AI Risk Wire

Cases › produced harmful content › LR-2026-0330

Racist AI-generated Facebook posts make Sri Lankan influencer rich

Preliminary Why: Publisher not yet named · subject to change

Status: fix reported

Severity moderate
Reported 16 Nov 2025

No source states: loss or records, developer and model, agent tool, could do, deployer, industry.

Severity moderate: Test: moderate, data or systems of others touched with a bounded scope stated. Fact: the network's 128 pages and groups target UK audiences with a stated combined following of 1.6m users.

A Sri Lanka-based influencer, Geeth Sooriyapura, ran a network of 128 Facebook pages and groups targeting UK audiences, with a combined following of 1.6m users. The pages posted racist, Islamophobic and anti-migrant content, much of it AI-generated, including AI images and videos of UK politicians. He said he earned $300,000 from the pages and taught students to do the same, with the pages monetised through Meta's in-stream ads, subscriptions and performance bonuses. A joint investigation by TBIJ, ISD and the Times identified the network. Meta said it removed pages flagged by TBIJ that violated its policies on inauthentic behaviour, and it disputes how lucrative the pages were.

What happened

No source tells the story step by step yet.

What was done

Fix reported

“Meta removed the pages flagged by TBIJ that violated its policies on inauthentic behaviour”

Risks

Bias and discrimination
Primary12 incidents
Harmful content and jailbreaks
Also84 incidents
Rising: 6 vs 3.8 a week

Sorted by rule from the case's fields; not yet read from the sources.

Controls

Not yet read for controls. Controls that mitigate the primary risk:

Application

Bias testing · Risk assessment per deployment · Output filtering and redaction

Evidence

No source states: a step-by-step account, when it happened, when it was found, how many records were exposed, the direct loss, a count of the other parties affected, any court case, the cause, what set it off.

Show every field, with its source and grade

What happened

Earliest source we hold
2025-11-16
D inferred by us from the described behaviour, reason shown
Who caught it
an outside party
C one secondary source states it
What was done
Meta removed the pages flagged by TBIJ that violated its policies on inauthentic behaviour
C one secondary source states it
What went wrong
produced harmful content
D inferred by us from the described behaviour, reason shown

Impact

Severity
moderate
D inferred by us from the described behaviour, reason shown
Who was affected
128 Facebook pages and groups targeting UK audiences, with a combined following of 1.6m users
C one secondary source states it
Why this severity
Test: moderate, data or systems of others touched with a bounded scope stated. Fact: the network's 128 pages and groups target UK audiences with a stated combined following of 1.6m users.
D inferred by us from the described behaviour, reason shown

Notes on gaps

The incident year is not stated (only March), so no full date is given. The source header date 2025-11-16 is not in the body text and is not used as a disclosure date. Meta disputes how lucrative the pages were.

LR-2026-0330 · version 1 · published 2026-11-01 after automatic checks; not yet checked field by field by a person · JSON