Facebook is banning all cryptocurrency ads on its platform. The ban will affect many digital currencies including Bitcoin. Initial Coin Offering ads will also not be displayed. Facebook says that the move is part of a broad global policy against deceptive marketers on its platform.
According to Rob Leathern, product management director at Facebook, the company will no longer show ads that tend to promote financial products that are associated with deceiving or misleading information or promotional practices. However, Facebook made it clear that the decision is not final. The rules would be revised when the company develops enough capacity to better detect deceptive ads on the platform.
Leathern added that Facebook is committed to ensuring that customers learn and discover new products through its ads. However, people should do this without the fear of being scammed. The policy is fairly broad however, and Facebook has said that this was actually intentional. It’s very likely that many legitimate companies advertising binary options, ICOs, and digital currencies will be caught up in this.
However, Facebook says that it will work on a system that will help it to better detect deceptive ads before it can finally allow these companies to advertise on the platform again. The social media platform has also urged its users to report any ad that they think is promoting deceptive information and may not have been detected or banned under the new policy.
Facebook has been allowing ads on sensitive financial topics for a while now albeit with some restrictions. For example, for any real money or gambling service advertised through the platform, advertisers had to make sure that they were targeting people above the age of 18. In addition to this, the platform has also banned deceptive student loan ads in the past.
It’s not yet entirely clear what criteria is the company using to ban cryptocurrency ads. However, there are a few ads that will not be able to slip under the radar. For example, if someone is promoting an ad urging people to buy Bitcoin using their retirement funds, the platform will detect and ban it right away.
The ban on ICOs and cryptocurrency ads had always been a new and specific type of censorship. As the digital currencies continue to grow, more regulations will emerge and Facebook is surely at the digital frontline. However, the company did not say just how many crypto ads there were on the platform and what percentage of them were thought to be illegitimate. It’s also not clear how many crypto ads have been affected.
Facebook didn’t announce a date as to when it will review the policy. The company said it will do the revision only if it gets better at detecting deceptive ads on its platform. This can take a few days, a month, or even years. The ban cuts across all platforms owned by Facebook including Instagram. Reaction to the ban has been relatively calm but there is no doubt that several legitimate companies caught up in this ban will speak strongly in the coming days. After all, Facebook is a huge marketing platform with billions of potential viewers.
