Facebook bans cryptocurrency ads because they’re mostly scams.
Facebook is implementing a new policy that bans advertising having to do with “financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.” This policy covers cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and unregulated fundraising events known as Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), but it also bans ads for established financial tools like binary options.
“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception,” Facebook’s blog post states. “That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs, and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.”
Last year, an Ethereum startup vanished from the internet after taking $374,000 USD from investors with an ICO. Also in 2017, Canadian authorities fined a Quebec man and sentenced him to jail after his cryptocurrency startup PlexCoin scammed ICO investors out of nearly $15 million. On Sunday, yet another Ethereum startup vanished from the web after taking money from investors, although it doesn’t look like they made much profit at all.
Recently Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook was studying cryptocurrencies and how to implement them in the platform, stating:
“There are important counter-trends to [centralization] –like encryption and cryptocurrency — that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control.
I’m interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services.”
If they do thus implement crypto while banning crypto advertising questions about monopoly practices might be raised further, on top of increasing scrutiny on the company some accuse of creating walled gardens while taking the lion’s share of advertising budgets.