“Gusto talaga nila na marami ang mabigyan kaya tumulong sila. All you have to do is follow their page, kasi do’n tayo kukuha ng random followers na makakapag-uwi ng iPhone 17.”

That was Ivana Alawi on July 15, explaining why 100 brand new iPhone 17 units would go to 100 lucky followers. She had just spent 4.28 million pesos at the mall, filmed herself hauling the boxes home in two suitcases, and posted the video to a Facebook page that had crossed 48 million followers days earlier. The post pulled in 7.3 million reactions and 5.9 million comments within days.

Buried in the mechanics: to qualify, you had to follow the Facebook page of Casino Plus, the online casino Alawi endorses.

Casino Plus is licensed by PAGCOR, so nothing about this giveaway is illegal. That is exactly the problem. The law was built to catch unlicensed gambling operators and the influencers who push them, not licensed ones who fold a follow requirement into what looks like an ordinary raffle. Alawi is not the one breaking a rule. She is exposing where a rule doesn’t exist.

What the record shows

The Creator and Influencer Council of the Philippines (CICP) weighed in directly on the giveaway, saying gambling-related endorsements deserve “a heightened degree of caution and responsibility.” The council’s point was about scale: the same 1,000 pesos means leisure money to one person and rent or medicine to another, and an influencer with tens of millions of followers is reaching both.

Digital Pinoys went further. National campaigner Ronald Gustilo called the giveaway an exercise in predatory marketing, arguing that a 100-phone giveaway isn’t really about rewarding 100 people. It’s about growing Casino Plus’s follower base, because every new follow becomes a channel for future betting ads and bonus offers. He’s asking PAGCOR and Meta to determine whether follow-to-enter promotions meet responsible advertising standards at all.

Nobody involved has explained what happens to the people who follow the page, don’t win an iPhone, and stay subscribed to a gambling operator’s content anyway.

Where the giveaway falls through the cracks

• Licensed operators like Casino Plus can legally sponsor promotions; only unlicensed platforms draw takedown orders and demand letters.
• Standard sales promotions need a DTI permit tied to a purchase. A follow-to-enter mechanic isn’t a purchase, so it doesn’t clearly trigger that oversight.
• There is no verification step that keeps a follow button away from a follower who is a minor.
• Once you follow, you stay in Casino Plus’s audience indefinitely, whether or not you win.
• Nothing in the giveaway required an age gate, a responsible-gambling disclosure, or a limit on how the entry mechanic could be structured.

What can actually change this

Digital Pinoys already asked the right question: whether PAGCOR and Meta consider follow-to-enter promotions tied to a gambling page compliant with responsible advertising standards. That’s specific enough to act on.

PAGCOR can start by classifying these mechanics as gambling promotion, not an ordinary raffle, and requiring the disclosures gambling ads already carry. DTI can clarify that a giveaway conditioned on following a gambling page falls outside the standard sales-promotion permit track. Meta can apply the same minor-protection enforcement it uses on paid gambling ads to organic giveaway posts.

Readers have a smaller lever, but it’s real. A follow isn’t free. It puts you on a gambling operator’s list, whether or not you win. Skip giveaways that require it, check who the minors in your household already follow, and report the mechanic to CICP or Digital Pinoys if it crosses a line. Both groups are on record asking for exactly that.

Alawi has not addressed the criticism publicly. Casino Plus has not either.

CICP says gambling endorsements deserve a heightened degree of caution. Nothing in the giveaway required that of Alawi, and nothing in the law required it of Casino Plus. What is stopping the next celebrity from running the exact same play, one follow button at a time?