Meta are "ignoring illegal gambling adverts" says UKGC Boss
Mark Zuckerberg's social media platforms are allowing unregulated gambling adverts to filter through, according to Tim Miller.
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is turning a blind eye towards illegal online casinos, according to the head of the UKGC.
Tim Miller spoke during a session at the ICE 2026 Conference in Barcelona this week and had harsh words for Meta, saying they did not do enough to tackle illegal gambling adverts.
He noted that a lot of the casinos advertising on the platform were not integrated with GamStop, meaning that they were unable to stop gamblers from self-excluding. In fact, Meta products allowed users to search for "Not on GamStop" casinos.
“Anyone who spends time on their platforms will likely have seen ads appearing for illegal online casinos. Most notably, and perhaps most worryingly, many aimed at GB users are for the so-called ‘not on GamStop’ sites." Miller said, “these are targeted at consumers that have taken the often-difficult step to self-exclude from online gambling through the use of GamStop, Britain’s multi-operator self-exclusion scheme.”
A "Window into Criminality"
He went on to suggest the Meta ad policy was a "window into criminality" which they were choosing to ignore, despite it being relatively easy to spot bad-faith actors:
“I would be 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,” he said. “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.;
The news comes at a time when another major tech operator, Google, has recently updated its Ads policy to treat prediction markets as a financial product, not a gambling one.
Gambling adverts in the United Kingdom have recently faced heavy scrutiny. At the end of last year, a professional footballer cited the abundance of gambling adverts in the UK as a reason for his three-month ban. This came following a University of Bristol study, which revealed that 5,000 gambling references were shown in a single broadcast match.
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