12 ms·

Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

551 points by imartin2k 9y ago

rsbartram 9y ago
People should look at FB for what it is. A big shopping mall where everyone goes to walk around and hang out. Don't like what goes on in FB. Stop using it.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  > People should look at FB for what it is. A big shopping mall where everyone goes to walk around and hang out. That rather sounds like Amazon's Whole Foods with its gazillion cameras. [1] As for your other advice: that counts for any company, and why I boycotted Microsoft for a long, long time. [1] https://dzone.com/articles/why-amazon-and-whole-foods-will-change-how-you-sho https://dzone.com/articles/why-amazon-and-whole-foods-will-c...
- dymk 9y ago
  What a weirdly tangential thing to point out given the content of the article. Is it possible to write a post on HN that isn't pointlessly critical of Facebook, or have we dropped the facade of "intelligent discussion" when it comes to things that the hivemind doesn't like?
  - dictum 9y ago
    > Is it possible to write a post on HN that isn't pointlessly critical of Facebook, or have we dropped the facade of "intelligent discussion" when it comes to things that the hivemind doesn't like? I don't represent or consult any hivemind when I look at corporations, especially the winky-smiley "let's connect the world!" with jaded cynicism – but my conscience.
  - davidcbc 9y ago
    > Is it possible to write a post on HN that isn't pointlessly critical of Facebook Mostly it is just impossible for there to be a story about FB on HN that doesn't have a bunch of people tripping over themselves to tell everyone they don't use FB.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
This is weird to me. Does Facebook currently ban advertisements for commodities like gold? If no, then what's the difference between advertising for bitcoin and advertising for gold?
- coralreef 9y ago
  The problem aren't ads for Bitcoin, its ads for Shitcoin scams.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    Then why not just ban Shitcoin scams?
    - wmf 9y ago
      Because Facebook (and most others) can't tell the difference between a legitcoin and a shitcoin. They already got in trouble for trying to separate "fake news" from real news, so why double down on the same problem? Take Tezos for example. Greatest innovation in blockchain history or greatest scam in blockchain history? You could lose a lot of hair over that decision, or you could just kill 'em all and let Satoshi sort 'em out.
      - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
        > Because Facebook (and most others) can't tell the difference between a legitcoin and a shitcoin And they shouldn't have to. We tightly regulate securities-related promotional content because we learned, the hard way about a century ago, that left to itself securities markets breed scams like rabbits.
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  Well one difference is that bitcoin has no intrinsic value, ie, it's online gambling in disguise. I believe that Facebook currently bans ads for online gambling. Don't agree? Ask yourself, why don't you see ads for other commodities, like rice or iron? Because there's no money in that. So how come there's money in ads for bitcoin? Could it be because bitcoin is not actually a commodity?
perseusprime11 9y ago
Twitter, What about you?
soared 9y ago
Just like google banning rehab centers, if an industry is getting destroyed in the news or by government regulators its generally not a good move to allow people to advertise it on your platform.
CryoLogic 9y ago
I am guessing it has something to do with the fake ICO's taking advantage of uneducated users (see Vyral for a great example). But Facebook has made their entire fortune taking advantage of uneducated users. So maybe they don't want competition?
- wpietri 9y ago
  I think that's close. Scam artists slaughter the sheep, while Facebook would rather keep shearing them.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    As a sheep, I would prefer being shorn rather than slaughtered, so I'm with Facebook on that one.
    - draw_down 9y ago
      I think the point is that it’s not really about what the sheep want.
- AlexCoventry 9y ago
  Showing these ads has legal implications for FB. They could be on the hook for selling unregistered securities. So it's a very sensible policy for a juicy legal target to adopt.
- aylmao 9y ago
  ??? This is improbable for two reasons: 1. There is no reason why a user buying into an ICO should be correlated with it being on facebook. 2. If a user gets scammed by an ICO that should in no way affect if/how they use services that are free to them, facebook included.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  How has Facebook taken advantage of uneducated users? Is there any evidence of this or you're just being edgy?
mmanfrin 9y ago
The first ad I saw for Crypto was an ad for Bitmain -- it flashed through my ad blocker enough for me to turn off the blocker to see it. It was Bitmain, advertising a miner back in stock. Clicked it, saw it in stock, then thankfully went back to the fb comments to see someone mention it was a Punycode domain -- was a complete phishing site. There was an 'a' that was actually some other glyph that had a small, nearly pixel-sized dot that made it something other than an 'a'. I am flabbergasted at why fb would allow punycode domains (especially when the domain listed under the ad was the 'real' domain).
- caust1c 9y ago
