The figures were published the same week as the UN Global Anti-Fraud Summit in Vienna‚ during which Meta signed an industry agreement with Amazon‚ Google‚ LinkedIn‚ Microsoft‚ OpenAI and Pinterest that labeled illegal online gambling‚ along with crypto fraud and financial scams‚ as a high-risk financial crime․
Where the pressure came from
The problem of unregulated gambling advertising on Meta platforms had been developing over a number of months․ It culminated when UK Gambling Commission Executive Director Tim Miller criticized Meta directly during the ICE conference in Barcelona in January 2026‚ saying that Meta’s public ad library offered easy access to ads from non-UK licensed bookmakers promoting ways around GamStop self-exclusion․ Miller said if his team could find the ads with a simple keyword search‚ there was no reason Meta could not do the same without anybody flagging the ads․
Malaysia had previously sent over 120‚000 requests to Meta to remove illegal gambling-related materials but felt pace and scale were lacking․ In the Philippines‚ Meta was given a list of over 300 domains with illegal gambling ads by the nonprofit Digital Pinoys․ Only six were removed‚ and a January 2026 investigation by Rest of World found hundreds of banned ads remaining live in at least 13 countries․
What has changed
Meta has stated it only removes such content when it is reported‚ but a 2024 Reuters report estimated Meta made $16 billion from advertising false or forbidden products; Meta has not confirmed the figure․
The Vienna agreement and the documents left with the company suggest that the policy may be changing․ Meta’s Director of Global Threat Response‚ David Agranovich‚ said Meta had worked with Royal Thai Police‚ FBI and US Department of Justice to take action against the fraud centres in Southeastern Asia․ He said real time sharing of data between social media platforms and law enforcement gave better and faster results than either alone․
Impact on the market
Illegal gambling is now a high-risk ad category on Meta’s platforms‚ and licensed gambling operators that advertise with Meta must go through additional scrutiny․ For those without a licence‚ run room is still more limited‚ and how effective the filters would be in practice is unclear․
Regulators have pushed large technology companies to get gambling under control‚ and we’ll find out in the coming months if Meta has actually made meaningful changes to address this issue․
