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Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

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Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#211
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rewards it's users for sharing content and attention You mean spamming content?

It's possible to tell the difference between genuine, authentic sharing, and automation. Rewarding the right behavior will make spam go away.

Existing social media reward mechanisms are bad enough, they need to be weakened, not strengthened. Imagine you could use hn karma to pay at Wal-Mart - would you expect the quality of discussions here to go up or to go down? I think it would be disastrous.

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#212
post #21

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?

Both gold mining and coin mining are environmentally dirty industries, but at least gold can used for useful things like conductors, reflectors, and jewelry. The only thing you can fashion out of bitcoins is entropy.

Entropy is a "property" of everything.

So you are saying there is no value to Bitcoin?

I sent money overseas to family with it... does that not count?

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#213
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The few “squeaky wheels” making the most noise - determining the very face and presentation of a context (in this case a field full of cattle, in GP’s case a handful of advertisers on radio) - is an old idea that even has prose to describe it.

So, comparatively, a few bad screaming apples spoil the whole bunch? (should clarify, I'm not disagreeing, just trying to relate)

In the negative case, yes. In the positive case, a few well behaved individuals viewed in isolation could cause a misunderstanding of the wider population (“ideal minority effect”).

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "team" page for them are mostly Russian / Eastern European. What's wrong with that?

1. It shows they are intentionally targeting people in the US. CPC rates for US consumers is much higher than for eastern europe / russia. 2. It is just shady. Investors in these schemes have no protections / legal recourse as these entities are outside the US. Not to single out Russian/Eastern European, investing money via ICO outside US is like asking to be robbed.

That's not based on Russian / Eastern European, it's based on SCAM levels across the whole cryptocurrency sector.

> targeting people in the US

Anyone doing >anything IT related> investors in these schemes have no protections / legal recourse as these entities are outside the US.

And that's related to the entity, not the team. How about a team of Russian / Eastern Europeans with an American entity? Would then be not a SCAM?

Of course I think what is stated in the OP is pure prejudice.

There are multiple scams originated in every nation, so let's not put the guilt on origin of the team behind it.

Vitalik is a Russian-Canadian, as well as lot's of good guys working on Cryptocurrency.

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#215

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?

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.

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#216

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 th…

I love your idea of clicking on facebook ads just to see what would happen for a person that did happen to be in that cohort. Other things I have thought of that would be interesting to do this experiment with is multi-level-marketing BS, political ads catering to the opposite side of the isle, and "Preppers". I would find that much more interesting than my current facebook feed that just feeds me more of what I am a…

>And it was just an "ah-ha" reminder that in every group, culture, hobby, or community there are a few advertisers that have an outsize influence on what people think their own grass-roots culture is.

What makes you think that the locals listen to those radio ads and assume it represents their own grass-roots culture? I grew up in a small town and the radio ads were dominated by a few dominating businesses, but I was never under the illusion that they represented the culture at all.

I think you are right for what outsiders think the grass-roots culture is, but that's a completely different statement.

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#217
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I never was in that line of business but afaik websites pay to AD platforms per banners displayed. So looking at AD and not interacting with it in any way is a net loss for a website who placed that AD.

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#218
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning dvorak and playing around with its compose key, I was amazed by the vast characters that there actually exists. For a, you also have: äāȧą I would fall for a domain like that. Sadly, you can't blacklist all punycode domains as some are legits in languages where accents are used

So allow those for the TLDs where it makes sense. Keeping them out of .com seems like a reasonable trade off.

Each TLD registry is able to choose their own policy for IDN. Responsible ones all have homograph rules to avoid this issue. But what you're missing is that .com is not Main Street or the big Mall, .com is that sketchy market where you can buy anything and the operators just take a fixed fee for each stall and turn a blind eye. So the policies for .com are deliberately as lax as possible to get the most people possible paying a fee.

Thus, any policies about protecting consumers, avoiding security problems, anything like that, won't come from .com and indeed it's operators will fight such things because they mean less income.

Re: Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies

#220
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that question important?

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”

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 :)
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