Meta given 48 hours to remove illegal ads in Brazil
The Brazilian Attorney General's Office has discovered multiple instances of illegal promotions hosted by Meta and has requested the social media company remove them promptly.
Key points:
– The Brazilian Attorney General’s Office has issued a notice to Meta regarding illegal gambling advertising
– Meta has been found to host ‘hundreds’ of promotions for unauthorised operators in its ad library
– AGU notice requests that they be taken down within 48 hours
The Attorney General’s Office (AGU) is going after Meta in Brazil, reminding the social media giant of its responsibilities to take down illegal online gambling promotions.
Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram, and following investigations into its ad library, hundreds of ads for unauthorised operators were found to be active.
An extrajudicial notice was issued to Meta through the National Prosecutor’s Office of the Union for the Defense of Democracy (PNDD) and demands that Meta removes these adverts.
Any gambling operator wishing to trade and advertise in Brazil must first obtain licences and authorisation from the Ministry of Finance, something that the entities referred to in this action have neglected to do.
An excerpt from the notification lists the AGU’s concerns for these illegal operations: “This is, therefore, a clearly illegal activity (given that these profiles are not authorised by the Ministry of Finance) – which may also be linked to tax evasion, money laundering, crimes against consumer relations, fraud and other illegal practices.”
Good to know: An authorised gambling site in Brazil is easy to spot, as the web URL for the company must end in ‘.bet.br’
Meta has run into similar troubles in Asia in past months and failed to attend a scheduled questioning in India regarding a money laundering probe into digital ads for unauthorised gambling platforms.
The social media company took more decisive action in the Philippines and began purging the Facebook pages of influencers that were found to be promoting illegal online gambling in the country – these included some high profile personalities like Sachzna Laparan.
The AGU has argued that in light of a recent ruling on Article 19 of the Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet, digital platforms like Facebook or Instagram are liable for any illegal content hosted on them, though it recognises that Meta has made some progress via its promise to update its terms of use for gambling advertising.
It reiterates that in cases such as this, a social media site must “prove that they acted diligently and within a reasonable time to make the content unavailable.”
On this occasion, the AGU has put forward a timeframe of 48 hours for Meta to pull down the non-compliant promotions.
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