U.K. Regulator Accuses Meta of Benefiting from Illegal Gambling Ads
In Focus
- British Gambling Commission says Meta ignores illegal casino adverts
- Meta claims it enforces a strict ad policy on U.K. gambling and gaming ads
- The watchdog says the ads appear in feeds
The Gambling Commission in the U.K. has accused Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms of ignoring illegal casino adverts on its website. According to Investing.com, the watchdog said Meta’s illegal gambling ads in the U.K. show that the social media giant is willing to receive money from criminals.
Social Media Users Exposed to Illegal Ads
The U.K. Gambling Commission said that anyone who uses Meta Platforms was likely to view ads by illegal online casinos in their feeds. According to the watchdog, most of the ads appearing on Meta’s social media platforms belonged to websites that did not participate in the country’s GamStop. This is a self-exclusion scheme for digital gambling.
“Meta has a searchable ad library where you can find all current ads that meet searched keywords. You or I can conduct such a search for ‘not on gamstop’ sites and see for ourselves how many are currently paying Meta to advertise on their platforms. If we can find them then so can Meta: they simply choose not to look,” U.K’s Gambling Commission Executive Director, Tim Miller noted as cited by Tech Republic.
The British watchdog said that Meta’s claim that it was not aware of the presence of illegal ads on its platforms until it got a notification was inaccurate.
“Companies like Meta will tell you that they don’t tolerate the advertising of illegal sites and will remove them if they are notified about them. But that approach suggests that they don’t know about those ads unless alerted. That is simply false,” Miller added.
Meta Claims Enforcement of Ad Policy
The social media platform says it enforces a strict ad policy on U.K. gambling and gaming ads. According to Meta, ads that violate its policies were removed promptly as soon as they were 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 Meta spokesperson said, as cited by Investing.com.
Regulators in the U.K. raised concerns about Meta’s illegal gambling ads months after the social media platform introduced an ad-free subscription service for Facebook and Instagram users in the country.
Watchdog Says Meta Earns from Prohibited Ads
The Commission holds that Meta has been earning from what it claims to prohibit. It’s hard to estimate how much the company generated from illegal casino ads on Facebook and Instagram in 2025. However, the social giant reportedly raised $16 billion from online ads on banned goods and scams.
“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,” Miller noted.
Meta’s gambling ads controversy in the U.K. comes months after Senators in the U.S. asked regulators to probe a scam ads scheme by the social media giant. The probe was triggered by a media report alleging that the social media giant generated revenue by promoting banned goods and scams.
