UPDATED 22:10 EDT / JANUARY 30 2018

EMERGING TECH

Facebook bans ads for bitcoin and initial coin offerings

Hoping to protect its users from scammers, social networking giant Facebook Inc. has banned all advertising related to cryptocurrencies, including anything to do with bitcoin and initial coin offerings.

Facebook Product Management Director Rob Leathern said in a blog post that “misleading or deceptive ads have no place on Facebook.” The ban 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 cryptocurrencies.

“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception,” Leathern wrote. “That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.”

Explaining that the policy is intentionally broad, Leathern went on to say that despite a blanket ban on all things cryptocurrency, Facebook isn’t 100 percent confident that it will catch all deceptive ads. The company is encouraging users to report any dubious advertising they may stumble across.

Although the new ban is rather specifically targeted at cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings, it’s not entirely a surprise. Facebook said in a blog post in September that it was “taking more steps to make its social network a cleaner, more well-lighted site for advertisers, this time not by removing certain content, but by not allowing content it deems inappropriate to make money from ads.”

That policy, perhaps inspired by YouTube, was more targeted at ads appearing against dubious content. But it signaled an intention by Facebook that it was no longer going to tolerate dodgy practices, no matter how much money it may have made from them.

Image: Megapixel

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