Twitter Inc is joining Facebook Inc and Google in banning advertisements for initial coin offerings and token sales on its social media platform.
“Advertisement of Initial Coin Offerings [ICOs] and token sales will be prohibited globally,” a Twitter spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement on Monday. “We know that this type of content is often associated with deception and fraud, both organic and paid, and are proactively implementing a number of signals to prevent these types of accounts from engaging with others in a deceptive manner.”
The decision comes after Facebook banned cryptocurrency ads in January and Alphabet Inc’s Google said it would ban such ads starting in June, as part of a broader effort to crack down on deceptive and misleading advertising on their platforms. Social media platforms are keeping cryptos away as regulators cast an increasingly wary eye on the sector globally.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission sent a number of subpoenas earlier this month to ICO teams it suspects are breaking securities regulations and it has warned since July last year that some of the offerings may be breaking securities regulations.
Twitter said on March 7 that it was implementing measures to prevent cryptoscams.
Cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet services ads are to be limited to those that are provided by a public company listed on major stock markets, and in Japan, these will be limited to cryptoexchanges regulated by the Japanese Financial Services Agency, the Twitter spokesperson said.
Crypto ad bans on major social media platforms has weighed on the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin is approaching the US$8,000 level, and is down more than 50 percent from an all time high of almost US$20,000 in December last year.
Paid search sends less than 1 percent of traffic to cryptocurrency exchange sites, so the effect of crypto ad bans might be limited, according to research by web site SimilarWeb, published on Monday.
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