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Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

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Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#61

Post by gkoberger »

wallace_f wrote: post #39
gkoberger wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not the full story. They've been actually demonetizing, or in some cases removing, videos for political speech they don't agree with. Even former Rep Ron Paul's Youtube channel was demonetized--which is frankly just insanely ridiculous. Meanwhile media reports extremist content such as Nazi propaganda is available?! Another example is anti-Trump, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. I'm not exactly sure who can be s…

This article was about ads, not content. That's the distinction I was making.

Google is very loathe to remove videos. I haven't seen that often, outside of copyright infringement or something truly illegal.

Demonetization is different. It's basically saying "we'll let you talk... But we don't want to reward you and charge our advertisers for it". It's a hugely slippery slope, of course, but... It's one thing to demand free speech (which Google isn't legally required to allow), yet a completely different thing to demand Google pay people they disagree with.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#62

Post by gkoberger »

bringtheaction wrote: post #29
gkoberger wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This article is about ads.

But, to your point: are they? Outside of copyright infringement and downright illegal content, are they really removing any videos? I googled it, and all I found were terrorists and copyright infringement being removed.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#63

Post by nukeop »

freedomben wrote: post #3

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.

>Google is a private business and they can do what they want,

This kind of an argument shows up every time Google or Facebook or some other megacorp does something detrimental to free speech. It would be a reasonable thing to say if they didn't control millions of conversations every day, show millions of ads to millions of people, and so on. When a company has a budget that would put it in the 20 biggest economies in the world if it were a country, this kind of a statement no longer applies. It doesn't matter that it's privately owned, its very existence impacts the lives of most people in most developed countries in the world, if it infringes on free speech, it should be regulated.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#64

Post by nukeop »

dunkelsten wrote: post #46
SoggyMike wrote: post #38

I'd be quite stoked were Facebook to ban most but not all cryptocurrency ads. What I find most disturbing are all the self-appointed "experts" who offer classes in which they will teach their "system" that they claim will guarantee the students collossal returns on very small investments. However there are lots of ads that I'd like Facebook to keep. Many of the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) ads are from legitimate star…

> But I only want just the _legitimate_ ICO ads to remain. I‘m sorry to bring you the news, but there aren‘t any. Oh, and just in case there are, the crypto ecosystem implosion happening this year will drag them along to the bottom of the pool together with all the scams.

Oh no it won't, that genie isn't going back into the bottle. Cryptos are here to stay, and they will continue growing for decades.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#65

Post by xiphias »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #26
mirimir wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think they have a chance if it can be shown that Google knew about the problem, because the SEC has special laws for advertising financial scams.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#66

Post by jMyles »

jsonne wrote: post #12

As outraged as many folks might be this is just good business for Google and Facebook. Internet advertising, nay advertising at large, is dangerously close to becoming a regulated, or more regulated, industry in the wake of fake news and Russian troll farms etc. If they aren't proactive and people lose money they inch ever closer to requirements that can and will eat large chunks of their profit margins. This isn't e…

> is dangerously close to becoming a regulated, or more regulated, industry

You're absolutely right.

And this is an easy, almost childishly obvious end-around to get at free speech. If speech is "political speech," then it is subject regulation suite A. If it is "advertising", then it is subject to regulation suite B. If it is "legal or medical advice," on and on.

Until there are no spaces left between the suites, and all speech is regulated.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#67

Post by anonytrary »

Well, it's their platform so it's their rules. It would be dystopian if they tried to censor cryptocurrency-related Google Trends insights, news and other media. The pressure on the rest of humans to find suitable substitutes to Google and Facebook will only grow with time.

Speaking of substitutes, Google and Facebook have a strong incentive to squander cryptocurrency. The long vision is a direct threat to the way they operate, and to the very question of whether or not they should exist.

If there was some hypothetical way to decentralize search, email or even social interactions, DLT research is likely the path forward. The whole point is that the nodes cannot trust each other, creating a sort of differential company, where search is provided entirely by those who are searching.

This is vastly different to Google's model which had the ease of assuming that they owned all of the nodes. Perhaps this is why Google and Facebook happened first in human history; they were simpler inventions. I truly believe the decentralized option is better for society, and so it will inevitably exist. Emergent protocols are changing the way I think about how computers talk to each other.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#68

Post by thinkingemote »

jcrites wrote: post #33
freedomben wrote: post #3

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.

> A serious YouTube competitor that doesn't demonetize content they find disagreeable would be very healthy, IMHO. It's probably not YouTube demonitizing content that they personally find disagreeable. It's most likely advertisers that find it disagreeable that their ads show up next to objectionable content: advertisers don't control precisely which videos their ads show up next to - they just target them to certain…

Worth saying that advertisers are working on the basis of their clients. I think it's the clients that are pushing this change. And I think it's a vocal group who are shouting at those companies saying that their group is unhappy. The companies respond by pulling their advertising. I'd argue therefore that the advertisers and the companies, the brands have less morality than you might think - they are just reacting to consumer pressure. Demonitization effectively stops any advertiser, and any brand from advertising on a particular space. I'd also argue that Google is reacting to consumer pressure, which is why there is plenty of objectively worse content on YT which is not restricted (because there is no pressure about these vile videos).

One example would be the Stop Funding Hate pressure group who very loudly and aggressively by social media, campaigns to companies to stop advertising within The Daily Mail newspaper in the UK.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#69

Post by austincheney »

jsonne wrote: post #12

As outraged as many folks might be this is just good business for Google and Facebook. Internet advertising, nay advertising at large, is dangerously close to becoming a regulated, or more regulated, industry in the wake of fake news and Russian troll farms etc. If they aren't proactive and people lose money they inch ever closer to requirements that can and will eat large chunks of their profit margins. This isn't e…

> As outraged as many folks might be

I am thinking that only applies to people who invested in cryptocurrency.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#70

Post by jMyles »

danmaz74 wrote: post #11
tudorconstantin wrote: post #6

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 not consenting adults if it's a scam

Are you serious? Or is this sarcasm?

If you're serious: you're welcome of course to an opinion that google is right to block scams, and / or that most cryptocurrency ads are scams.

But you can't really believe that adults stop being adults, or that consent to judge the merits of, for example an ad, suddenly evaporates in the presence of a scam?

Is the presence of a scam sufficient to warrant treatment of the involved individuals like children?

That sounds like an awful world.

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