The state agency PlayCity has blocked 33 TikTok profiles that promoted gambling and violated Ukrainian law. The total audience of these accounts was over 365 thousand subscribers. This was reported on the website of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and confirmed by the agency itself.
Another 20 accounts with a combined audience of over 625,000 users are currently undergoing verification. If violations are confirmed, they are also threatened with blocking. According to the head of PlayCity Gennady Novikov, cooperation with TikTok has now become much more efficient: “ We file a complaint with TikTok — and within a few days the account is blocked. Until September, these were only isolated cases, and our applications were considered for a very long time. Now we have already established a process and have an effective tool to combat illegal gambling advertising on this platform as well .”
The Ministry of Digital Affairs and PlayCity directly call TikTok one of the key platforms through which "gray" gambling advertising tries to reach a younger audience. Most of these pages promoted online casinos and bets under the guise of "easy earnings", "quick money" or "affiliate links to proven sites."
This is not the first front. In parallel, PlayCity is working with Meta: according to the agency, 54 Instagram pages have already been blocked, which also advertised gambling without licenses and in violation of Ukrainian law.
Recall that in recent months PlayCity has become a large-scale public player in the gambling regulation market: the agency replaced the old KRAL and is now responsible for gambling and lotteries policy. At the same time, the state is preparing new restrictions in parallel - from limits on player spending to technical self-restriction mechanisms to reduce addiction and eliminate aggressive targeting of gambling on vulnerable groups.
