Facebook bans ads pertaining to cryptocurrency

Facebook has announced in a blog post that it will ban any ads related to virtual currencies as it deems it to be misleading or deceptive ads and therefore they will find no place on the social networking site.

In the post, Rob Leathern, Product Management Director, Facebook said that the new advertising policy prohibits ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with “misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency.”

The company feels that it is its job to provide genuine advertising on its platform and save people from falling to scams. Facebook’s new advertising policy also applies on other networks such as Instagram and Audience Network. Over time, it will revisit the policy and its enforcement mechanisms as a sign of improvement.

The company has also appealed to users to report content that violates its advertising policies. Besides, people can report any ad on Facebook by clicking on the upper right-hand corner of the advertisement.

“This policy is part of an ongoing effort to improve the integrity and security of our ads, and to make it harder for scammers to profit from a presence on Facebook,” wrote Leathern.

Meanwhile, the move has given a jolt to the reputation of the digital currency, which has already been tarnished by various institutions, countries and businesses.

For instance, last year, Jamie Dimon, chairman, president and chief executive office of JP Morgan at a conference in New York said that digital currency is only fit for use by drug dealers, murderers and people living in places such as Venezuela, Ecuador and North Korea.

In a recent incident, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has frozen the assets of a Texas-based initial coin offering (ICO) that claimed to have raised more than $600 million that included Bitcoin, dogecoin and litecoin among others.

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