How Facebook Monetizes Police and Military Pages

From the Philippines to Israel, the US, UK, Europe and beyond, our research reveals numerous police and military pages currently or previously enrolled in Facebook’s revenue redistribution programs. Many of these pages are blue-tick verified and clearly labeled as representing a “law enforcement agency” or “government organization”.

Government-affiliated entities are typically subject to financial disclosure requirements and regulatory oversight, which is likely why Facebook’s partner monetization policies explicitly prohibit ‘government agencies and departments’ from enrolling in its monetization services. As state-funded, public entities, police and military units would be expected to fall into that category.

As of 20 September 2025, however, Meta's partner-publisher list — which catalogues current participants in the company’s revenue redistribution programs — includes numerous police and military pages.

Findings via our own Meta Monetization Archive, a fully searchable consolidation of Meta’s partner-publisher lists compiled over nearly six years, reveal that this issue is not just widespread but also longstanding.

Beyond suggesting potential violations of Meta’s policies, our findings raise important questions about how revenue generated via Facebook is being used and potentially misappropriated, as well as how financial incentives may shape public safety communications.

Some of the most alarming findings from our Meta Monetization Archive involve Facebook pages linked to police and military units with documented histories of human rights abuses.

Under former president Rodrigo Duterte, Filipino police and military forces across the country conducted a brutal "war on drugs" that resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killings. Duterte, whose term ended in 2022, now faces three charges of "crimes against humanity" at the International Criminal Court for directing that campaign. While the violence has subsided, Facebook continues to provide monetization services to these same police and military forces.

Searching our Meta Monetization Archive for the key word “police”, and filtering for admin locations in the Philippines, yields several cases of monetized pages associated with Filipino police units.

It's worth highlighting that, among the pages which successfully enrolled in Facebook revenue redistribution programs, are the pages representing the Police Regional Office 11 (Davao region) and the Davao City Police Office - two entities particularly notorious for their involvement in extrajudicial killings carried out during the war on drugs.

The Davao City Police Office page, in particular, has been enrolled in the Facebook In-Stream Ads programs since May 2020. Its uninterrupted enrollment, well past Facebook’s six-month grace period to register a payout account, suggests that the page not only accrued money, but that its admins were able to withdraw at least part of that revenue.

While we have no evidence to suggest that the Davao City Police Office monetized videos or reels depicting extrajudicial activities, the income generated via Facebook’s revenue redistribution programs, as well as potentially other monetization features such as Subscriber Hub and Stars, may have provided the kind of flexible funds necessary to facilitate the alleged cash rewards distributed to police officers involved in drug suspects’ killings during Duterte’s administration.

We sought clarification from the Davao City Police Office, but did not hear back.

Beyond the Philippines, our Meta Monetization Archive also reveals that the Arabic language Facebook page of the Israeli police شرطة إسرائيل, which counts nearly half a million followers, has been enrolled in Facebook’s revenue redistribution programs since November 2021.

A look at the page’s content history reveals that it typically posts 3-6 videos and reels per week, regularly garnering hundreds of thousands of combined views. While Facebook may not have approved every video and reel for monetization, in line with its content monetization policies, much of the page’s content deals with police operations and raids in the West Bank, where police and military forces have been accused of human rights abuses against Palestinians.

The page is currently accessible from Israel, but appears to be geofenced - presumably by the page admins themselves. This means that the page is not visible to users in restricted countries, and that Facebook’s partner-publisher list will only return results if accessed via a VPN.

While Facebook appears to have demonetized the page on a couple of occasions, it was promptly re-instated, and the recorded enrollment periods lasted beyond the six-month grace period for payout account registration. This suggests, as above, that payments were most likely processed through the programs.

The page’s inclusion on Facebook’s partner-publisher list dated 20 September 2025 is further concerning, as it suggests that Facebook may have issued the police unit an invitation to its invite-only Content Monetization Program, which replaced the In-Stream Ads and Ads on Reels programs on 1 September 2025.

Of note is also the page of the Bangladesh Rapid Action Battalion, which we previously covered in our sanctions piece.

Bangladesh’s counter-terrorism unit is described by the US Department of the Treasury as a joint task force composed of members of the police, army, navy, air force, and border guards, and is alleged to be responsible for hundreds of disappearances and extrajudicial killings as well as torture.

Our Meta Monetization Archive reveals that the Rapid Action Battalion was able to successfully enroll its Facebook page for the Facebook In-Stream Ads and Ads on Reels programs for months after the unit was placed under US sanctions in December 2021.

While Meta’s partner-publisher list provides information on the pages enrolled in Facebook’s active revenue redistribution programs on a given day — and our own Monetization Archive offers historical visibility into that data, Meta does not provide information on the legal entities involved or the payouts made to enrolled entities.

The fact that Facebook offers no transparency into who exactly receives the revenue generated via its monetization services is particularly concerning, as it could create opportunities for misappropriation and abuse of the funds.

Police and military units could, in theory, register payout accounts in the name of private individuals or separate business entities, in order to bypass regulatory oversight.

Meta requires the name associated with a payout account owner’s tax ID or social security number to match the name provided during the program onboarding - but it doesn’t specify who is authorized to enter into monetization contracts on the page’s behalf.

With social media duties often delegated to a single person or external service providers, there is also the possibility that a page admin could direct payouts to their own bank account, without the explicit knowledge or consent of the entity affiliated with the page. Such practice could constitute embezzlement.

While we have no evidence that this is (or was) the case for any of the discussed pages, the Facebook page of the Ahmedabad police in Gujarat, India offers an interesting case study.

The page has been listed as enrolled in Facebook’s In-stream Ads and Ads on Reels programs since October 2024, and was recently invited to join Facebook’s invite only Content Monetization Program.

It is blue tick verified, labeled as a ‘Government Organization’ and appears to post only official content. Yet Facebook discloses that Compubrain, a private company offering technology consulting and social media marketing services out of Ahmedabad, has claimed responsibility for the page.

For Compubrain to claim responsibility for the page, a member of the company would have needed Facebook access with full control of the page, which would grant them the power to turn on monetization and adjust payout accounts.

We sought clarification from the Ahmedabad police and Compubrain, but did not hear back.

Beyond raising concerns over potential misuse and misappropriation of funds, the monetization of police and military pages also raises important questions around how engagement-based financial incentives might shape police and military communications.

Police and military units are entrusted with public safety and upholding the law, not with chasing clicks. By introducing engagement-based financial incentives, there is a risk that social media monetization services may blur that line in ways which could put financial gains ahead of people's safety and privacy.

Using our Meta Monetization Archive, we identified pages associated with the US’ Slidell PD, the UK's Sussex Police and Lithuania's Alytaus Police Department, for example.

While there is no indication that these pages have been involved in any form of abuse, their use of monetization services brings forth the question of how comfortable we are, as citizens, to have financial incentives factor into how our police and military communicate to the public.

As with our previous investigations into Facebook’s monetization of sanctioned entities and politicians, our research points to repeated failures by Facebook to enforce its own monetization terms and policies.

While our research focuses on Meta, as the only social media company offering some degree of account-level transparency into its monetization programs, all other major social media companies offer similar monetization services.

Several of the actors we’ve looked at in this research maintain social media presences on other social media platforms — suggesting that they may have at least tried to access monetization services on these platforms too.

This underscores the urgent need for all social media companies to be required to offer transparency into their monetization services.