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A Facebook Inc. logo sits on display at Station F, a mega-campus for startups located inside a former freight railway depot, in Paris, France, on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017. Facebook will open a startup incubator at Paris's soon-to-debut entrepreneur campus created by billionaire Xavier Niel, as Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg vows to keep investing in France. Photographer: Christophe Morin/Bloomberg
Social media giant will no longer allow ad platform to be used to promote "financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings, or cryptocurrency."
On Tuesday, Jan. 30, social media giant Facebook announced in a blog post that it would be banning all advertising related to cryptocurrencies.
[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.]
Product Management Director Rob Leathern explained that though this is not intended to reflect Facebook's stance on the cryptocurrencies, but rather to remove the possibility of scams and bad-faith actors using the platform to manipulate users.
We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception. That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.
He goes on to show the new official policy here:
Facebook
Facebook's new advertising policy regarding cryptocurrencies.
As shown above, phrases like, "New ICO! Buy tokens at a 15% discount NOW!" and "Click here to learn more about our no-risk cryptocurrency that enables instant payments to anyone in the world" are now deemed unfit for the social media platform.
Leathern also explained that 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 including Facebook, Audience Network and Instagram."