  Google does the same: https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/948680008112816128 https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/948680008112816128
- SahAssar 9y ago
  If they would have the same rules as browsers this basically wouldn't be an issue. Those rules are along the lines of "don't mix character sets unless under a ccTLD for that character set". See here: https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/idn-in-google-chrome https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/idn-in-...
- fancyfacebook 9y ago
  You have pretty garbage ad blocker if it loads the ad then hides it instead of just never wasting resources to load the ad in the first place.
  - y4mi 9y ago
    Some blockers are specifically created like that. Their rational is a combination of letting the website owners (who embedded the ads) get their money and hiding that they're using a blocker.
    - aclatuts 9y ago
      Do you have any examples of these types of blockers? I couldn't find any.
lez 9y ago
Sounds like fb is planning to dive into the blockchain world.
jeeyoungk 9y ago
Finally. I've been intentionally clicking ICO ads so that I get targeted for more ICO ads. It's been interesting. - Many of them have the most buttery smooth introduction video that was just so compelling to stare at. - Many has business lines like, "The total market for car loans / social media advertisement / game currency is N trillion... - The "team" page for them are mostly Russian / Eastern European. Some of them have links to LinkedIn. I looked at their (I believe fake) profiles too. (I don't know why would anybody use their real identity to pull such a thing). - Some ads are in Korean (understandable, I speak Korean and cryptocurrency is hot over there), some ads are in Chinese including their landing page. Do they expect people to land on those pages and drop money without reading anything?
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > Do they expect people to land on those pages and drop money without reading anything? Huh? I assume those are just aimed at people who speak/read the language.
  - jeeyoungk 9y ago
    Sorry, forgot to add that I don't know any Chinese and I don't have any reason to believe that Facebook thinks that.
    - lozenge 9y ago
      Maybe the fact you keep clicking on Chinese ads is reason enough?
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - singularity2001 9y ago
        which would still leave the question why he was offered it in the first place
meowface 9y ago
I am sure real, legitimate ICOs must exist, but I have yet to find one. Can anyone point to one that they strongly believe is legitimate?
- whataretensors 9y ago
  Ethereum seems legit. For modern answers: WTC, SNM are two that I like
  - banderman 9y ago
    Is there anything that it can exclusively do? I mean functionally in the real world, right now.
    - baddox 9y ago
      Why is that question important?
      - sanderjd 9y ago
        At risk of taking the bait... why wouldn't that question be important?
      - Analemma_ 9y ago
        Everything you need to know about cryptocurrency is right here in this comment. “What does it do?” “Why would you ask that? Just BUY BUY BUY”
        Yizahi 9y ago
        I once saw a hilarious answer to the question about unique uses of blockchain as a general concept. One user said that it is great for "tracking of diamonds". O.M.G. People expect other to pay money and invest time in development of a tool to enable even more closed-in and tightly controlled global monopoly by De Beers mafia cartel :)
      - 9y ago
dandare 9y ago
This is good for Bitcoin because...
- Ataraxy 9y ago
  Realistically...because it will remain the biggest one to breach the general public consciousness and by getting rid of such ease of access to promoting scams and the like it will prevent (at least in the short term) the public perception of cryptocurrencies from being tainted by a sea of scams that are difficult for novices to navigate through.
olivermarks 9y ago
Assuming rumours FB is developing their own cryptocurrency, along with Amazon and Google, as has been suggested on various forums, isn't there a risk here for them? Banning potential competitors in what you could generously describe as the dawn of the next internet (in many ways the crypto wild west is v similar to early dot com days, complete with all the shysters and con artists) seems unethical and may bring up anti trust issues eventually?
- mv4 9y ago
  You are correct, that would be a risk for them (especially for FB) because of how big they've become. Anecdote: in 2014, I registered an account on Twitter called "tweetcoin". I felt social networks would start developing their own currencies. I posted one comment, "exciting things in the works". I was promptly locked out of the account, and a new tweet appeared there (dated 2012!), stating "this is not your account." You can see it here: https://twitter.com/tweetcoin https://twitter.com/tweetcoin
  - gl00pp 9y ago
    Wow! reminds me that the internet is really just a cave wall with shadows on it...
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    And oddly enough, it says the account was created in 2008. Very strange indeed.
    - olivermarks 9y ago
      https://twitter.com/jack/status/958743238512328704 https://twitter.com/jack/status/958743238512328704
  - davesque 9y ago
    Assuming you're being truthful, that is pretty weird actually. I'm going through explanations for this in my mind and none of them make much sense.
whataretensors 9y ago
