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Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

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Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#21

Google is a private business and they can do what they want, but this disappoints me. More and more Google seems to be thinking of themselves as content police (consider YouTube is owned by Google also), and I think that's a shame. Perhaps it will open up a market for dethroning them. A serious YouTube competitor that doesn't demonetize content they find disagreeable would be very healthy, IMHO.

My livelihood depends on online advertising and yet I have the opposite feelings. Google (and Facebook and Reddit etc) should be doing more content policing, especially for the content monetized by advertising, and should be held liable for the content which they monetize.

Right now, no one is responsible for the poisonous mixture of fake-news / radicalizing context coupled with attention based internet economy where the only incentive an internet content business has is to grab more and more eyeballs. Google (and others) simply shirk their failures by claiming "to give users what they want", when instead their employees are busy devising more and more elaborate ways to grab someone's eyeballs.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#22
post #13

It might look like censorship, but they probably realized that most ads where getting similar to penis enlargment ads and thought they didn't want to be associated with that.

Indeed, the crypto/ICO advertising along with multi-level-marketing schemes are a plague on social media. Guessing it's only getting attention because it's 'crypto' in the title rather than 'likely scams'.

Exactly :-)

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#24

Google is a private business and they can do what they want, but this disappoints me. More and more Google seems to be thinking of themselves as content police (consider YouTube is owned by Google also), and I think that's a shame. Perhaps it will open up a market for dethroning them. A serious YouTube competitor that doesn't demonetize content they find disagreeable would be very healthy, IMHO.

They're stopping ads, not content.

Content and ads are very different things. Stopping lucrative crypto ads certainly will financially hurt Google, but is definitely a win for consumers. Most crypto advertising is 100% scams. There's a huge difference between letting someone speak their mind on your platform (content) versus accepting money to broadcast their message on your platform (ads).

As for content, that's completely different (and a slippery slope). I won't pick a side on free speech vs protecting people, but I will say I'm very glad I don't have to choose where to draw the line.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#25
post #23

I completely understand this decision but that doesn’t make me any less disappointed. Not in Google but the users. Nothing has changed if after all these years, people still fall for scams: Nigerian princes, Ponzi schemes, single house wives and now ICOs.

You can always find a sucker, but the hope is that education will greatly reduce many of those suckers.

The thing is there still are many scams that are in plain sight, things like fad diets, weight loss products, and on and on.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#26
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can user sue Google if they follow an crypto advertisement on it, invest in it then find it is a fraud? It is likely self-protection.

Anyone can sue anybody about anything. But getting very far vs Google probably takes some resources. And even with resources, liability over ad publishing seems iffy. But IANAL.

Sure, but the question is, would they deserve to win because Google was at least partially to blame for the deceitful ad? Because if so, Google's right not to show the ad.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#28

I think a time will come when these decisions will brigng lots of shame and bad PR for companies like google and facebook. I find it totally unacceptable for a third party to assume the role of babysitter for consenting adults.

It's not consenting adults if it's a scam, and Google can't analyze every ad to check for that. In a space where most ads are scams, this looks legit to me.

It's their business, they should be allowed to decide whatever they want.

In the same way we can think that most of the businesses are scams, because most of them end up bankrupt after 5 years. Should they also ban the ads for products of companies younger than 5 years? To protect the consumers from becoming bag holders of unsupported and unusable products?

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#29

Google is a private business and they can do what they want, but this disappoints me. More and more Google seems to be thinking of themselves as content police (consider YouTube is owned by Google also), and I think that's a shame. Perhaps it will open up a market for dethroning them. A serious YouTube competitor that doesn't demonetize content they find disagreeable would be very healthy, IMHO.

They're stopping ads, not content. Content and ads are very different things. Stopping lucrative crypto ads certainly will financially hurt Google, but is definitely a win for consumers. Most crypto advertising is 100% scams. There's a huge difference between letting someone speak their mind on your platform (content) versus accepting money to broadcast their message on your platform (ads). As for content, that's com…

> They're stopping ads, not content.

They’ve been removing videos from YouTube also. Which they are free to do, it being their platform, but my point is that they are removing content also.

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