• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, January 30, 2018

At the risk of portraying all cryptocurrency as unsafe and deceptive in nature, Facebook has decided to ban any and all ads pushing the digital assets. The change is part of a wider effort to foster more authentic engagement on its platform.

“We’ve created a new policy that prohibits ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency,” Rob Leathern, product management director at Facebook, notes in a new blog post.

While not all cryptocurrency may be deceptive or harmful, there are just too many bad actors using the promise of digital riches to mislead and defraud unsuspecting consumers, according to Leathern.

Making no apologies for portraying what may be legitimate currencies and related businesses as unsafe, Leathern said that Facebook’s new policy is “intentionally broad.” That said, Leathern said that Facebook could eventually amend its new policy once it finds better ways to detect deceptive and misleading ads practices.

“We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve,” Leathern said. Till then, Facebook warned it may not catch every ad that should be removed under this new policy.

The social giant is encouraging users to help out by reporting content that violates its Advertising Policies.

As part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s push for greater authenticity, Facebook also recently started cracking down on solicitors of “likes,” shares and other types of phony engagement. It’s what Facebook calls “engagement bait,” or the manipulation of its News Feed algorithm in order to boost engagement and achieve greater reach.