Facebook, Instagram Banning All Bitcoin, ICO, Other Cryptocurrency Ads

Facebook is prohibiting all cryptocurrency ads, including those on Instagram, the company announced on Tuesday.

The move comes as cryptocurrency use is on the rise, and as the new type of currency spikes, so do scams.

Facebook Product Management Director Rob Leathern said in a post “there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.”

Due to the rise in scams, Facebook is now prohibiting 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.”

Facebook said the ban will be in place until the company can learn to better detect deceptive and misleading advertisements. The platform will revisit the policy and its enforcement methods as “signals improve,” the company said. The ban will be applied to Facebook, the company’s ad network Audience Network and on Instagram.

Facebook also admitted it might not be able to remove every single ad under the new policy, and also encouraged users to report content that violates the new rule and the platform’s advertising policies. The new rule means every ad, even those under legit firms, will be disallowed.

The recent policy states:

“Ads must not promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings, or cryptocurrency.”

Facebook also provided examples of cryptocurrency ads:

• “Start binary options trading now and receive a 10-risk free trades bonus.”

• “New ICO! Buy Token as a 15% discount NOW!”

• “Use your retirement funds to buy bitcoin.”

• “Click here to learn more about our no-risk cryptocurrency that enables instant payments to anyone in the world.”

Users have created lists of bitcoin scammers on Facebook, exposing them to others so people don’t fall for the ads. Scammers have artificially inflated the price of cryptocurrencies on apps like Telegram, which popular among cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Meanwhile, YouTube has its own ad problem related to cryptocurrency. Researchers recently found ads served to visitors on YouTube contained hidden code plugged in by hackers that could take over a person’s processor to mine for cryptocurrency.

Facebook’s stricter stance on ads comes after the company has dealt with pressure from officials over the 2016 presidential election. The platform told Congress last September it found $100,000 in ad spending from June 2015 to May 2017, which traced back to 3,000 ads. The propaganda was created and circulated by Russian trolls, including the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency. Ads, stories and other posts by Kremlin-backed trolls are said to have reached about 126 million people in the United States. Facebook reportedly told advertisers last October it would begin to manually review every ad that is based on politics, religion, ethnicity or social issues. The company did not mention cryptocurrency ads at the time.