Someone should make a cryptocurrency social platform that rewards it's users for sharing content and attention. Like the steemit of facebook. Anyone know of any projects like this?
- wmf 9y ago
  [deleted; I didn't read the parent carefully]
  - downandout 9y ago
    Cynical much? This kind of response is one reason I rarely mention ideas on HN. They all seem to be met with instant criticism and/or suspicion.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > rewards it's users for sharing content and attention You mean spamming content?
  - mv4 9y ago
    It's possible to tell the difference between genuine, authentic sharing, and automation. Rewarding the right behavior will make spam go away.
    - Kalium 9y ago
      You're right! It's absolutely possible to tell the difference. And when it's known, bad behavior can be punished and good behavior rewarded. What do you think it takes to tell this difference with a high degree of reliability (>4 nines) at scale (>1000/s)? How about in an environment where people are strongly incentivized to find and exploit the weaknesses of your approach? Is it just maybe possible that this might not quite be handwave-it-away trivial? Facebook has had a shocking level of success in cutting down spam with their investments in punishing bad behavior and rewarding good behaviour. Thank you for your thoughts. You're completely correct! It's possible to tell the difference, and rewarding good behavior will drive out bad actors.
Theodores 9y ago
I am not a fan of 'the city' and I am not a Facebook user. However, today Facebook have earned a small bit of respect from me. As for 'the city', regulation now seems a very good idea, sure we have all been ripped off by the fat cats of 'the city', however, the toxicity of traditional investments is along the levels of 'sweets laced with sugar' instead of 'heroin laced with fentanyl' which seems to be what the ico-scam-coin-nonsense is peddling. I would like to see a crypto-addict brain under a MRI scan to see if those graphs in tiddlywink prices light up the same bits of the brain that physical addiction to a chemical makes. In some way this story reminds me of when Lance Armstrong was discovered to be cheating. Some people wouldn't believe it until he came on Oprah and spoke about a few things. The evidence was overwhelming and yet there were some devoted fans that held out. They didn't even have skin in the game (taking PED's) but still they wanted to believe the comeback from cancer fairytale. It did not matter to them that all of his team mates thought him to be toxic, dedicated fans held out. I don't think it is time to tease crypto-obsessed-people but once they have lost all their monopoly money and tiddlywinks then I am sure they will start to get the story. Fear and greed gets the better of people, so I am looking forward to on-going 'so where is your lambo then, did you leave it on the moon'? comments. Shame I didn't quit my job and spend all day investing in tiddlywinks tethered to monopoly money. Oh well.
jonathanjaeger 9y ago
This is just one of many things Facebook bans, including dating ads from sites that aren't preapproved, payday loans, sketchy supplement ads, and the list goes on. They even banned fantasy sports betting sites for a while (until the legality got cleared up in NY somewhat).
HugoDaniel 9y ago
They are about to launch their own coin[0] "For example, one of the most interesting questions in technology right now is about centralization vs decentralization. A lot of us got into technology because we believe it can be a decentralizing force that puts more power in people's hands. (The first four words of Facebook's mission have always been "give people the power".) Back in the 1990s and 2000s, most people believed technology would be a decentralizing force. But today, many people have lost faith in that promise. With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it. There are important counter-trends to this --like encryption and cryptocurrency -- that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people's hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I'm interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services." [0] https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104380170714571 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104380170714571
- Gaelan 9y ago
  Looking into != launching soon or even ever.
- mliker 9y ago
  > There are important counter-trends to this -- like encryption and cryptocurrency ... How does this translate to "they are about to launch their own coin"?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- aylmao 9y ago
  This would be a pretty interesting move actually. Something like Brave's BAT comes to mind.
nicodjimenez 9y ago
I'm going to miss the "crypto genius" ads.
- corysama 9y ago
  You'll like this https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-man-behind-bitcoin-genius-ads-internet-134441715.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-man-behind-bitcoin-geniu...
singularity2001 9y ago
these news sent the bitcoin charts below the magical $10000, a second time after the "crash that wasn't", two weeks ago will we finally see a real dramatic crash, or will it just fade away? as much as I feel sorry for those that were duped, some part of me is urging for the drama.
- wyldfire 9y ago
  > will we finally see a real dramatic crash, or will it just fade away? Aside from global prohibition there's not much that would destroy the value that's created by this novel tool. Even then it would still have some residual value.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    I think that a global carbon emissons tax would do the trick.
