Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#121

Post by purple-again » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 1:15 PM UTC

tnolet wrote: post #109

lewisj489 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw this too, I was genuinely weirded out to see print advertising for cryptocurrency Did you see the "World's first blockchain currency for football"?

Yes! and we also have a DJ Don Diablo ICO https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/dance/8241155/don-di...

This actually doesn't look like an example of a bad ICO from the 3 minutes I spent looking at it. You pay an upfront fee (buying HEXCOINS) for access to a virtual environment filled with like minded people, Hexagonia ($15 a month to play World of Warcraft) AND you earn coins just for spending time there, AND you can spend those coins right now on real life things you probably care about (this guys music, shirts, hats and shit kids eat up).

I see no issues here.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#122

Post by herbst » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 1:24 PM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #98

RestlessMind wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Right now, no one is responsible for the poisonous mixture of fake-news / radicalizing contex Who decides what’s fake news. Trump said there was problems in Sweden. NYTimes called him out on it. Not even a year later they are writing about the problems in Sweden. So was the fake news trumps comment? Or the denile and lying by the media? Maybe we should just censor everything. Censor trump, the media, advertising, e…

Exactly this. Fake news just is a way to proclaim unwanted propaganda as something bad. This does not always mean the wanted propaganda is less a lie or the unwanted is a lie to begin with.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#123

Post by Ajedi32 » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 1:29 PM UTC

Shoue wrote: post #101

austincheney wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As outraged as many folks might be I am thinking that only applies to people who invested in cryptocurrency.

As someone who has invested in cryptocurrencies, I have to say I don't really mind the ban – most crypto ads I've seen so far have been scammy or for subpar copycat cryptocurrencies, and I feel like that'd be the general trend, even if legitimate cryptocurrencies start using ad platforms I feel like they'll be a minority since they already get free advertisement through word of mouth by simply being innovative.

Why would you ever need to _advertise_ a cryptocurrency anyway? Can you imagine someone advertising a specific stock, or a fiat currency? That'd be ridiculous! Seems likely to me that most of those ads are just trying to prop-up the price of the currency they're advertising so that the one who bought the ad can dump their holdings at a higher price.

I'm a little concerned though that Google's ban here seems to go beyond just ads for currencies themselves. For example, is Brave no longer allowed to advertise its browser on Google because there's a cryto coin associated with it? Are exchanges or hardware wallet manufacturers like TREZOR no longer allowed to advertise their services? If so, I think these restrictions might be overly broad.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#124

Post by herbst » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 1:29 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #115

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the dot com boom with tons of $noun.com companies of which the vast majority were worthless. But there were some true innovations, and those gems survived the crash. Had we lumped them all together and prohibited any of their advertisement, they may have never succeeded.

Often the significant innovations don't need to advertise. I didn't use the early Google because I saw an ad for it and I don't think Etherium did paid ads for their launch.

Ethereum is a good example. Look at all these poor Ethereum clones that ICO the shit out of their eth chain copy cat. Same shit we saw with the Altcoins craze some years ago.

The names that stay are those that speak for them self through revolutionizing Technologie.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#125

Post by herbst » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

nukeop wrote: post #89

cryptomancer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahhaah breathe aahahahahahahahhahahahaha

This is a post of somebody who regrets missing the train

I don't understand the strong negative opinion some people have. Sure we all could be millionaires but on the way we develop mathematically proven distributed information and now even computing systems (like eth) that will definitly help to shape the future in one way or another.

I made money and lost money with crypto. However i dont care because I love the Technologie. Who wouldn't?

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#126

Post by lholden » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 1:35 PM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #62

bringtheaction wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"I googled it"

I see what you did there :D

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#127

Post by deadmetheny » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

nukeop wrote: post #89

cryptomancer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahhaah breathe aahahahahahahahhahahahaha

This is a post of somebody who regrets missing the train

Shoulda bought more Beanie Babies when they were just sitting around in gift shops as well.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#128

Post by wyldfire » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #123

Shoue wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has invested in cryptocurrencies, I have to say I don't really mind the ban – most crypto ads I've seen so far have been scammy or for subpar copycat cryptocurrencies, and I feel like that'd be the general trend, even if legitimate cryptocurrencies start using ad platforms I feel like they'll be a minority since they already get free advertisement through word of mouth by simply being innovative.

Why would you ever need to _advertise_ a cryptocurrency anyway? Can you imagine someone advertising a specific stock, or a fiat currency? That'd be ridiculous! Seems likely to me that most of those ads are just trying to prop-up the price of the currency they're advertising so that the one who bought the ad can dump their holdings at a higher price. I'm a little concerned though that Google's ban here seems to go bey…

> Can you imagine someone advertising a specific stock, or a fiat currency?

The latter -- yes, that's ridiculous. But not the former. Companies whose stock is traded publicly do advertising all the time. The intended audience for the ads isn't limited to potential buyers of their product. It's often also useful for swaying shareholders, potential shareholders, regulators, etc.

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#129

Post by newnewpdro » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 2:16 PM UTC

Buge wrote: post #40

newnewpdro wrote: post #20

At first I expected this to be about JS-mining ads. How the hell can these companies turn blind eyes to bogus advertising like [1] to the point that the FTC steps in - but suddenly have a conscience about cryptocurrency. It would please me to no end for advertising to magically become 100% truthful and fact-based. But this is selective censorship for reasons I don't care to understand, the ads these companies serve w…

Is/was Google serving "one weird trick" advertisements? Or is that other ad networks?

"In all of the cases, news sites such as MSNBC and washingtonpost.com appear to be passive hosts of the “flat belly” ads. The ads are “served” to the news sites and thousands of others by ad networks, including those operated by Google and Pulse360, based in New York." taken from [1].

There's probably a comprehensive list in the FTC documents, but the other articles cited by the wikipdia article make it sound like the ads were ubiquitous at the time, run on every major ad network.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/ubiquitous-ti...

Re: Google will ban all cryptocurrency-related advertising

#130

Post by newnewpdro » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 2:26 PM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #57

newnewpdro wrote: post #20

At first I expected this to be about JS-mining ads. How the hell can these companies turn blind eyes to bogus advertising like [1] to the point that the FTC steps in - but suddenly have a conscience about cryptocurrency. It would please me to no end for advertising to magically become 100% truthful and fact-based. But this is selective censorship for reasons I don't care to understand, the ads these companies serve w…

Individuals learn and organisations learn. Perhaps the intervention of the FTC lead to a change in organisational incentives that made the organisation more wary of allowing possibly-fraudulent ads.

It's worth noting that the FTC seems to have only stepped in here because of the "negative-option" recurring payment model these sales channels were employing. They made it very difficult to successfully stop purchasing the advertised products.