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What is Space Goonz?
On Wednesday the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled against Midnite following an investigation into a paid TikTok advertisement featuring an AI-generated character who appeared to be under the age of 25 and engaging in gambling activity.
The ASA reviewed a clip posted to TikTok in July promoting Midnite, a Gibraltar-based online casino app. The clip displayed a young-looking man using the app, accompanied by the voiceover: “Another massive World Cup upset. Bet £10 on the big match and get £30 in free bets. Level up your World Cup with Midnite, get on it.”
According to the ASA’s Code for gambling advertising, anyone who “was, or seemed to be, under 25 years of age” must not be depicted gambling or playing a significant role in advertisements.
What is Space Goonz?
Trace2Trace is relatively new, but Madsen says its underlying dataset has already grown to around 620,000. And it continues to grow, highlighting the scale of illegal operations in the gambling industry.
“We receive around 7,000 domains a day on average through the lists we monitor, including new and cloned sites,” he explains.
The system starts with domains that have already been identified by authorities. Trace2Trace then crawls them, looking for technical connections and similarities.
About Space Goonz
According to the survey, the problem arises when a user follows a single account related to betting. The platform’s recommendation system then starts showing other profiles in the same segment, including betting sites, influencers and specialised pages.
Among the 100 most recommended profiles are accounts that, together, have accumulated more than 6 million followers and 114,000 posts. There are three main types of profiles recommended by Instagram: operators, content creators and media specialising in the betting market.
The research also identified content that associates betting with investments and the possibility of income.
