Thailand Plans Meta and TikTok Working Group Against Online Gambling
The digital ministry will turn public tips into watch lists for the platforms and police, after blocking almost 1 million gambling links in a single year.
· 2 min · 2 min read
Thailand's digital ministry plans to set up a working group that collects public tips on online gambling and shares them with Meta and TikTok. The findings will then go to the Royal Thai Police, according to a ministry statement on talks held Oct. 5.
Blocking has been the government's main tool, and the numbers show the scale. The ministry got court orders to block over 830,000 gambling web addresses in the year to September 2026. Platforms took down almost 110,000 more at its request, for a total of more than 945,000 links, or almost 2,600 a day.
Ministry Asks the Public for Tips
Minister Chaichanok Chidchob agreed the plan with the Stop Gambling Campaign Foundation and three youth and family groups. The ministry listed four measures:
- a channel where anyone, of any age, can report gambling sites, ads or experiences
- the working group, which will process those reports with platforms such as Meta and TikTok and forward cases to police
- work with search engines to make gambling sites harder to find through search
- awareness lessons on gambling risks for children and students, run with the education and interior ministries and security agencies
Of the court-ordered blocks, around 750,000 came from the ministry's own searches, which use AI to find gambling sites. Police supplied the other ~85,600.
Solving the online gambling problem, including illegal URLs, cannot be done by any single agency. It needs cooperation from every sector, especially the public.
The minister made the remarks in the ministry's Thai-language statement, translated by FairGambling.
Meta Already Faces a Thai Scam Lawsuit
Meta is already in a Thai court. The Thailand Consumers Council sued Meta, Line, Apple and several banks in June over scam ads and fake investment pages, according to multiple reports. The council says it logged 3,793 Facebook-linked complaints between 2024 and 2026.
Neighbors are also tightening. Cambodia suspended casino-run online gambling from October.
The ministry's statement did not set a start date for the tip channel or the working group. It also does not say whether Meta or TikTok have agreed to take part.
Treat gambling as entertainment you pay for. 18+, and if it stops feeling like entertainment, help exists at BeGambleAware and GamCare.
