Facebook is Reversing Its Cryptocurrency Ads Ban

Facebook is reversing its ban on cryptocurrency advertisements and will now allow some preapproved advertisers to promote crypto businesses and services.

Facebook banned all crypto ads on the service back in January, around the height of the bitcoin price surge, to prevent people from promoting “financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.”

Others major social media sites including Google, Twitter and Snapchat also banned crypto ads. Later on, a number of industry experts said Google’s decision to ban all Bitcoin and cryptocurrency adverts on its platforms was ill-thought-out and potentially even unethical.

“At the time we also made clear that “this policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices… We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve,” wrote Rob Leathern, Facebook’s Product Management Director.

Now, advertisers that are approved by Facebook through an application process can promote crypto products, though ads promoting binary options and ICOs, initial coin offerings, are still banned.

Interested advertisers may have to show Facebook “licenses they have obtained, whether they are traded on a public stock exchange, and other relevant public background on their business” in order to receive permission to run crypto ads.

Many spoke out that the ban was part of a bigger plan to push out competitors if and when Facebook launched its own blockchain.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced it was developing its own blockchain internally. This followed Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that the company was looking into cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technologies as a ‘fix’ for Facebook.

Facebook had also tapped David Marcus, former president of PayPal and a board member of Coinbase, to run their blockchain initiate, though the company has yet to launch any blockchain or cryptocurrency technologies publicly.

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