The Facebook banned ads for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies this weekteam. The move seems to have been necessary (many of these ads on the social network were malicious and led to spam pages), but it was done in a completely wrong way.
Why
Basic theme is that this particular ban sends the wrong message.
At worst, Facebook disagrees with the innovation of a technology that can determine the future, and at best, Facebook is lazy and unwilling to properly control the ads it displays.
The announcement starts entirely innocent. Facebook just wants to protect the end user (as always):
Two of our core principles advertisingdescribe our belief that ads should be safe and that we do everything for users first people. Misleading ads have no place on Facebook.
Agree.
But then the fiasco begins:
We have created a new policy banning ads that promote financial products and services that are often associated with misleading promotions such as binary options and cryptographic offers.
I would prefer if Facebook banned all financial (and political) ads that have delinquent behavior. After all, there are a lot of financial scams circulating on the social network and Facebook does not set specific policies for them.
Instead, Facebook just decided to deal with the binary options, and generally all the crap offers as scams. Even the list of terms is misleading.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, announced on 4 January of 2018:
With the rise of a small number of big tech companies – and governments using the technology to monitor their citizens – many people believe that technology is gathering more and more power. There are significant counter-trends to this – such as encryption and cryptocurrencies - which take power from central systems and return it to the hands of the people. But they come with the risk that they will be much harder to control. I am interested in deepening and studying the positive and negative aspects of these technologies for a better way of using them in our services.
Who knows;
Maybe Facebook will start removing all kinds of ads that promote not only financial products and services "often associated with misleading promotional practices", but also all products and services that they find misleading. After all, financial products are not the only area affected by false advertising.
Ίσως το Faceboοk να “καθαρίζει το σπίτι” πριν υιοθετήσει την encryption σε μία από τις υπηρεσίες του σύμφωνα με το VB. Φανταστείτε να δούμε το Faceboοk να δέχεται πληρωμές με Litecoin μέσω του Faceboοk Messenger.
Or perhaps, I may say, Facebook is trying to get rid of the competition for its own purposes.
Facecoin, anyone?
Regardless of his motivation, Facebook, he could do better, and try to classify good ads and bad ads.
If this is a hassle, then your ad network may not run.