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\n Stephen McDermott<\/p>\n
HANNA PARKER IS a 35-year-old full-time videographer who lives in rented accommodation in Blackrock in south county Dublin.<\/p>\n
She spends \u20ac1,450 a month on rent and has just \u20ac550 left to spend on everything else, and says she checks her bank account four times a day while pretending she\u2019s doing okay.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t buy clothes. I don\u2019t go on holiday. I meal prep on Sundays. I take the Luas. I haven\u2019t been to the pub in months,\u201d she wrote in a lengthy Facebook post this week.<\/p>\n
Hanna\u2019s account is a particularly grim insight into the life of someone who\u2019s barely scraping by at the acute end of Ireland\u2019s housing crisis.<\/p>\n
The twist here is that she is not a real person.<\/p>\n
The testimony popped up in my Facebook feed this week, grabbing my attention because of its affective account of her struggle.<\/p>\n
The account that posted it initially seemed to have all the hallmarks of a legitimate person, and I took the post at face value and read it just as I would consume any other Facebook post.<\/p>\n
It worked in part because the first half of the copy sounded like a real story; Ireland\u2019s housing crisis has made the fiction plausible enough for the lie to borrow its emotional force.<\/p>\n
The pictures and \u2018about\u2019 information on the account seemed genuine, and it wasn\u2019t until I did a bit more digging that I could see things like name changes and strange posting history that told me it was fake.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I read more of the story in the ad, I could tell it was written using AI.<\/p>\n
It had already elicited my sympathy successfully before I even realised that I was being redirected towards a slot machine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The ad claimed that \u2018Hanna\u2019 had overcome her financial woes by winning tens of thousands via an online casino and I soon realised that the compelling story was nothing more than a promotion for a gambling company.<\/p>\n
I went digging on Meta\u2019s ad library, an open source tool that allows you to see what sponsored posts a page is running or search for individual ads, and I unearthed dozens of similar promotions for the same company.<\/p>\n
In other versions that had previously run on the Hanna Parker page, the copy said she lived in London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol and tweaked small details depending on whom the account was trying to appeal to.<\/p>\n
In the UK ads, the initial claims I saw that Hanna had to pay for her Leap card and that she received HAP payments were re-worded to suggest she had an Oyster card and received Universal Credit.<\/p>\n
I also found other fake profiles claiming to be different women that ran similar ads for the same service, or other accounts that ran identical sponsored posts and used the same pictures of \u2018Hanna\u2019, but under different names.<\/p>\n
Collectively, the ads showcase a particularly dark example of the industrial manufacture of a simulacrum of online authenticity using generative AI tools.<\/p>\n
They generate a realistic story on profiles that appear to belong to ordinary people, creating an ersatz authenticity to subtly promote gambling as a solution to economic difficulties.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Most people will probably see these promotions for what they are, but the intention to deceive is still there \u2013 as are the risk and reward systems that drive the behaviour of compulsive gamblers.<\/p>\n
When I clicked on the link to the online casino: I got two free spins on a digital fruit machine and was told after just my second attempt that\u00a0I\u2019d won \u20ac1,500 and 250 free spins.<\/p>\n
To claim my \u201cprize\u201d, I was prompted to download the casino\u2019s app, which was blocked in Ireland, though the operator appeared to be based in Cyprus.<\/p>\n
The breadcrumb approach is clearly designed to keep people moving towards the app download, especially those desperate or gullible enough to continue.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s notable how the interface of social media inadvertently enabled that design.<\/p>\n
One minute I was just scrolling on Facebook, but within a few moments I was getting a prompt to download the app of an obscure gambling company.<\/p>\n
That shows the frightening efficiency of modern social media feeds, which can turn passive attention into commercial intent before we even notice the change.<\/p>\n
This is a world apart from deliberately seeking out another online casino, or even more passively consuming ads for gambling companies or casinos on TV.<\/p>\n
As a strategy, the fake testimony partly removes the conscious decision to engage with an addictive service.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a technique that is especially valuable to small and unfamiliar operators whose brands can\u2019t compete with bigger, high street bookmakers.<\/p>\n
Unheard-of casinos that arrive in social media feeds don\u2019t have the same level of recognition.<\/p>\n
Rather than building trust as a brand, they can fabricate trustworthy individuals and let Facebook place them in people\u2019s feeds.<\/p>\n
People who have never sought out gambling \u2013 or who have excluded themselves from familiar operators \u2013 are especially vulnerable here because they don\u2019t actually know what they\u2019re engaging with until it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s recently established Gambling Regulator has planned to set up a national exclusion register to stop registered people from accessing or being contacted by licensed online operators, but it is not yet a functioning universal safeguard.<\/p>\n
Meta, which profits from companies when they run these ads, also has a role in policing them.<\/p>\n