Fake Accounts Crying Jackpot Are Selling the iGambling Dream
Our special summer issue is out now. Get a discounted subscription to our print magazine today. Your support keeps us publishing!
Fake Accounts Crying Jackpot Are Selling the iGambling Dream<br>ByLaura O’Connor<br>Online gambling operators are no longer selling the promise of luxury but the promise of stability. Through fake Reddit accounts, they peddle stories of groceries bought and rent paid, all supposedly made possible by a lucky break.
Giants of the online gambling world appear to be targeting poor people and teenagers by posting first-person testimonials pretending to be them on social media forums. (Paul Hanna / AFP via Getty Images)<br>Our summer issue is out now. Get a discounted subscription to our print magazine today.
Israel’s Young Settler Vanguard<br>E. A. Halevi
The Making of the Teenager<br>Lauren Fadiman
Zohran Needs to Create Popular Assemblies<br>Gabriel HetlandBhaskar Sunkara
A Half-Century of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital<br>Sophina ClarkDaniel Judt
Between August 2025 and the present, over 330 Reddit posts have appeared on forums made for working-class people and teenagers. The posts purported to chronicle users stumbling across small windfalls of cash through Stake.com, the multibillion-dollar online casino (currently headquartered in Curaçao) that dominates the increasingly feral digital gambling realm. The posts were largely made by now-deleted accounts that buried mention of Stake between seemingly innocuous discussions on struggling to pay for groceries or the crushing weight of student debt, often using the Cyrillic alphabet to avoid detection by AI moderators.<br>These formulaic posts, with their consistent, covert mention of Stake, clearly intended to circumvent moderation. Together, they point to a disturbing tactic: a giant in the online gambling world — or its paid affiliates — appears to be targeting poor people and teenagers by pretending to be one of them. Stake did not reply to Jacobin’s request for comment.<br>Online gambling has grown explosively over the past year, thanks to digital advertising and rapid legalization across the United States. Maine recently legalized iCasinos, and states like New York and Illinois are facing pressure to do the same.
This is not a paywall. Log in or register for free to keep reading. Subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.
Remove IconESCSmall<br>Between August 2025 and the present, over 330 Reddit posts have appeared on forums made for working-class people and teenagers. The posts purported to chronicle users stumbling across small windfalls of cash through Stake.com, the multibillion-dollar online casino (currently headquartered in Curaçao) that dominates the increasingly feral digital gambling realm. The posts were largely made by now-deleted accounts that buried mention of Stake between seemingly innocuous discussions on struggling to...
Medium<br>Between August 2025 and the present, over 330 Reddit posts have appeared on forums made for working-class people and teenagers. The posts purported to chronicle users stumbling across small windfalls of cash through Stake.com, the multibillion-dollar online casino (currently headquartered in Curaçao) that dominates the increasingly feral digital gambling realm....
Large<br>Between August 2025 and the present, over 330 Reddit posts have appeared on forums made for working-class people and teenagers. The posts purported to chronicle users stumbling across small windfalls of cash through Stake.com, the multibillion-dollar online casino (currently headquartered...