The relationship between Facebook and cryptocurrencies seemed to be deepening in recent months. First David Marcus, formerly PayPal’s president and now Facebook’s Vice President of Messaging Products, was appointed to the Coinbase board. Then, in his annual new year statement, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was taking some time to look into cryptocurrencies and their potential for decentralising power and improving Facebook’s functionality.
Now though, they have made a move that some would see as anti-cryptocurrency. The social media platform is banning all adverts for cryptocurrencies and ICOs.
In a blogpost, Rob Leathern, Product Management Director explained the move, saying that all “misleading or deceptive ads have no place on Facebook”. As such, they have banned all ads for financial products or services which are “frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices”. Though this includes “binary options”, the main targets are ICOs and cryptocurrencies.
Facebook believes that many of the people and companies behind crypto and ICO adverts “are not currently operating in good faith”. They give as examples of the now prohibited adverts, “New ICO! Buy tokens at a 15% discount NOW!” and “Use your retirement funds to buy Bitcoin!”
All of Facebook’s platforms will enact the ban, including Instagram. However, the move is not necessarily permanent; they say that they will revisit it when they have more information.
Self-styled “crypto-genius” James Altucher, whose get-rich-through-cryptocurrency adverts are currently swamping the web, took to Twitter to welcome the move. “The recent FB move on crypto ads is a great thing,” he said, as it “removes the 1000s of fraudulent or useless services, fraud ICOs, and other investment schemes.”. He added that “cleanings” like this are needed to “make cryptocurrencies fruitful for investors because they can trust the system.”
Banned Stamp Image From Shutterstock
