Facebook has just announced a ban on all cryptocurrency and ICO related advertisements on their platform. Facebook, which believes in a ‘people-first’ ad policy, has stated that there is no space for ‘misleading or deceptive’ ads on their platform. This ban comes as a part of Facebook’s new ad policy which was introduced today.
This ban on cryptocurrency ads is valid across all Facebook run platforms including the audience network as well as Instagram. The company states that they want people to discover and learn about new products and services through their ads. However, a number of ICOs and cryptocurrency ads are misleading and are meant to scam people. Hence, they have decided to ban all ads which talk about cryptocurrencies - including the ones which talk about Bitcoins!
Of late, there has been a rise in the number of scams which take place in the name of Cryptocurrencies. One of the biggest such examples was that of BitConnect, which scammed people with the help of various social media promoters. In a more recent case, a cryptocurrency startup, Prodeum, disappeared with millions of dollars in investor money. Perhaps the impact of such fraudulent activities would be lesser if major platforms like Facebook did not allow such ads.
Keeping such scams and incidents in mind, Facebook has decided to introduce this new ad policy. The policy reads:
“Ads must not promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, Initial Coin Offerings, or Cryptocurrency”.
Facebook has stated that while they intend to remove every possibility of such ads being banned, there may be some which may bypass their ad scanners. The company wants the users to be alert and be safe from these scams. Facebook further stated that they will tweak the policy as per the response it gets over time. “We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve.”
In addition to scammy ICOs and other fraudulent products and services, this Facebook ad policy update will also put an end to people who keep promoting themselves as a ‘crypto-genius’ and promise to help you make millions of dollars with a simple trick. There has been a sharp rise in the interest around cryptocurrencies in 2017 - which has also led to a sharp rise in the number of cryptocurrency scams and Ponzi schemes.
Hopefully, with this move, Facebook will be able to make sure that they do not, in any way, act as a means of helping promote such scams to unsuspecting users. This policy is likely to witness quite a lot of media attraction as many legitimate cryptocurrency experts and upcoming ICOs are likely to suffer because of it.
While Facebook goes all strict on cryptocurrencies, two members on Facebook’s board of directors, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen are known cryptocurrency investors who run firms which back cryptocurrencies. It’s a strange, strange world!
Source: FB Business Updates