The internet’s oligopolies are not fond of Blockchain. Early this year, Facebook broke the ice with instituting a blanket ban on all cryptocurrency and initial coin offering (ICO) ads[1]; not long after, Google and Twitter followed suit. While the stated rationale for the ban is protecting users from “misleading or deceptive practices” that are “frequently associated” with the cryptocurrency business, industry commentators ponder[2] on more mercenary considerations that could likely prompt tech platforms to enforce hostile policies. For one, cracking down on crypto is a relatively inexpensive way to alleviate the public’s wrath, as the narrative of the big tech’s lack of social responsibility is gaining traction in the background. Others in fintech view the ban as an outright manifestation of the Silicon Valley giants’ general antagonism towards the emerging Blockchain-powered economic and social ecosystems. After all, these ecosystems are informed and inspired by the ideas that are potentially threatening to their dominance in the long run.
Furthermore, the ban on cryptocurrency and ICO advertisements is not the only way Facebook is putting pressure on fintech enterprises these days. Consider this: for the most of 2017, Facebook’s rate of approval for Cointelegraph (CT) ads promoting individual articles plateaued at around 75 percent. Over the last few weeks, however, the rate plummeted to just 40 percent, without any notice from the company. It remains to be seen how many people have been saved from misleading and deceptive practices by the virtue of not being exposed to CT’s coverage of the Blockchain world.
Disheartening as it is, such a clampdown is hardly a deviation from how Facebook routinely does its business. For an organization that seeks to occupy a moral high ground as a users’ shield against endemic cryptocurrency fraud, Zuckerberg’s brainchild has for too
