Facebook Banning Cryptocurrency Ads, ICOs - This Is How It Starts...

in crypto •  7 years ago  (edited)

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In a blog post published today by Rob Leathern, Facebook Product Manager, a new ad policy was announced by Facebook:

We’ve created a new policy that prohibits ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency.

Facebook is a private company and it has all the rights in the world to implement whatever ads policy it wants. So I see nothing inappropriate here for Facebook. After all, it has to protect its investors, right?

But I do see something else, something more interesting than that: Facebook finally recognized publicly the threat cryptocurrency poses to its own business. It think it cannot get more public than that.

Because, let's face it: who is going to decide what is misleading and what is not? Where do you draw the line between a legit campaign for, let' say, a new exchange, and a really scammy ICO for an inexistent product?

There's only one small step from this position to a new "cryptocurrency", that is not misleading at all, because, well, it's made by your good ol' Facebook site, that you all know and respect, despite its fake news campaigns, its Russian ads and all the other crap that is feeding you, just to be able to sell your data to advertisers...

Of course, this may be just a step in the right direction, in which real scams are fenced, but given Facebook history of "divide and conquer, and if you cannot conquer, then just buy it, and if you cannot buy it, then copy it", I simply don't buy it.

I'll buy some real, decentralized crypto instead...

Later edit: according to a short piece published on the site recode.net: "Facebook’s board of directors includes two investors — Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel — whose firms have been prominent crypto backers. Facebook Messenger boss, David Marcus, is also on the board at the popular crypto exchange Coinbase." . Talk about unfair advantages...


I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.


Dragos Roua


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i ve allways thought that there is enough space for fb and the rest, where the rest fight to bite a piece of fb's cake.
But with this policy they are giving a new advantge to the rest because crypto's won't dissapear, however they are saying that they can publi any other scam business but not crypto's? wtf ..
Probably they are already in working in their own "fbipple" we will see soon:)
thx for sharing i'm not using my fb acc for years so i don't get this news anymore

I've said it before and I'll say it again - 2018 is going to be a very interesting year ;-)

I though the same thing, when I first read your title, FB wants in and it needs to limit the competition.

Also Amazon is preparing to get in. They would like to implement it into their marketplace, selling around the world and use one single currency.

Big changes are on the way. How much say in all this we are going to have?

Hahahahahah! Facebook has been going to shit for years now, this is just another nail in its coffin! Yeah, let's ban russian ads, and post our own! Yeah, let us decide what is fake news! Yeah, let's ban crypto because some our scam, so we can get our own in! Oh boy, this is hilarious!

Agreed and we must continue to build alternative to Facebook ghettos and monopolies globally. Upvoted.

Indeed, hence my being on steemit. I came here precisely because of censorship and lies.

they are just afraid..

zuckie, king of FUDie

The scam isn't crypto, the scam is Facebook.

Great points!
Just a minor correction. Facebook is a publically traded company, not a private one.

Steemit is coming! Take down ads all they want, nothing FB can do about it!

he needs to protect all the auntie and grannies from the crypto boogie man .... ooooooohhhhh

Hes trying lol. Cant keep him in the closet forever though! Crypto night is coming, and boogie man comes out at night

They can't ban people sharing stuff about crypto.

Actually they can. Not really ban, but they will probably kill the reach of these posts.

Facistbook does have "algorithms". You can share stuff but that doesn't mean Facebook will show it.

I noticed even over a year ago that FB would take care NOT to promote my post in peoples feeds if it had a Steemit link in it. They arent dummies

Thank you Facebook for showing your cards and for the free advertising!

How Russian ads are worse than others ? :))

I'm talking about "Russian ads" in the context of fake news, not in the context of legit Russian businesses which are advertising on FB, sorry if this wasn't clear...

I agree that many ICOs (and almost every one of them) are not having good faith. Most are scams. I have been scammed last month as well. Still waiting for a chance to recover that money.

Sorry about your loss, but just because somebody sells some bad doughnuts, I don't think we should ban the flour...

Funny that Facebook is finally now starting to get scared. I'm suprised they banned ALL crypto ads instead of a select few.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I have no idea why Facebook is still around. It just really blows my mind.

For real man, the writing is on the wall ✏️

I have been seeing more and more discussion about Steemit getting blocked, deleted randomly, or members getting alerts that Steemit.com is spam and cannot be posted. This is simply Facebook being scared of what is growing here and they know it - Steemit threatens their hold on social media, plain and simple.

