Hi all,
I'm very pleased Facebook is taking steps to ban cryptocurrency ads, the fewer ads the better imho.
Facebook has taken some flak recently over the running of ads for fake Telegram open network sites and there are tons of really dodgy "to good to be true" schemes involving crypto. TON has even been hyped by the media yet there is no official announcement!! it could be an elaborate joke to expose their stupidity, lack of thought for their readers or perhaps they have fallen victims to the more sinister goings on!
The combination of media hype and social media ads has given the scammers an open playing field to exploit cryptocurrencies and anyone gullible enough to fall victim to their exploits.
It would be brilliant if Google took similar steps. If they are unable to filter out the obvious scams then blanket ban the lot of them the less ads the better in any case! thumbs up to Facebook for trying to get it's act together.
Checkout my posts on how the media has played into the hands of scammers and how google has been cashing in on there ads, my latest is titled MIT and FT latest to give ICO credibility to Telegram Scam, here's a link to it https://steemit.com/blockchain/@johnchamberlain/mit-and-ft-latest-to-give-ico-credibility-to-telegram-scam
I totally get where Terry is coming from on the censorship angle but the ban is on dodgy sales advertisements not free open discussion, get the ads out of our faces and encourage the media to do more research so not to overly hype unconfirmed rumors in the crypto space, as it not only plays into the hands scammers but also gives the regulators the ammo they need to impose their regulations on us all.
I would love to see a completely ad-free internet and cryptocurrencies give me quite some hope that this might actually become true.
As such they are big threat for the business model of internet media giants. If I were in their position I'd do anything to slow down their evolution. While the advertising ban may affect some scammers, it also damages the reputation of crypto in the eyes of the vast (uninformed) majority.
Even better if I can disguise that blow as a "protective" measure towards my audience.
Though you make good points on the idea that Facebook is taking action to protect their content providers from scammers, however, you should keep in mind that this type of censorship is the type of control that hinders innovation and progress. Facebook is not hesitating to take advantage of selling your information to another company that is seeking to scam you as well!
We have given up our freedom and privacy to these corporate giants for too long, which is why more and more I'm supporting decentralization of such social media platforms. It's clear that Facebook has the freedom to do whatever they want, so my suggestion is for those in the crypto-community to use more sites like steemit to educate and inform the public about a project they truly believe in.
Facebook is trying to clean up their act, believe it or not that is a good thing.
So far as decentralization of social media goes... @ned clearly describes Steamit well "Steemit is a centralized website sitting atop a decentralized protocol—that's steem"
The point i'm highlighting here is that it's not practical to "deventralize everything" which is why EOS IO, for example, has a custom application infrastruction framework. Ironically Block. One the company developing the EOS IO software uses "Decentralize Everything" as a slogan!
It's not, imo a struggle for freedom or privacy that is generally a choice and most choose the social platform with 2+ billion active users over the less popular under 1 million user platforms, regardless to the underlying technology.
There are other incentives such as monitization those which are different from a user and advertisers perspective and here we can agree as Facebook taking a hit on advertisement revenue combined with it's own interest in exploring cryptocurrency and blockchain tech as announced in it's new year statement could be an indication of it paying close attention to user growth stats across various platforms.