{"id":242375,"date":"2026-01-20T10:35:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T10:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/242375\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T10:35:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T10:35:09","slug":"meta-turning-a-blind-eye-to-illegal-gambling-ads-uk-gambling-commission-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/242375\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta ‘turning a blind eye’ to illegal gambling ads, UK Gambling Commission says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain’s Gambling Commission<\/a> said on Monday that \u200dMeta Platforms, the owner of Facebook and Instagram<\/a>, was turning a \u2060blind eye to illegal online casinos advertising on its sites, indicating it was happy to continue taking money from criminals. <\/p>\n

The independent \u200cregulator’s executive \u200cdirector Tim Miller<\/a> said that anyone who has spent even a little \u200ctime on Meta<\/a>‘s platforms would more than likely have seen ads in their feed for illegal online casinos. <\/p>\n

Most notably, many of the ads were for sites that did not participate \u200bin Britain’s “GamStop” self-exclusion scheme for online \u200bgambling, he said.<\/p>\n

Meta’s assertion that it did not \u200cknow about \u200dsuch ads until it was notified was “simply \u200dfalse”, he said in a speech at the \u200cICE Barcelona trade show, according to the text on the Gambling Commission’s website.<\/p>\n

He said Meta’s searchable ad library showed which advertisers said their sites were “Not on GamStop”.<\/p>\n

“It’s effectively a window into criminality,” he said. “If we can find them then so can Meta. \u200dThey simply choose not to look.”<\/p>\n

The Gambling Commission had made “very limited progress” on the problem \u200dwith Meta, \u2060he said, adding \u2060that he would be very surprised if the tech company couldn’t use its own keyword facility to prevent the ads.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

Meta has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain’s Gambling Commission said on Monday that \u200dMeta Platforms, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, was turning a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[142364,47899,142362,134,142361,4791,142363,554,555,898,33438,111,139,69,79577,142360],"class_list":{"0":"post-242375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-facebook-ads","9":"tag-gambling-commission","10":"tag-gamstop-scheme","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-illegal-gambling-ads","13":"tag-instagram","14":"tag-instagram-ads","15":"tag-mental-health","16":"tag-mentalhealth","17":"tag-meta","18":"tag-meta-platforms","19":"tag-new-zealand","20":"tag-newzealand","21":"tag-nz","22":"tag-tim-miller","23":"tag-uk-gambling-commission"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}