British Regulator Accuses Meta of Helping Promote Illegal Online Gambling Ads

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JAKARTA - British regulators have accused Meta of allowing illegal online gambling ads to circulate on the Facebook and Instagram platforms, even targeting users who have filtered the ads.

In his statement at the ICE Barcelona industry conference, UK Gambling Commission Executive Director Tim Miller accused Meta of happily accepting money from "criminals" to promote the illegal ads.

"I would be very surprised if Meta, as one of the largest technology companies in the world, was not able to proactively use their own keyword facilities to prevent illegal gambling advertisements," he said on the official UK Gambling Commission website.

Meta has said it does not tolerate the promotion of illegal gambling and will remove ads if it receives reports. However, Miller said the claim was not in line with the facts on the ground.

Worse, in a meeting with Meta, the company owned by Mark Zuckerberg suggested that the British government use its own AI tools to monitor and find these ads and then report them.

"That approach implies that they didn't know about the ad unless someone reported it. That's just not true," he said.

According to him, this type of advertisement has the potential to push vulnerable people back into gambling addiction, even though they have tried to get out through official protection mechanisms.

Miller emphasized that this problem does not only occur in the UK, but also in many other countries, along with the dominance of global social media platforms in the digital advertising ecosystem.

He also called for the availability of international, industry regulators, and with other parties, to work together to eradicate illegal gambling advertisements on any platform.