Facebook has banned all advertisers from promoting any content pertaining to Bitcoin, Ripple and other virtual currencies, it has been revealed.
The social media titan introduced strict new guidelines on February 1 to curb the mounting number of adverts used to promote fraudulent cryptocurrency services, in a bid to combat criticism from consumers and the media alike.
“Ads must not promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings, or cryptocurrency,” outlines the new policy.
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“This policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices, and enforcement will begin to ramp up across our platforms,” said Rob Leathern, Facebook’s Product Management Director.
“We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve,” he added.
A recent report revealed that fraudsters were using Facebook’s Ads Manager to promote complex ‘get rich quick’ schemes, often using images of influential people to add a false sense of credibility to their adverts, on the News Feed.
We did some digging at the time and uncovered a number of illicit adverts – one of which was used to raise awareness for a non-existent funding round, known as an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) for TON, Telegram’s upcoming Bitcoin and Ripple rival.
“It is wrong that social media companies, such as Facebook, are profiting from phishing scams and fake adverts that are harmful to their platform’s users,” said Damian Collins, Chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
Do you think Facebook made the right call banning all cryptocurrency adverts? Let us know over on Facebook or Twitter @TrustedReviews.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.