Thailand to Work With Meta and TikTok to Target Illegal Gambling Advertising

Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society plans to coordinate directly with Meta, TikTok and other digital platforms to identify illegal gambling advertising, build shared monitoring data and pass actionable information to the Royal Thai Police.

Thailand is expanding its campaign against illegal online gambling by bringing major social media platforms more directly into its monitoring and enforcement system.

The Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (DE) said it plans to establish a working group that will collect and analyse reports concerning online gambling and coordinate with platforms including Meta and TikTok. The resulting monitoring information will then be forwarded to the Royal Thai Police for further action within its enforcement powers.

The initiative was outlined after an October 5 meeting between Digital Economy and Society Minister Chaichanok Chidchob and several anti-gambling, youth and public-health organisations. The government’s approach will also give members of the public, including young people, additional channels to report suspected gambling advertisements, websites and other related online activity.

The strategy goes beyond social media. DE also plans to work with search-engine providers to reduce the visibility and accessibility of gambling-related websites through search results, while the education, interior and security ministries are expected to participate in awareness programmes focused particularly on children, students and younger internet users.

The new cooperation builds on an already large enforcement programme. During Thailand’s 2026 fiscal year, from October 2025 through September 2026, authorities reported action against 945,075 gambling-related URLs and online items. Court orders covered 835,207 URLs, while another 109,868 were blocked through cooperation with digital platforms. The figures refer to individual URLs and pieces of content rather than separate gambling operators.

Meta has already worked with Thai law enforcement on content removals. Royal Thai Police reported earlier in 2026 that cooperation with the company had resulted in the blocking of 158,365 Facebook pages linked to online gambling between October 2025 and April 27, 2026.

Pressure on platforms has also increased from the consumer-protection side. In June, the Thailand Consumers Council launched legal action against Meta and other parties over alleged failures to prevent scam advertising from reaching Thai users. The wider case concerns fraudulent advertising rather than gambling alone, but it has intensified scrutiny of platform responsibility for illegal paid content.

For Thailand, the latest plan marks a shift from reacting to individual websites after they appear toward building a continuous information pipeline connecting citizens, technology platforms and law enforcement. If fully implemented, the system could allow gambling advertisements, promotional accounts and associated networks to be identified and escalated more quickly rather than relying primarily on conventional website blocking.