As outraged as many folks might be this is just good business for Google and Facebook. Internet advertising, nay advertising at large, is dangerously close to becoming a regulated, or more regulated, industry in the wake of fake news and Russian troll farms etc. If they aren't proactive and people lose money they inch ever closer to requirements that can and will eat large chunks of their profit margins. This isn't even to mention that they're also getting pressure from the private side where a couple hundred companies control over half the world's advertising spend and are getting actively called out by consumer advocacy for where they advertise. The handful of dollars they will get from crypto ads (in comparison to their overall spend) pales in comparison to even one Coca Cola, Unilever, etc. pulling their ad spend. Advertising, and media for that matter, is not free and fair market. It is tightly controlled by a handful of players that will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.
Well, it's their platform so it's their rules. It would be dystopian if they tried to censor cryptocurrency-related Google Trends insights, news and other media. The pressure on the rest of humans to find suitable substitutes to Google and Facebook will only grow with time.<p>Speaking of substitutes, Google and Facebook have a strong incentive to squander cryptocurrency. The long vision is a direct threat to the way they operate, and to the very question of whether or not they should exist.<p>If there was some hypothetical way to decentralize search, email or even social interactions, DLT research is likely the path forward. The whole point is that the nodes cannot trust each other, creating a sort of differential company, where search is provided entirely by those who are searching.<p>This is vastly different to Google's model which had the ease of assuming that they owned all of the nodes. Perhaps this is why Google and Facebook happened first in human history; they were simpler inventions. I truly believe the decentralized option is better for society, and so it will inevitably exist. Emergent protocols are changing the way I think about how computers talk to each other.
Google is a private business and they can do what they want, but this disappoints me. More and more Google seems to be thinking of themselves as content police (consider YouTube is owned by Google also), and I think that's a shame. Perhaps it will open up a market for dethroning them. A serious YouTube competitor that doesn't demonetize content they find disagreeable would be very healthy, IMHO.
I'm collecting those ICO banners as signs of the era. Sure, I know it is the bubble, hence the driving force for me to collect them.<p>"Kids look, those are the pics of ICO craze 2018! Now get off my lawn"
I'd be quite stoked were Facebook to ban most but not all cryptocurrency ads.<p>What I find most disturbing are all the self-appointed "experts" who offer classes in which they will teach their "system" that they claim will guarantee the students collossal returns on very small investments.<p>However there are lots of ads that I'd like Facebook to keep. Many of the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) ads are from legitimate startup companies who hope to finance their new businesses by selling tokens at a fixed price for a limited period of time.<p>But I only want just the _legitimate_ ICO ads to remain. Unfortunately there are plenty of ICO scams. It can be quite difficult for a newbie to determine the difference.<p>I had a good experience with my first ICO - I bought NAGA at $1.00 then after it was listed with an exchange, I sold it at $3.00.<p>I have three other ICOs that I plan to hold until the companies behind them become profitable.<p>Note: "sold". I have a special hatred for the word "HODL".<p>There are other kinds of crypto advertising that I feel should remain. I'm very happy with my Bitmain Antminer L3+ LiteCoin mining rig.<p>Even with mining rigs there are scams: Etherium and Monero are both "ASIC resistant" because mining them requires quite a lot of memory. They both require GPUs.<p>In principle ASIC ETH or Monero ASIC mining is _possible_. I expect someone will eventually make ASICs with the required memory integrated into the chip.<p>But there are _no_ ETH or Monero ASIC rigs _yet_. Despite this, scammers are endlessly posting on message boards that their "company" - perhaps "shell company" is a better term - has ASIC Etherium rigs for sale.
At first I expected this to be about JS-mining ads.<p>How the hell can these companies turn blind eyes to bogus advertising like [1] to the point that the FTC steps in - but suddenly have a conscience about cryptocurrency.<p>It would please me to no end for advertising to magically become 100% truthful and fact-based. But this is selective censorship for reasons I don't care to understand, the ads these companies serve will continue to be rife with lies and propaganda with or without cryptocurrency.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_weird_trick_advertisements" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_weird_trick_advertisements</a>
It might look like censorship, but they probably realized that most ads where getting similar to penis enlargment ads and thought they didn't want to be associated with that.
The whole cryptocurrency is quite tainted atm, I'm pleased they do this, if only to root out the bad players. Perhaps at a later time when things are more stable they will go back to offering these ads.
I wonder what kind of effect, if any, do advertising platforms have on success of an ICO? My understanding is that most of the demand is driven through Discord and Youtube channels, Reddit and maybe BitcoinTalk. Happy to be corrected on this.
I don't think they really have a choice here. If you think the SEC rules on "is X a security" are broad, take a look at FINRA's rules on advertising and recommending securities.<p>The crypto litigation mass is approaching its Schwarzschild radius... By acting as a conduit for these ICO ads, Google etc. are making themselves part of the accretion disk arond the black hole, teeing up a decade of subpoenas, complaints, etc.
If this is in response to the BitConnect drama. I think it is unfortunate but it will be a good idea in the long run.<p>On one hand there are tokens and coins created with good intentions who will have to find other ways of marketing their values. On the other hand it prevents scam-coins like Bitconnect and DavorCoin from taking advantage of the less informed on a grand scale.
I welcome this decision. Investment should not be driven by advertisement but by facts. In my experience, any investment advertisement trying to appeal to mass audiences is fraud. This is no different for cryptocurrencies and reminds me of the penny stock scams.
I was on an Easyjet flight yesterday and their in flight magazine had a 15-page section with paid advertorials from all kinds of bitcoin, ico etc. companies. The rest were ads about VPN software. Pretty weird.
I completely understand this decision but that doesn’t make me any less disappointed. Not in Google but the users. Nothing has changed if after all these years, people still fall for scams: Nigerian princes, Ponzi schemes, single house wives and now ICOs.
Now if only Twitter would do the same, it's about 90% of their promoted tweets now. To me, it says something about the platform overall since they don't seem to mind these obvious scams marketing to their userbase.
I think a time will come when these decisions will brigng lots of shame and bad PR for companies like google and facebook.<p>I find it totally unacceptable for a third party to assume the role of babysitter for consenting adults.
"First they came for the crypto-currencies and I said nothing..."<p>For those with their eyes open, this is just another example of the current authoritarian trend sweeping the globe.<p>Yes, google is a private company but so are bakers. Unless you subscribe to "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others".<p>By the way, there is no distinction here between public and private powers. The State needs these big corporations to extend itself and they in turn need the State to regulate competition out of the markets.
This is complete nonsense on the part of Google. I'm not sure when they thought they became God. Banning all ads for something that isn't even illegal and is a fresh new wave of tech and financial innovation is a sad day. Do no evil, sure sure.<p>This reminds me of when newspapers wouldn't run my ads for internet sites back in the day.