Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is facing accusations from the UK’s Gambling Commission that the social media giant is deliberately overlooking advertisements from unlicensed gambling operators on Facebook and Instagram.
Bloomberg reports that the UK Gambling Commission has raised concerns about Meta, alleging that the social media giant is turning a blind eye to illegal gambling sites that advertise on Facebook and Instagram. The accusations were made public during a speech delivered by the commission’s executive director, Tim Miller, at the ICE gaming conference in Barcelona.
Miller revealed that the regulatory body has been examining Meta’s publicly searchable ad library and discovered numerous operators without proper licensing who are specifically targeting consumers in the UK. Miller characterized the situation as a window into criminal activity, emphasizing that if the regulator can identify these illegal advertisements, Meta certainly possesses the capability to do the same.
According to Miller’s statement, Meta simply chooses not to look for these violations. The situation is particularly notable because Meta’s own advertising policies explicitly require gambling companies to hold proper licenses in the countries where they target consumers. Miller explained that advertisements from illegal operators cause harm to vulnerable individuals while enriching criminals and con artists. Unlicensed gambling operators create multiple problems for society, including failure to pay taxes and exposing consumers to significantly higher risks of fraud and other forms of exploitation.
In conducting their investigation, the Gambling Commission searched specifically for advertisements using the keywords “not on Gamstop.” Gamstop is a UK service designed to help problem gamblers by allowing them to voluntarily block themselves from accessing gaming sites. All gambling operators licensed in the United Kingdom are required by law to integrate Gamstop and must block any players who are registered with the self-exclusion program.
According to Miller’s account, Meta suggested that the Gambling Commission should utilize the company’s own AI tools to locate and report illegal advertisements. The technology giant promised to remove advertisements once they were brought to its attention through such reports.
Miller expressed skepticism about this approach, stating he would be very surprised if Meta, as one of the world’s largest technology companies, is truly incapable of proactively using their own keyword facility to prevent the advertising of illegal gambling operations. He suggested that the situation could leave observers with the impression that Meta is quite happy to turn a blind eye and continue accepting money from criminals and scammers until someone raises objections.
In a statement provided to Breitbart News, a Meta spokesperson wrote:
We enforce strict advertising policies regarding online gambling and games ads and any ads that violate these policies are promptly removed once identified. We’ve been working closely with the Commission to identify and remove all the flagged ads found in violation of our policies, and we’re using this intelligence to further improve the proactive detection tools we already have in place. We would encourage the Commission to continue to collaborate with us to ensure users and legitimate advertisers are protected from these bad actors.
Breitbart News reported in December that Meta turned a blind eye to fraudulent advertisements originating in China to protect its profits:
Despite being banned in China, Meta’s platforms allow Chinese companies to advertise to users worldwide. This business became a major revenue stream, generating over $18 billion in annual sales in China by 2024, representing more than 10 percent of Meta’s global revenue. However, this also opened the door to widespread abuse and fraud.
Meta formed a dedicated anti-fraud team that managed to slash the share of problematic Chinese ads from 19 percent to 9 percent in the second half of 2024. But Meta later disbanded the team, lifted a freeze on onboarding new Chinese ad agencies, and shelved other anti-scam measures that internal tests showed would be effective. Within months, the share of banned ads rebounded to about 16 percent of China revenue. A Meta spokesperson told Breitbart News in relation to allegations that these changes came at the behest of CEO Mark Zuckerberg than, “Mark’s guidance to the teams responsible for addressing high-risk harms, such as fraud and scams, was to redouble efforts to reduce them all across the globe, including in China.”
Former Meta integrity executive Rob Leathern called the scale of the fraud indefensible. “The levels that you’re talking about are not defensible,” he told Reuters. “I don’t know how anyone could think this is okay.”
Read more at Bloomberg here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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