On Facebook, it now pays to post about politics

For years, Meta, Facebook's parent company, has had a complicated relationship with politics. A decade ago, after the 2016 election shocked the nation and allegations of foreign interference dominated headlines, the company leaned into content moderation and political ad regulation. Since then, Meta’s approach to political content has shifted repeatedly. During the early days of COVID-19, the company allowed vaccine misinformation to run rampant, earning a rebuke from the White House. Later, it turned down the dial and deprioritized political content in user feeds. When Donald Trump returned to the White House last January, Meta once again leaned back into politics, ending fact-checking and “taking a more personalized approach” to allowing politics in its algorithmic recommendations.

“I can say that I’ve published on Facebook when the floodgates were open…and when they’ve clamped down [on political content],” says Brian Tyler Cohen, a leading political personality with 2.1 million followers on Facebook. “Facebook is allowing more political content to be seen right now, and obviously, revenue and engagement go up accordingly.”

For this story, I spoke to a dozen major political creators or people who run large pages on Facebook, and all said the same thing: in recent months, the platform has become a major boon to political and news creators, resulting in a surge of growth and engagement—and cash.

In case you weren’t aware, like other social media platforms, Meta pays top creators for content that draws high views and engagement. Late last year, those payouts on Facebook in particular skyrocketed with the launch of a new streamlined content monetization program, and political creators were not excluded from reaping the rewards. 

While most creators I spoke with declined to share exact revenue figures, one said they were earning “six figures” a month from Facebook. Others described monthly payouts ranging from $5,000 to $50,000. Most shockingly, one prominent liberal news creator shared a screenshot showing a January 2026 payout of $268,000. Annualized, that would put this one individual’s potential Facebook earnings at roughly $3 million this year—just for posting.