Facebook news: Social media initites crackdown on cryptocurrency ads

A smartphone user shows the Facebook application on his phoneREUTERS/Dado Ruvic

Facebook is not having anything to do with the cryptocurrency craze as the social media domain has initiated a widespread ban on advertisements (ad) regarding cryptocurrencies.

As such, some of the most popular and widely used cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the rest are no longer allowed in Facebook, meaning people will have to find another platform for marketing their cryptocurrencies. This is quite detrimental as Facebook is, right now, the most used social media website with hundreds of billions of users.

The band is due to how a lot of scams and financial deceptions are associated with cryptocurrencies, and Facebook apparently wants to protect its users from these. Facebook has even dubbed cryptocurrency marketing as "financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices." This ultimately closes the doors for businesses both legal and illegal.

It also seems Facebook is not stopping on its own domain, as those who violate the company's new policy will be banned not only from the core website of Facebook, but also from its partner social media sites like Instagram and its ad network.

According to Rob Leathern, one of Facebook's ad tech directors, "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." This means that the strict cryptocurrency promotion regulations for the said social media might be temporary and could become more lenient in the near future but at this point, only time will tell.

This is because the recent inflation of the Bitcoin value bubble has led to a lot of investment scams, where a lot of people who have no knowledge of how the cryptocurrency works tend to lose a lot of money. This is quite common due to the wildly fluctuating price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Meanwhile, people are quite skeptical regarding Facebook's policy to ban cryptocurrency promotions in their domain, some have begun speculating that the move might have been personal while others predict that this will cost Facebook a lot since cryptocurrencies can be used to gain higher advertising revenues.