    - criddell 9y ago
      It would just make the giant mining farms in China powered by hydro-electric generators that much more profitable.
  - oh-kumudo 9y ago
    Well if all people decide to cash out, it will destroy the value.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > these news sent the bitcoin charts below the magical $10000 Nah, I believe the "crash" is rather due to the Tether stuff and that one exchange that got hacked... and because there are people who have decided that they don't want to wait any longer to materialize their profits in dollars in the aftermath.
- antvei2 9y ago
  "these news" didn't do anything. It was due to tether and South Korea.
skywhopper 9y ago
I haven't seen these ads, but this is probably the right move. The irony is that Facebook has built its perceived value to advertisers, investors, businesses, and audience alike on its ability to use deep learning to process all these posts and images and ads and understand what they mean. But here they are explicitly admitting they are unable to do that. It's a healthy thing to do. But it's interesting that it's financial fraud for which they might be directly liable, and not political propaganda, mental health, or explicit racism that brings them to admit their limitations and draw a hard line.
- eugenez 9y ago
  There is a difference between understanding the content (e.g. ICO) and understanding what happens a few weeks after the content is interacted with (e.g. someone runs off with the money). The first is doable, the second requires prescience.
Mc_Big_G 9y ago
...but they're totally OK with political ads paid in rubles. Fuck Facebook.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- gonvaled 9y ago
  Are those worse than political ads paid in dollars?
rolyatyasmar 9y ago
When I clicked the link I was served an ad promoting cyptocurrencies haha
thebiglebrewski 9y ago
Thank god, this has been SO annoying to see all the time. I mark them as spam/report them for being a scam.
simonebrunozzi 9y ago
Finally! The most annoying ones were James Altucher's... I found them particularly fishy. (don't know him so not sure what's behind them).
wybiral 9y ago
Doesn't "misleading or deceptive promotional practices" generally apply to the entire business model of an advertisement platform disguised as a social network?
bb88 9y ago
I for one say, hurrah.
yorby 9y ago
up next: Facebook is starting it's own currency...
aussie1233 9y ago
This is worrisome, mainly for one reason. Maybe one of the many ICOs might turn out to derail Facebook's centralised + ads approach. With this Facebook is basically attempting to prevent competition - or am I totally off?
- paxy 9y ago
  I think it's more due to the fact that most ICOs are fraudulent.
- aylmao 9y ago
  IMO you're totally off. ICOs and the ad market are pretty tangential.
  - aussie1233 9y ago
    I'm more referring to Mark Zuckerberg's new year post about investing in decentatizlized tech and the power it provides. Will be interesting to see if FB will do an ICO themselves or at least built there own blockchain to address some of the data centralization concerns.
- usrusr 9y ago
  That hypothetical one magic ICO to derail Facebook would surely not have to rely on Facebook ads to succeed. And besides that, I'd consider Facebook to be "sufficiently evil" to individually black out an advertiser they secretly consider a threat, of it ever came to that. This move is easily explained by the long term cost of being perceived as the place worth the shitty scam ads. The existential threat Facebook is trying to avert is people thinking "I would not have lost that money if I had not been on Facebook all the time, reading all those stories about bitcoin geniuses" one day. Everybody likes to blame the messenger.
aqsheehy 9y ago
If only hacker news would follow suit
jinfiesto 9y ago
Thank god. My neighborhood has a forum run by the HOA. It's flooded with posts about neighbors running their own "crypto-businesses" trying to get other people in on it. Based on a quick read, I'm pretty sure none of them are in tech (not that that's prerequisite to understanding the technology) and most seem to think BTC is magic internet money. If/when BTC tanks, the ensuing bloodbath is going to be nasty.
bengrunfeld 9y ago
Wow.... banning a product that is considered in hindsight to be mostly dishonest..... Well, here's hoping they don't stop at nasty cryptocurrencies. How about they also swing the axe at other fraudsters, like traditional banks? (referring to the Wells Fargo debacle - https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2017/08/31/wells-fargo-admits-to-more-unauthorized-accounts-increasing-tally-to-3-5-million/#2d1ec8ab1f1b https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2017/08/31/wells-...)
allthenews 9y ago
Ironic that such an influence on the price of BTC can be so centralized, between this and news of tether. I'm sure FB announcing this alone could have sparked a similar or smaller crash.
mrarjen 9y ago
"Because they are mostly scam ads", haven't seen many non scam ads or highly incorrect/false usage of material on facebook for years. This is more of a thing for them to properly fix. They might as well ban most ads I was seeing at least.
matt_s 9y ago
When will they block all political ads?
mtgx 9y ago
= Facebook cryptocurrency to be announced within a year?
iblaine 9y ago
People are shilling ICOs like they're selling a discounted big mac. The SEC doesn't like it. Surely Facebook recognizes this and is protecting themselves.

