It has finally happened. Nearly half a year ago Facebook implied a ban on the ads of cryptos promising to review the policy when it finds viable solutions to deceitful promotions.
On June 26, the dominant social network has somehow changed its policy regarding the issue, even though ICOs are still under taboo – but something is better than nothing, isn’t it?
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Facebook’s Showing Mercy
This week Tuesday Facebook has released an announcement stating that the social net has updated its policy on blocked financial products and services including cyber assets. Now advertising of the latter is going to be unbanned. However, the promotion of token sales known as ICOs will remain under the taboo.
According to the company’s notification, Facebook has been considering the best solutions for getting around its absolute prohibition on crypto-related promotion. It is also noted that it took the company a few past years to come up with them. That was needed to make sure some ads are permitted, yet they do not endanger the Facebook-community.
The reviewed net’s forbidden products and services policy now mentions:
“Starting June 26, we’ll [...] allow ads that promote cryptocurrency and related content from pre-approved advertisers. But we’ll continue to prohibit ads that promote binary options and initial coin offerings.”
So What Are The New Rules?
Even though now crypto-advertisers have got some hope, it doesn’t mean that everything is going to be simple for them. In particular, they are required now to apply to Facebook once they decide to run an ad. The company’s team is going to consider it to evaluate the ads’ conformity with the eligibility criteria.
To do that, applicants are demanded to provide any permits that they have received. Interestingly, those should include the information on whether they are traded on public stock venues as well as any other related information concerning their business.
Taking into account these limitations, Facebook acknowledges that it is not every crypto-advertiser that is eager to run a niche ad will be able to do that.
Is This Semi-Strict Policy Going to Be Refined?
Yes, Facebook admits it is going to pay attention to the feedback and in case of necessity it may look through the policy once again, but with time.
The company has also claimed it intends to keep examining the technology which lies in the foundation of virtual assets and continue working on its policy.
The Background
In early 2018, Facebook CEO and co-constitutor Mark Zuckerberg promised to look into crypto technologies, as well as to work on the errors that the company makes when precluding misuse of Facebook’s instruments. And it seems that there indeed was a trespass of advertising tools on Facebook. There probably could have been lots of complaints concerning speculative ads on cryptos and ICOs that by late January Facebook decided to change its policy concerning these issues.
From that point nobody was allowed to post ads on the network, endorsing ICOs and cyber money, including bitcoin, as the company considered such promos as deceitful activities. The ads prohibition applied not only to cyber-coins and initial coin offerings but binary options as well. And not the Facebook social network was currently adopting this policy, but the company’s platforms too, including Audience Network, the app network for advertisers, and photo-sharing app Instagram, was expected to curb on misleading ads.
In the Facebook blog, it was highlighted that such ads had no place on the platform because they violated two of company’s advertising fundamentals concerning safety and interests of people. However, the company emphasized that it looked forward to advertising on the whole as it allowed users to find out more about novel services and products.
