Some of the most successful creators on Facebook aren't names you'd ever recognize. In fact, many of their pages don't have a face or recognizable persona attached. Instead, they run pages dedicated to memes, animal videos and yes, AI-generated photos and videos.
The people behind these pages are experts at creating content that can catch Facebook's algorithm and go viral. Successful pages can generate tens of thousands of dollars a month from performance bonuses, revenue-sharing and other monetization programs that pay Facebook creators for popular content.
For years, Meta fostered this industry of viral content on Facebook. As the company transformed Facebook's main feed into a "discovery engine" of recommended posts from random pages and accounts, creators supplied a stream of content crafted for the algorithm. But over the last year, some creators say this dynamic has broken down. Meta has penalized creators for the very same content it once rewarded. Other creators have seen Facebook's payment systems break down due to glitches and other errors.
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One creator has become so frustrated, he's filed dozens of lawsuits in small claims court against Meta over the last year. Some of those lawsuits are related to missing payments and account issues he's experienced, but he's also brought 23 cases related to other creators' Facebook pages. As several of those cases are now winding their way through small claims court, he hopes his actions will bring attention to what he says is a wider breakdown in Meta's relationship with Facebook creators.
The cases shine a light on how Meta's lack of human-centered customer service can impact creators who rely on the platform. But it also offers a glimpse into the volatile dynamics of viral Facebook content.
Mel Bouzad is a former photojournalist for Getty Images who for the past eight years has made his living running popular Facebook pages with names like "The Meme Bros" and "FunkiestShitEver." He posts memes, travel content and AI-generated videos. Over the years, he's become an expert at figuring out what type of content is most likely to rack up views and comments on Facebook.
"It's basically jumping on the trends as they're happening," he explains. "If you can jump on the trending topics right at the beginning, then you get the momentum, it kicks in the algorithm, and it sends your content viral. And if one post goes viral, the algorithm is going to send the next post viral, because it thinks the next post is going to get the same type of engagement." He's also learned little tricks for drawing more Facebook comments: adding a small error in a travel-focused listicle, or asking questions like "what's the most boring state in America?"
Example of recent posts from one of Bouzad's travel-themed pages on Facebook.
He estimates that at their peak, his pages collectively earned between $10,000 to $20,000 a month — primarily from performance bonuses and in-stream video ads — though they sometimes earned much more than that. Last September, 12 of his pages earned more than $68,0000 combined in performance bonuses, according to documents viewed by Engadget.
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