Poker Writer
A Dutch gambling trade association is suing Meta for illegal gambling advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. The lawsuit alleges that the social media giant did not act to prevent black market sites that promoted unlicensed gambling.
The Licensed Dutch Online Gambling Providers (VNLOK) claim that Meta has refused to engage with illegal gambling advertisements, opting to ignore them instead. The result of ignoring the gambling ads is that young people are seeing the ads and being inundated with illegal gambling propaganda.
According to the VNLOK, 95% of all Meta gambling ads were from unlicensed gambling operators, which made the ads for licensed operators almost nonexistent by comparison. The association has also claimed that Meta has removed less than 5% of the ads. The huge number of illegal ads led to as many as 75 million impressions on Facebook and Instagram, many of which come from underage users.
Meta the Target of Many Lawsuits
Similar accusations have dogged Meta in the past. Notably, the U.K. Gambling Commission called out Meta earlier this year. Another 2026 report said Meta continued to run illegal gambling ads targeting Asian countries despite the company’s insistence that it prohibits them.
California also filed a lawsuit against Meta for illegal sports betting ads. That lawsuit alleges that Facebook and Instagram displayed sports betting ads to users there, where sports betting is illegal. The lawsuit claims that the Meta algorithm identified a user’s interest in sports betting and then showed them ads for illegal betting services.
Outside of the world of gambling, Meta has faced lawsuits for other issues. Another of the most notable of those court cases happened in California. A jury there found Meta negligent in a social media harms case, which blamed the depression and anxiety of a woman on her interactions with social media in her formative years.
The jury ordered that Meta and Google pay the woman a total of $6 million in punitive and compensatory damages. The court deemed Meta responsible for 70% of that amount.
