Amid the bitcoin frenzy of January this year, social media giant Facebook Inc. made a decision to ban all cryptocurrency advertisements citing the concern that many of the companies in the crypto space at the time were not “operation in good faith.” Since then, it has been a considerably interesting time for Facebook as it struggles with coming to terms with the rapidly growing cryptocurrency market.
All things considered, while the ban may have been a genuine gesture of goodwill by the company to protect its users, the cryptocurrency space has proven time and time again that the potential it has as far as ad revenue goes is too significant to ignore. To this effect, Facebook made yet another big decision on Monday, June 26 when it announced that it was going to reverse the cryptocurrency ad ban immediately.
As expected, the period between the initial announcement of the ban on January and its eventual reversal on June 26 gave the social media platform a lot of time to review a great number of things the most important being how they would ensure that only legitimate crypto businesses get to market their products. Seen as more of caveats, the new ad policies says that the company will only allow advertisements and related content from “pre-approved advisers.” Ads promoting binary options and initial coin offerings (ICOs), on the other hand, will still remain on the not so favorable end of the company’s new crypto ad policy – they will not be allowed.
How It Is Going to Work
Facebook’s plans to only allow the so-called “pre-approved advisers” mentioned earlier by putting interested advertisers through an application that is tailored to determine whether or not they are eligible to advertise on the platform. As part of the application process, the advertisers will be asked to include the licenses they have obtained, whether they are public traded companies as well as other relevant background information regarding their businesses.
As the reversal of the crypto ad ban is still in its earlier stages, the company is yet to make it clear how thoroughly they will fact-check the information that will be provided by the advertisers. However, the company made it clear during the announcement that they would still be relying on users to pinpoint some of the content they do not allow. In essence, this implies that at least a few of the restricted crypto ads are going to make it through the screening process.
“We’ll listen to feedback, look at how well this policy works and continue to study this technology so that, if necessary, we can revise it over time,” Rob Leathern, Product Management Director wrote in Facebook’s announcement.
While many cryptocurrency users have lauded the development, the reversal of the crypto ad ban has also been subjected to some level of skepticism especially because the company has previously announced plans to venture into the cryptocurrency market.
“The reasons for Facebook reversing its decision to ban crypto ads are not clear, but the motivation could have something to do with its own strategy regarding the evolving crypto space. The cryptocurrency ecosystem is expanding rapidly and is growing its footprint in mainstream society, introducing new economic opportunities. We are also seeing regulatory authorities taking steps to provide security to the ecosystem that will, in turn, give strength to the global economy,” says Olyseum CEO, Carlos Grenoir.
