Bitcoin bust: Facebook and Google are cracking down on cryptocurrency ads
Have you seen an ad on your Facebook feed promoting a new cryptocoin or something related to bitcoin? Well you won’t see it any longer. Facebook has implemented a new rule that pretty plainly bans them. Specifically, the rule 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.”
This is a preemptive strike from Facebook against blockchain scams. Since cryptocurrency has become such a hot issue, deceptive companies and programs have sprung up using these crypto buzzwords to try to dupe people. According to Facebook’s blog post, this new rule is intentionally broad, so that the company can work to “better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices.”
Google, too, has begun cracking down on malicious crypto advertisements. Though it has not implemented a such a wide-ranging ban, it has created specific policies to help its team find abuse in advertisements–specifically for cryptocurrencies. Much of the company’s bad-actor detection focuses on advertisements that maliciously mine cryptocurrencies by using the computing power of unsuspecting people.
A Google spokesperson provided me with this statement: “Mining cryptocurrency through ads is a relatively new form of abuse that violates our policies and one that we’ve been monitoring actively. We enforce our policies through a multi-layered detection system across our platforms which we update as new threats emerge.”
Facebook’s move, meanwhile, will surely have an impact on businesses and people like James Altucher, who have promoted their name in the crypto world by heavily advertising on Facebook.
You can read the full announcement here.
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