551 points by imartin2k 9y ago

People should look at FB for what it is. A big shopping mall where everyone goes to walk around and hang out. Don't like what goes on in FB. Stop using it.

Fnoord 9y ago
> People should look at FB for what it is. A big shopping mall where everyone goes to walk around and hang out. That rather sounds like Amazon's Whole Foods with its gazillion cameras. [1] As for your other advice: that counts for any company, and why I boycotted Microsoft for a long, long time. [1] https://dzone.com/articles/why-amazon-and-whole-foods-will-change-how-you-sho https://dzone.com/articles/why-amazon-and-whole-foods-will-c...
dymk 9y ago
What a weirdly tangential thing to point out given the content of the article. Is it possible to write a post on HN that isn't pointlessly critical of Facebook, or have we dropped the facade of "intelligent discussion" when it comes to things that the hivemind doesn't like?
- dictum 9y ago
  > Is it possible to write a post on HN that isn't pointlessly critical of Facebook, or have we dropped the facade of "intelligent discussion" when it comes to things that the hivemind doesn't like? I don't represent or consult any hivemind when I look at corporations, especially the winky-smiley "let's connect the world!" with jaded cynicism – but my conscience.
- davidcbc 9y ago
  > Is it possible to write a post on HN that isn't pointlessly critical of Facebook Mostly it is just impossible for there to be a story about FB on HN that doesn't have a bunch of people tripping over themselves to tell everyone they don't use FB.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago

This is weird to me. Does Facebook currently ban advertisements for commodities like gold? If no, then what's the difference between advertising for bitcoin and advertising for gold?

coralreef 9y ago
The problem aren't ads for Bitcoin, its ads for Shitcoin scams.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  Then why not just ban Shitcoin scams?
  - wmf 9y ago
    Because Facebook (and most others) can't tell the difference between a legitcoin and a shitcoin. They already got in trouble for trying to separate "fake news" from real news, so why double down on the same problem? Take Tezos for example. Greatest innovation in blockchain history or greatest scam in blockchain history? You could lose a lot of hair over that decision, or you could just kill 'em all and let Satoshi sort 'em out.
    - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
      > Because Facebook (and most others) can't tell the difference between a legitcoin and a shitcoin And they shouldn't have to. We tightly regulate securities-related promotional content because we learned, the hard way about a century ago, that left to itself securities markets breed scams like rabbits.
fwdpropaganda 9y ago
Well one difference is that bitcoin has no intrinsic value, ie, it's online gambling in disguise. I believe that Facebook currently bans ads for online gambling. Don't agree? Ask yourself, why don't you see ads for other commodities, like rice or iron? Because there's no money in that. So how come there's money in ads for bitcoin? Could it be because bitcoin is not actually a commodity?

perseusprime11 9y ago

Twitter, What about you?

soared 9y ago

Just like google banning rehab centers, if an industry is getting destroyed in the news or by government regulators its generally not a good move to allow people to advertise it on your platform.

CryoLogic 9y ago

I am guessing it has something to do with the fake ICO's taking advantage of uneducated users (see Vyral for a great example). But Facebook has made their entire fortune taking advantage of uneducated users. So maybe they don't want competition?

wpietri 9y ago
I think that's close. Scam artists slaughter the sheep, while Facebook would rather keep shearing them.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  As a sheep, I would prefer being shorn rather than slaughtered, so I'm with Facebook on that one.
  - draw_down 9y ago
    I think the point is that it’s not really about what the sheep want.
AlexCoventry 9y ago
Showing these ads has legal implications for FB. They could be on the hook for selling unregistered securities. So it's a very sensible policy for a juicy legal target to adopt.
aylmao 9y ago
??? This is improbable for two reasons: 1. There is no reason why a user buying into an ICO should be correlated with it being on facebook. 2. If a user gets scammed by an ICO that should in no way affect if/how they use services that are free to them, facebook included.
dingo_bat 9y ago
How has Facebook taken advantage of uneducated users? Is there any evidence of this or you're just being edgy?

mmanfrin 9y ago

The first ad I saw for Crypto was an ad for Bitmain -- it flashed through my ad blocker enough for me to turn off the blocker to see it. It was Bitmain, advertising a miner back in stock. Clicked it, saw it in stock, then thankfully went back to the fb comments to see someone mention it was a Punycode domain -- was a complete phishing site. There was an 'a' that was actually some other glyph that had a small, nearly pixel-sized dot that made it something other than an 'a'. I am flabbergasted at why fb would allow punycode domains (especially when the domain listed under the ad was the 'real' domain).

