Gambling advertising faces a new crackdown on the UK arm of the world’s biggest social networking site.

Facebook UK said yesterday it would be taking steps to remove all forms of gambling advertising including online casino, bingo, sportsbook and poker ads. Industry insiders fear it could eventually lead to a host of facebook pages belonging to online gambling websites being removed too.

Blacklist

Gambling is just one of 20 categories being wiped as part of a “clean-up” by facebook. Others include firearms, tobacco, spy cameras, politically religious agendas and pyramid schemes.

Bizarrely, Facebook members will still be able to play the sites own “gambling” games and bosses insist that existing group pages, fan pages personal pages will be allowed to continue for the moment.