LinkedIn co-founder suggests social media crypto ads ban is only temporary
Twitter, Facebook, Google and Reddit all currently have cryptocurrency and ICO advertising embargoes.
Cryptocurrency advertising has been a contentious issue for social media users and platforms since market prices soared to all-time highs at the end of last year. Many companies and websites have banned crypto-related promotions and advertisements as a result of scams, pyramid schemes, extortion and trading volatility.
Despite these prohibitions, professional and employment-oriented social media network LinkedIn has yet to enforce a similar policy for its users. During a recent interview with Cointelegraph, one of the communication and connections website’s co-founders, Chinese-American entrepreneur Eric Ly, indicated that these restrictions were a transient measure and that token sale ads will be re-permitted on these platforms.
Ly, who served as LinkedIn’s founding chief technology officer and left the company in 2006, believes that the embargoes offer these companies protections and a way to “avoid potentially uncertain interactions with SEC.”
“The ban is fundamentally… a conservative protective measure that these platforms have to not have to be entangled with answering the SEC’s potentially interesting questions,” Ly said. “I do believe this is a temporary period because like many domains, advertising has an incentive to support as many domains as possible.”
Ly added that when regulatory organizations and the law eventually catch up with what’s going on, advertising of cryptocurrencies and coin offerings will be reinstated across social media platforms, domains and websites.
Facebook, Twitter, Google and Reddit all currently forbid the placement of cryptocurrency and initial coin offering (ICO) advertisements across their platforms. However, LinkedIn continues to buck the trend — for now.
Twitter was the latest social media giant to discontinue cryptocurrency and ICO advertising. In late March this year, the platform updated its financial services ads policies to reflect these amendments and changes.
Facebook has a ban in place, while Google’s restrictions will be enforced from June. However, Google also revealed that it was creating blockchain technology to underpin and differentiate its expanding cloud business.
Ads for cryptocurrencies and ICOs have not been permitted to be published on Reddit since early 2016.
In recent times, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has come down hard on ICOs. For example, last week the regulator subpoenaed cryptocurrency company Riot Blockchain. At the beginning of April, the SEC filed a court order against purported blockchain company Longfin Corp, freezing more than $27 million in trading proceeds from restricted stocks. The independent agency also charged Centra Tech and its co-founders with fraud after the startup raised more than $32 million from thousands of investors in 2017. Additionally, Overstock’s crypto-driven subsidiary, tZERO, had its ICO placed under review by the SEC in March.
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