caust1c 9y ago
Google does the same: https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/948680008112816128 https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/948680008112816128
SahAssar 9y ago
If they would have the same rules as browsers this basically wouldn't be an issue. Those rules are along the lines of "don't mix character sets unless under a ccTLD for that character set". See here: https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/idn-in-google-chrome https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/idn-in-...
fancyfacebook 9y ago
You have pretty garbage ad blocker if it loads the ad then hides it instead of just never wasting resources to load the ad in the first place.
- y4mi 9y ago
  Some blockers are specifically created like that. Their rational is a combination of letting the website owners (who embedded the ads) get their money and hiding that they're using a blocker.
  - aclatuts 9y ago
    Do you have any examples of these types of blockers? I couldn't find any.

lez 9y ago

Sounds like fb is planning to dive into the blockchain world.

jeeyoungk 9y ago

Finally. I've been intentionally clicking ICO ads so that I get targeted for more ICO ads. It's been interesting. - Many of them have the most buttery smooth introduction video that was just so compelling to stare at. - Many has business lines like, "The total market for car loans / social media advertisement / game currency is N trillion... - The "team" page for them are mostly Russian / Eastern European. Some of them have links to LinkedIn. I looked at their (I believe fake) profiles too. (I don't know why would anybody use their real identity to pull such a thing). - Some ads are in Korean (understandable, I speak Korean and cryptocurrency is hot over there), some ads are in Chinese including their landing page. Do they expect people to land on those pages and drop money without reading anything?

pavel_lishin 9y ago
> Do they expect people to land on those pages and drop money without reading anything? Huh? I assume those are just aimed at people who speak/read the language.
- jeeyoungk 9y ago
  Sorry, forgot to add that I don't know any Chinese and I don't have any reason to believe that Facebook thinks that.
  - lozenge 9y ago
    Maybe the fact you keep clicking on Chinese ads is reason enough?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - singularity2001 9y ago
      which would still leave the question why he was offered it in the first place

meowface 9y ago

I am sure real, legitimate ICOs must exist, but I have yet to find one. Can anyone point to one that they strongly believe is legitimate?

whataretensors 9y ago
Ethereum seems legit. For modern answers: WTC, SNM are two that I like
- banderman 9y ago
  Is there anything that it can exclusively do? I mean functionally in the real world, right now.
  - baddox 9y ago
    Why is that question important?
    - sanderjd 9y ago
      At risk of taking the bait... why wouldn't that question be important?
    - Analemma_ 9y ago
      Everything you need to know about cryptocurrency is right here in this comment. “What does it do?” “Why would you ask that? Just BUY BUY BUY”
      - Yizahi 9y ago
        I once saw a hilarious answer to the question about unique uses of blockchain as a general concept. One user said that it is great for "tracking of diamonds". O.M.G. People expect other to pay money and invest time in development of a tool to enable even more closed-in and tightly controlled global monopoly by De Beers mafia cartel :)
    - 9y ago

dandare 9y ago

This is good for Bitcoin because...

Ataraxy 9y ago
Realistically...because it will remain the biggest one to breach the general public consciousness and by getting rid of such ease of access to promoting scams and the like it will prevent (at least in the short term) the public perception of cryptocurrencies from being tainted by a sea of scams that are difficult for novices to navigate through.

olivermarks 9y ago

Assuming rumours FB is developing their own cryptocurrency, along with Amazon and Google, as has been suggested on various forums, isn't there a risk here for them? Banning potential competitors in what you could generously describe as the dawn of the next internet (in many ways the crypto wild west is v similar to early dot com days, complete with all the shysters and con artists) seems unethical and may bring up anti trust issues eventually?

mv4 9y ago
You are correct, that would be a risk for them (especially for FB) because of how big they've become. Anecdote: in 2014, I registered an account on Twitter called "tweetcoin". I felt social networks would start developing their own currencies. I posted one comment, "exciting things in the works". I was promptly locked out of the account, and a new tweet appeared there (dated 2012!), stating "this is not your account." You can see it here: https://twitter.com/tweetcoin https://twitter.com/tweetcoin
- gl00pp 9y ago
  Wow! reminds me that the internet is really just a cave wall with shadows on it...
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  And oddly enough, it says the account was created in 2008. Very strange indeed.
  - olivermarks 9y ago
    https://twitter.com/jack/status/958743238512328704 https://twitter.com/jack/status/958743238512328704
- davesque 9y ago
  Assuming you're being truthful, that is pretty weird actually. I'm going through explanations for this in my mind and none of them make much sense.

