Stephen McDermott

HANNA PARKER IS a 35-year-old full-time videographer who lives in rented accommodation in Blackrock in south county Dublin.

She spends €1,450 a month on rent and has just €550 left to spend on everything else, and says she checks her bank account four times a day while pretending she’s doing okay.

“I don’t buy clothes. I don’t go on holiday. I meal prep on Sundays. I take the Luas. I haven’t been to the pub in months,” she wrote in a lengthy Facebook post this week.

Hanna’s account is a particularly grim insight into the life of someone who’s barely scraping by at the acute end of Ireland’s housing crisis.

The twist here is that she is not a real person.

The testimony popped up in my Facebook feed this week, grabbing my attention because of its affective account of her struggle.

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.

It worked in part because the first half of the copy sounded like a real story; Ireland’s housing crisis has made the fiction plausible enough for the lie to borrow its emotional force.

The pictures and ‘about’ information on the account seemed genuine, and it wasn’t 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. 

When I read more of the story in the ad, I could tell it was written using AI.

It had already elicited my sympathy successfully before I even realised that I was being redirected towards a slot machine. 

The ad claimed that ‘Hanna’ 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.

I went digging on Meta’s 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.

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.

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.

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 ‘Hanna’, but under different names.

Collectively, the ads showcase a particularly dark example of the industrial manufacture of a simulacrum of online authenticity using generative AI tools.

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. 

Most people will probably see these promotions for what they are, but the intention to deceive is still there – as are the risk and reward systems that drive the behaviour of compulsive gamblers.

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 I’d won €1,500 and 250 free spins.

To claim my “prize”, I was prompted to download the casino’s app, which was blocked in Ireland, though the operator appeared to be based in Cyprus.

The breadcrumb approach is clearly designed to keep people moving towards the app download, especially those desperate or gullible enough to continue.

And it’s notable how the interface of social media inadvertently enabled that design.

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.

That shows the frightening efficiency of modern social media feeds, which can turn passive attention into commercial intent before we even notice the change.

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.

As a strategy, the fake testimony partly removes the conscious decision to engage with an addictive service.

It’s a technique that is especially valuable to small and unfamiliar operators whose brands can’t compete with bigger, high street bookmakers.

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Unheard-of casinos that arrive in social media feeds don’t have the same level of recognition.

Rather than building trust as a brand, they can fabricate trustworthy individuals and let Facebook place them in people’s feeds.

People who have never sought out gambling – or who have excluded themselves from familiar operators – are especially vulnerable here because they don’t actually know what they’re engaging with until it’s too late.

Ireland’s 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.

Meta, which profits from companies when they run these ads, also has a role in policing them.

The company’s policies say that online gambling advertisements require the company’s permission and that they cannot be targeted at children.

But its advertising standards also prohibit offers that are promoted through identified deceptive or misleading practices.

Meta’s ad library states a number of ads on the Hanna Parker page were removed, but not all of them were; and while the company did not write her story, it still sold the space in which she acquired an audience and pushed it to Facebook users.

These promotions are also clear-cut examples of why provisions in the Gambling Act were written, because yet-to-be commenced aspects of the legislation would prevent them from appearing in feeds like mine. 

Section 146 of the Act would restrict gambling ads on social media from appearing to users who have not actively subscribed to the gambling operator’s account; in other words, I’d have had to have followed Hanna Parker first to see the ad.

Meanwhile, Section 157 deals with inducements – benefits or advantages intended to encourage gambling – which is exactly the territory occupied by free spins and instant “prizes”.

These protections have not yet been switched on, which of course is a problem for legislators.

But social media companies like Meta could arguably be proactive and stop this from happening now if they wanted to.

The problem is that like the story told by Hanna Parker, the financial incentive is just too sweet.