A senior official at the United Kingdom’s Gambling Commission has criticised Meta Platforms, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, over the presence of advertisements promoting unlicensed or unregulated online gambling services on its platforms. The comments were made during a presentation at the ICE 2026 gaming conference in Barcelona.
Tim Miller, the Gambling Commission’s executive director for research and policy, said users in the United Kingdom regularly encounter adverts for gambling sites that operate outside the country’s regulatory framework. According to Miller, many of these promotions direct users to “not on GamStop” casinos, referring to services that are not part of the UK’s national self-exclusion program for problem gambling.
GamStop is a system that allows people in the UK to exclude themselves from licensed gambling operators if they want to limit or stop betting activity. Platforms that do not participate in the scheme may still operate online but often fall outside the country’s regulatory oversight. Miller said the promotion of such sites to British users raises concerns about compliance with UK gambling rules.
Speaking at the conference, Miller suggested that Meta has the technical capacity to block or restrict advertising linked to unlicensed gambling services. He questioned why such ads remain visible on Facebook and Instagram despite the company’s large-scale advertising moderation systems. According to Miller, it is difficult to conclude that the company is unable to identify the promotions, given the resources available to it.
Meta operates one of the largest digital advertising platforms in the world, allowing businesses to promote services to targeted audiences across multiple countries. Advertising systems on the company’s platforms use automated tools and human reviewers to detect and remove content that violates platform policies.
The Gambling Commission official said regulators should not be required to monitor and report problematic advertisements individually if the platform itself has the capacity to detect them. He argued that enforcement efforts would be more effective if the platform took stronger proactive action against ads that appear to promote services outside the UK’s licensing regime.
The issue forms part of broader concerns raised by regulators and policymakers about online advertising used to promote scams, illegal services, or misleading financial schemes on major social media platforms. Previous reporting and regulatory discussions have highlighted the scale of fraud and deceptive promotions appearing in online advertising ecosystems.
Meta has previously said it works to detect and remove harmful advertising through automated systems and enforcement policies, including efforts to identify fraudulent or misleading campaigns. The company has also reported removing large numbers of misleading ads and reducing user reports of scam advertisements in recent years.
Regulators and industry officials continue to examine how digital platforms handle advertising linked to gambling, scams, and other regulated activities as part of ongoing discussions about platform oversight and online safety.