In accordance with user protection in the matter of gambling, the UKGC has partnered with Facebook and followed with creating a guidance in order to limit the number of ads related to gambling that pop up for the users to see.
Social media has seen an increased bombardment of adverts related to gambling and sports betting practices lately, since the market has seen a massive increase in profit margins despite the global situation. Things could get to the point where all users see are adverts about gambling so it was time for somebody to hit the brakes and this spread (at least a little bit)
The UKGC has, therefore, set up a guide where they can inform users on how to utilize Facebook’s safety tools to mitigate adverts on their newsfeed.
Chief Executive of the UKGC, Neil McArthur, explained: “Protecting children and vulnerable people from being harmed or exploited by gambling is a the heart of what we do, which is why I challenged the industry to look at how they can make better use of technology to prevent gambling-related content and adverts being seen by those individuals”
“Partnering with Facebook to produce this guidance is a welcome step for us in order to offer consumers clear, practical advice, and I hope that this will help them limit gambling-related content they see when using the platform.”
The guidance offered via the partnership will include relevant information on how users can hide ads, modify their preferences when it comes to reviewing advertisers from which they’ve already seen ads, and also how to manage data so they can choose how advertising companies uses said data to show ads within or outside the platform and how can the user be targeted based on what attributes they chose.