It was an interesting move by FaceBook i myself rarely use it now and instead am using Steemit the writing has been on the wall for FaceBook for a while imo.

Dragos, being on of the first people to use Steemit. It would be interesting to see a post with your view of Steemit evolution from it's beginning until today. Also, what do you think will happen to it in the next year or so.

Thanks!

I write quite often about that. I'll think about a specific post, though...

I thought of something like "That's where we started, where we are now, where we will be in 1-2 years or more"

Tbh I actually think that is quite good. Ever since i entered the crypto space i have been getting spammed by IQ trader and a vast variety of other crypto related ads on Fb so it might actually declutter some of my pages. That being said I am sure they will be able to fill it up with other ads instead after all its the advertising revenues that keep the Fb investors happy at the end of the day.

salut, dupa nume am vazut ca esti roman , ma bucur sa vad si romani pe steemit ! o sa-ti dau follow

Shocked at this biased attitude of facebook towards crypto ads. May be some of the crypto ads are scams but...my question here is...are non-crypto ads free from scams? We have been advertising on fb since a year & let me reveal that their approval process is very superficial. They don't even check for legal identity of their ad clients. If I click on a facebook ad & am directed to an online store then can facebook guarantee the genuineness of that online store (LOL!!)?

Facebook caring about fake news, that would be a new one.

Well of course they want to give themselves an unfair advantage, but in Facebook's defense this is just the shotgun approach. We don't have the time nor want to spend the resources to determine what's legit so we'll just ban everything. You can't rearlly blame them with the class action lawsuit being set-up against Bitconnect and anything that promoted Bitconnect. If Facebook aired a Bitconnect add I could see them being put in the crosshairs of the class action as well.

Nothing surprising here. Facebook is a publicly traded company, and it does have to protect its investors. Cryptocurrencies (and binary options) are highly speculative and people are likely to get burned if they invest without knowing what they're doing. There's also some chance that Facebook has some inside knowledge regarding coming regulations that would cause them to ban this type of advertising...

Fuck Facebook!

hahahhah, hypocrites! They are in for sure!

I think the bitconnect scam is the main reason behind this. Many people lost their money and may have invested in bitconnect thing that the scheme could be real since the ad appeared on facebook. Some people have this tendency of trusting ad on their favorite website. Some even come to argue when pointed on this. They usually say that " X is a big newspaper/website/tvchannel and they always show ads about authentic things.

Every one private company can do what it want to!
I am seeing now a days that some one are really promoting crypto currencies at there best level and some are not!
I think in dubai bitcoim has been officially launched!

Perhaps, Facebook is jealous!

I sense some deals here. Facebook may likely Come out with its own or that they were paid by the big fish coin to crumble the upcoming ones but with steemit i stand because they are making waves already.

Facebook will fail down goes facebook

wtf.... sucker-berg can suck on it !!

It's all out war now !!

I think the cryptocurrency is reaching all levels and some actors start to tremble because they feel invaded because they do not really know it; I think they are reorganizing to enter sooner rather than later into this world of cryptocurrencies: free market competition decides, people will decide... Greetings

Awful choice by Facebook @dragosroua. If I'm into crypto or bitcoin, I most likely want to see ads about it. Who does Facebook think they are? I'm fairly certain they've also done this with medical marijuana, guns, and other sensitive categories. Apparently a Bitcoin company can't advertise on there, but they don't have an issue with Russia placing ads designed to stroke hatred & division within our country!

...or perhaps Facebook is getting ready to launch their own coin...?

half of the fud is due to this lol facebook be like when you can't beat them ban them

Two thoughts:

One, negative advertisement also means advertisement, after all ;)

Two, if fake news are so easy to penetrate, then maybe ad providers, if want to highlight on crypto and ICOs, should focus more on the non-financial aspects of their product. Which, I can see, may have slower coming, but much, much deeper consequences in the long-term.

FAcebook is not dying yet ... It will take some time for cryptos to be aknowledged by people , were are still small communities, but we will get thete :)

facebook can sense the fear of cryptos

finally facebook admit also the competition

What an irony, first he announced about the possibility of joining the crypto race and now he is banning cryptocurrency advert. What a strange world we live in.