whataretensors 9y ago

Someone should make a cryptocurrency social platform that rewards it's users for sharing content and attention. Like the steemit of facebook. Anyone know of any projects like this?

wmf 9y ago
[deleted; I didn't read the parent carefully]
- downandout 9y ago
  Cynical much? This kind of response is one reason I rarely mention ideas on HN. They all seem to be met with instant criticism and/or suspicion.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
> rewards it's users for sharing content and attention You mean spamming content?
- mv4 9y ago
  It's possible to tell the difference between genuine, authentic sharing, and automation. Rewarding the right behavior will make spam go away.
  - Kalium 9y ago
    You're right! It's absolutely possible to tell the difference. And when it's known, bad behavior can be punished and good behavior rewarded. What do you think it takes to tell this difference with a high degree of reliability (>4 nines) at scale (>1000/s)? How about in an environment where people are strongly incentivized to find and exploit the weaknesses of your approach? Is it just maybe possible that this might not quite be handwave-it-away trivial? Facebook has had a shocking level of success in cutting down spam with their investments in punishing bad behavior and rewarding good behaviour. Thank you for your thoughts. You're completely correct! It's possible to tell the difference, and rewarding good behavior will drive out bad actors.

Theodores 9y ago

I am not a fan of 'the city' and I am not a Facebook user. However, today Facebook have earned a small bit of respect from me. As for 'the city', regulation now seems a very good idea, sure we have all been ripped off by the fat cats of 'the city', however, the toxicity of traditional investments is along the levels of 'sweets laced with sugar' instead of 'heroin laced with fentanyl' which seems to be what the ico-scam-coin-nonsense is peddling. I would like to see a crypto-addict brain under a MRI scan to see if those graphs in tiddlywink prices light up the same bits of the brain that physical addiction to a chemical makes. In some way this story reminds me of when Lance Armstrong was discovered to be cheating. Some people wouldn't believe it until he came on Oprah and spoke about a few things. The evidence was overwhelming and yet there were some devoted fans that held out. They didn't even have skin in the game (taking PED's) but still they wanted to believe the comeback from cancer fairytale. It did not matter to them that all of his team mates thought him to be toxic, dedicated fans held out. I don't think it is time to tease crypto-obsessed-people but once they have lost all their monopoly money and tiddlywinks then I am sure they will start to get the story. Fear and greed gets the better of people, so I am looking forward to on-going 'so where is your lambo then, did you leave it on the moon'? comments. Shame I didn't quit my job and spend all day investing in tiddlywinks tethered to monopoly money. Oh well.

jonathanjaeger 9y ago

This is just one of many things Facebook bans, including dating ads from sites that aren't preapproved, payday loans, sketchy supplement ads, and the list goes on. They even banned fantasy sports betting sites for a while (until the legality got cleared up in NY somewhat).

HugoDaniel 9y ago

They are about to launch their own coin[0] "For example, one of the most interesting questions in technology right now is about centralization vs decentralization. A lot of us got into technology because we believe it can be a decentralizing force that puts more power in people's hands. (The first four words of Facebook's mission have always been "give people the power".) Back in the 1990s and 2000s, most people believed technology would be a decentralizing force. But today, many people have lost faith in that promise. With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it. There are important counter-trends to this --like encryption and cryptocurrency -- that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people's hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I'm interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services." [0] https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104380170714571 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104380170714571

Gaelan 9y ago
Looking into != launching soon or even ever.
mliker 9y ago
> There are important counter-trends to this -- like encryption and cryptocurrency ... How does this translate to "they are about to launch their own coin"?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
aylmao 9y ago
This would be a pretty interesting move actually. Something like Brave's BAT comes to mind.

nicodjimenez 9y ago

I'm going to miss the "crypto genius" ads.

corysama 9y ago
You'll like this https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-man-behind-bitcoin-genius-ads-internet-134441715.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-man-behind-bitcoin-geniu...

singularity2001 9y ago

these news sent the bitcoin charts below the magical $10000, a second time after the "crash that wasn't", two weeks ago will we finally see a real dramatic crash, or will it just fade away? as much as I feel sorry for those that were duped, some part of me is urging for the drama.

wyldfire 9y ago
> will we finally see a real dramatic crash, or will it just fade away? Aside from global prohibition there's not much that would destroy the value that's created by this novel tool. Even then it would still have some residual value.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I think that a global carbon emissons tax would do the trick.
  - criddell 9y ago
    It would just make the giant mining farms in China powered by hydro-electric generators that much more profitable.
- oh-kumudo 9y ago
  Well if all people decide to cash out, it will destroy the value.
mschuster91 9y ago
> these news sent the bitcoin charts below the magical $10000 Nah, I believe the "crash" is rather due to the Tether stuff and that one exchange that got hacked... and because there are people who have decided that they don't want to wait any longer to materialize their profits in dollars in the aftermath.
antvei2 9y ago
"these news" didn't do anything. It was due to tether and South Korea.

