AI-generated videos fuel surge in gambling ads in Bangladesh despite Meta ban: report
Dismislab’s report, released on 31 August, found thousands of gambling ads still running daily in Meta’s ad library
Gambling advertisements are proliferating on Meta's platforms in Bangladesh, now increasingly powered by artificial intelligence (AI)-generated videos, despite the company's ban on such promotions in the country, research by fact-checking group Dismislab showed.
Dismislab's report, released on 31 August, found thousands of gambling ads still running daily in Meta's ad library, a year after a similar investigation exposed the scale of the problem. "It remains business as usual," the group said.
A striking shift in tactics is the widespread use of AI-generated characters in videos promoting gambling apps such as FB77. These clips show fictional figures in settings ranging from hospitals and markets to courtrooms and political rallies, portraying gambling as a path to financial rescue or social status.
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One video features a rickshaw puller told by a suited man that FB77 "changed his life," while another depicts a mother unable to pay for her child's surgery until a man claims gambling winnings at the hospital counter. In another case, a mock courtroom drama ends with a judge praising FB77 as a source of income.
Dismislab said it identified 46 AI-generated gambling videos, 14 of which were reused across multiple ads. The campaigns, it noted, target poor and unemployed youth who risk addiction or losses to fraudulent sites.
On 12 August alone, the watchdog found 4,161 gambling ads linked to 225 Facebook pages, with "Luck BD" and "FB77Super lucky" among the most active. Administrators were traced to Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Malaysia and the United States.
Meta's policy explicitly prohibits gambling ads in Bangladesh and bars targeting users under 18. The government also outlaws gambling under the Public Gambling Act of 1867, and its new Cyber Security Ordinance, issued in May, makes digital gambling and related advertising a criminal offence.
Despite these restrictions, Dismislab said enforcement remains weak. "Meta is failing to detect and take action against them," the report concluded.
Bangladesh's High Court in 2022 questioned the government's inability to curb digital gambling promotions, but researchers said the persistence of such ads – now amplified by AI – highlights both regulatory and platform-level gaps.
