia has become home to large communities of grifters, who steal and propagate content on an industrial scale, with little to no human oversight, for the sole purpose of maximizing profit. Political actors have also benefited from social media monetization, by generating ad revenue and gaining access to thriving markets for inauthentic assets, tools and disinformation-for-hire providers.

What can we do about this? How can we maximize the potential of social media ad revenue sharing in the region, while minimizing risks?

Together with our friends at digitallyright.org, we hosted a workshop diving into the nascent regulatory conversation around social media monetization and ad revenue sharing. We explored case studies from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam - and engaged participants over how Asia, which is the global epicenter of the problem, can be at the center of the solution.