The "tigrinho game" has taken over the internet and paid for it. The slot machine adapted for mobile screens, officially called Fortune Tiger, is spreading on social networks, despite the limitations imposed by the major tech companies behind Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok. The most visible face of this phenomenon is on Instagram. In recent weeks, users have reported harassment from fake profiles making friend requests, tagging them in posts about the tigrinho, and approaching them with promises of cash bonuses for those who place bets through their links.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is evidence that affiliate programs, operating similarly to pyramid schemes, are behind the mass production of spam. In this business, the person who posts the link to the betting site receives a portion of the money lost by internet users convinced to bet. Folha found in advertisements what suggests to be the origin of the gambling spam. Although restricted by social networks, 2,217 promoted posts on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp mentioned the words "tigrinho" and "Fortune Tiger" in the first 20 days of June. Of these, nearly 40% were related to commission programs for link dissemination. The data was extracted from Meta's ad library, the owner of the three platforms, and led the report to more profiles of betting site affiliates and identical links found in fake accounts, which are banned by Instagram for "inauthentic behavior" but harass users on the photo network.

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