The British Gambling Commission said on Monday that Meta Platforms, the parent company behind Facebook and Instagram, was turning a blind eye to illegal online casinos advertising on its site.
According to the independent regulator’s executive director Tim Miller, anyone who has spent even a little time on Meta’s platforms would more than likely have seen ads in their feed for illegal online casinos. Most notably, many of the ads are were for sites that do not participate in Britain’s “GamStop” self-exclusion scheme for online gambling.
While Meta had reportedly said it did not know about such ads until it was notified, Miller said this assertion was “simply false” in a speech at the ICE Barcelona trade show, according to the text on the Gambling Commission’s website.
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“It could leave you with the impression they are quite happy to turn a blind eye and continue taking money from criminals and scammers until someone shouts about it,” he said.
Meta said that it enforced strict advertising policies regarding online gambling and gaming ads, and any ads that violated these policies were 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,” a spokesperson said. “We would encourage the Commission to continue to collaborate with us to ensure users and legitimate advertisers are protected from these bad actors.”
Miller said the Gambling Commission has tried to engage Meta, but without much progress.
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“Their suggestion was that we should deploy AI tools ourselves to monitor and find these ads and then report them,” he said, before declaring himself “very surprised if Meta, as one of the world’s largest tech companies is incapable of proactively using their own keyword facility to prevent the advertising of illegal gambling.”
Miller said that Meta must decide “whose side it is on.” “The consumers and users of your platforms, many of whom are seeking to escape gambling harm? Or the criminals and con artists who are using your platforms to prey on vulnerable people right in front of your eyes and whose clutches you risk pushing those vulnerable people into?”
Miller also said that no one can defeat illegal gambling “by working alone.” “We need to work together to ensure that there is no room for suppliers and other companies who want to benefit from the legitimate industry whilst also actively undermining our collective efforts to tackle illegal gambling operators,” he said. “Government, regulators and industry should no longer tolerate anyone having a foot in both camps. It’s time to work together. It’s time to force them to pick a side.”