skywhopper 9y ago

I haven't seen these ads, but this is probably the right move. The irony is that Facebook has built its perceived value to advertisers, investors, businesses, and audience alike on its ability to use deep learning to process all these posts and images and ads and understand what they mean. But here they are explicitly admitting they are unable to do that. It's a healthy thing to do. But it's interesting that it's financial fraud for which they might be directly liable, and not political propaganda, mental health, or explicit racism that brings them to admit their limitations and draw a hard line.

eugenez 9y ago
There is a difference between understanding the content (e.g. ICO) and understanding what happens a few weeks after the content is interacted with (e.g. someone runs off with the money). The first is doable, the second requires prescience.

Mc_Big_G 9y ago

...but they're totally OK with political ads paid in rubles. Fuck Facebook.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gonvaled 9y ago
Are those worse than political ads paid in dollars?

rolyatyasmar 9y ago

When I clicked the link I was served an ad promoting cyptocurrencies haha

thebiglebrewski 9y ago

Thank god, this has been SO annoying to see all the time. I mark them as spam/report them for being a scam.

simonebrunozzi 9y ago

Finally! The most annoying ones were James Altucher's... I found them particularly fishy. (don't know him so not sure what's behind them).

wybiral 9y ago

Doesn't "misleading or deceptive promotional practices" generally apply to the entire business model of an advertisement platform disguised as a social network?

bb88 9y ago

I for one say, hurrah.

yorby 9y ago

up next: Facebook is starting it's own currency...

aussie1233 9y ago

This is worrisome, mainly for one reason. Maybe one of the many ICOs might turn out to derail Facebook's centralised + ads approach. With this Facebook is basically attempting to prevent competition - or am I totally off?

paxy 9y ago
I think it's more due to the fact that most ICOs are fraudulent.
aylmao 9y ago
IMO you're totally off. ICOs and the ad market are pretty tangential.
- aussie1233 9y ago
  I'm more referring to Mark Zuckerberg's new year post about investing in decentatizlized tech and the power it provides. Will be interesting to see if FB will do an ICO themselves or at least built there own blockchain to address some of the data centralization concerns.
usrusr 9y ago
That hypothetical one magic ICO to derail Facebook would surely not have to rely on Facebook ads to succeed. And besides that, I'd consider Facebook to be "sufficiently evil" to individually black out an advertiser they secretly consider a threat, of it ever came to that. This move is easily explained by the long term cost of being perceived as the place worth the shitty scam ads. The existential threat Facebook is trying to avert is people thinking "I would not have lost that money if I had not been on Facebook all the time, reading all those stories about bitcoin geniuses" one day. Everybody likes to blame the messenger.

aqsheehy 9y ago

If only hacker news would follow suit

jinfiesto 9y ago

Thank god. My neighborhood has a forum run by the HOA. It's flooded with posts about neighbors running their own "crypto-businesses" trying to get other people in on it. Based on a quick read, I'm pretty sure none of them are in tech (not that that's prerequisite to understanding the technology) and most seem to think BTC is magic internet money. If/when BTC tanks, the ensuing bloodbath is going to be nasty.

bengrunfeld 9y ago

Wow.... banning a product that is considered in hindsight to be mostly dishonest..... Well, here's hoping they don't stop at nasty cryptocurrencies. How about they also swing the axe at other fraudsters, like traditional banks? (referring to the Wells Fargo debacle - https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2017/08/31/wells-fargo-admits-to-more-unauthorized-accounts-increasing-tally-to-3-5-million/#2d1ec8ab1f1b https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2017/08/31/wells-...)

allthenews 9y ago

Ironic that such an influence on the price of BTC can be so centralized, between this and news of tether. I'm sure FB announcing this alone could have sparked a similar or smaller crash.

mrarjen 9y ago

"Because they are mostly scam ads", haven't seen many non scam ads or highly incorrect/false usage of material on facebook for years. This is more of a thing for them to properly fix. They might as well ban most ads I was seeing at least.

matt_s 9y ago

When will they block all political ads?

mtgx 9y ago

= Facebook cryptocurrency to be announced within a year?

iblaine 9y ago

People are shilling ICOs like they're selling a discounted big mac. The SEC doesn't like it. Surely Facebook recognizes this and is protecting themselves.