News portals warned against unsafe ads

The government has warned that news portals will be shut down without prior notice, if they continue to publish gambling or other unsafe advertisements.

Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, special assistant to the Chief Adviser for Posts, Telecommunications and ICT, said authorities already had given enough time for compliance and no further warnings would be issued any more.

"Almost all media outlets are still involved in promoting gambling and unsafe content because these advertisements generate significant revenue for them," he said at a meeting titled "Measures to Prevent Online Gambling", held at the BTRC headquarters in Agargaon, Dhaka, on Tuesday.

Taiyeb made it clear that portals failing to remove such adverts would be blocked any moment.

He said the government had been using web-crawling tools to track links between gambling sites and specific mobile financial service (MFS) accounts. Since May, 4,820 MFS numbers and 1,331 web portals or links tied to gambling activities have been identified.

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He admitted that its enforcement remained a big challenge, noting that operators frequently change IPs, create mirror websites, and circulate new numbers through encrypted platforms such as Signal and WhatsApp.

The special assistant also called on mobile operators, broadband providers, and MFS platforms to work more proactively to prevent betting-related transactions and content distribution.

BTRC Chairman Md Emdadul Bari and senior officials from relevant ministries, law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and financial regulators were also present at the meeting.