Meta strikes back
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has come under intense global fire this year from regulators and charities for not doing enough to restrict illegal gambling firms on its platforms, but it turns out the tech giant has been taking significant action.
Reports emerged on Wednesday that in 2025, Meta removed over 159 million fraudulent ads and deleted 10.9 million accounts across its social media platforms Facebook and Instagram that were linked to gambling, romance, and cyber-fraud scam networks.
The announcement came after Meta and other brands including Amazon, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Pinterest inked an industry accord against digital scams and fraud at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime Global Fraud Summit in Vienna, Austria on Monday:
Meta’s Global Head of Counter Fraud Nathaniel Gleicher said at the Vienna summit that the collective response of the tech giants to combat global cyber fraud was because: “Scammers are growing more sophisticated, and they exploit gaps between companies and platforms.”
International enforcement
Just days before signing the Vienna accord, however, Meta also announced its role in a major international law enforcement operation in which the Facebook parent’s investigators disabled over 150,000 accounts associated with scam centers and money laundering that led to 21 arrests in Southeast Asia.
Last week, Meta took to X to reveal its role in a joint operation involving the FBI, DOJ Scam Center Strike Force, and the Royal Thai Police that led to the arrests of the individuals tied to scam center networks targeting users in the US, the UK, and beyond:
Meta’s Director of Global Threat Disruption David Agranovich said the Thailand operation proved that “real-time intelligence sharing between platforms and law enforcement enables faster disruption than either can achieve independently.”
In its post-UN summit press release, Meta claims it can detect 90% of illegal content before customers can report it, using AI systems that analyze various signals such as “text, images, and the surrounding context.”
spread of fake online casinos on social media
SiGMA recently reported the spread of fake online casinos on social media platforms sporting Amazon Slots branding and using false testimonials from Jeff Bezos and influencer Khaby Lame to “persuade users to deposit money or hand over personal data.”
Meta, however, said that its AI offers a new way of detecting scammers who impersonate the likes of Bezos, Elon Musk, and established brands, in addition to “analyzing fake fan sentiment, misleading bios, or associations with public figures or brands.”
Making inroads
That Meta deleted 159 million fake ads in only a year suggests both the scale of the illegal online market and that Zuckerberg’s firm is doing something, despite UK Gambling Commission exec Tim Miller’s criticism in January for failing to take down “Not on GamStop” ads.
Ultimately, Meta has inked an accord explicitly identifying online gambling content as a high-risk marketing category beside crypto and financial fraud, which means regulated operators face stricter ad content conditions and rising compliance costs to conduct business on its platforms.
