On Tuesday, the 30th of January 2018 Facebook announced that it will no longer allow adverts 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,” said Facebook’s Rob Leathern
That means no advertiser — even those that operate legal, legitimate businesses — will be able to promote things like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings — ICOs for short — or binary options.
The decision means that you’ll never see any advertisements for Bitcoin, or any other cryptocurrency – including popular rivals like Litecoin, Ethereum, and Ripple.
Ads that violate the company’s new policy will be banned on Facebook’s core app, but also in other places where Facebook sells ads, including Instagram and its ad network, Audience Network, which places ads on third-party apps.
But he also admitted: “We may not catch every ad that should be removed.”
The ban is wide-ranging and removes one of the most popular kinds of advertising on Facebook. But the company said it had designed it to be that way, so that it could ensure the policy covered all of the various problems that are seen on the site.
The news follows Zuckerberg’s January announcement that he was looking into how virtual currencies like Bitcoin could be integrated into Facebook.
Earlier this year, the Facebook founder said he wanted to take advantage of “important counter-trends…like encryption or cryptocurrency”.
