A Twitter account with 800,000 followers was blocked. Will social media's regulation of virtual currencies be upgraded again?

Today, @Bitcoin, a popular Bitcoin information account with over 800,000 followers on Twitter, was banned again by Twitter. According to Twitter’s official ban reasons, the account may have been involved in spam, abuse of tweets, etc., or it may have been hacked. As of press time, the account has not yet been restored to normal.

Since January this year, the entire network has strengthened supervision of advertisements in the virtual currency field, and now the supervision may have reached the big accounts that publish information.

After the Chinese New Year of the Dog, WeChat banned some accounts that posted information about private placements, ICO fundraising, and investment agents. However, related content has recently been spread in the form of advertising promotions on public accounts, Toutiao, and other channels.

Regulators have begun to crack down on the cryptocurrency industry, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claiming to have obtained a court order to freeze the assets of AriseBank's alleged ICO scam. In March, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney also called for stronger regulatory measures to end the "anarchy" in the cryptocurrency field. In this environment, the days of cryptocurrency have become less easy, and even the way to advertise is about to be blocked.

In January of this year, Facebook announced a new advertising policy that officially banned cryptocurrency, binary options and ICO-related ads on the grounds of "misleading or deceptive promotional practices." Facebook's move is intended to reduce the number of Facebook users who are deceived by ads.

Following Facebook's footsteps, Twitter said a spokesperson for the site was aware of "manipulative behavior" related to cryptocurrencies and was taking steps to "prevent these types of accounts from engaging with other users in a fraudulent manner," such as those that use "get rich quick" promises to trick other Twitter users into displaying or retweeting suspected manipulative ads.

An unnamed source said Google is also considering officially banning cryptocurrency-related ads in March this year. According to a report by financial media on March 8, some advertisers who use Google Adwords to promote cryptocurrency-related businesses have indeed found that ad views have dropped significantly, while other advertisers have reported that not only have cryptocurrency ads been suspended, but their accounts have also been deactivated.

An unnamed ICO marketing company reported that the number of ad views brought by Adwords dropped by several thousand. The table below clearly reflects the change of the company's ad views within 24 hours.

This significant drop in ad views is evidence of the fact that cryptocurrency-related Adwords ads are defined as “restricted,” meaning that while they can be displayed, they cannot be seen by certain age groups, regions, and devices.

A user named anas b posted that her blockchain technology development company’s Adwords account was shut down due to “false statements” and there was no chance of it being restored.

“I have thoroughly analyzed www.blockobi.com and cannot find any violation of Google’s advertising policies. Our company’s main business is “blockchain technology development” and we do provide related services in the UAE. Please help us. The Google team did not give us the exact reason for shutting down our account.”

A user named Andrew H pointed out that cryptocurrency-related ads are restricted or blocked because cryptocurrency investments are very risky for customers, but there is no disclosure of any details about the risks in their ads, which is likely to have violated Google's current financial services rules.

Is it self-inflicted or over-regulation?

After a dramatic surge in late 2017, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum, as well as ICOs, have entered the mainstream, and with them, scammers and frauds.

There are already so many cryptocurrency-related scams and scammers on Twitter that it is annoying. On March 6, Emin Gün Sirer, an associate professor at Cornell University, tweeted about cryptocurrency scams, "The number of cryptocurrency-related scammers on Twitter recently is unbearable. You can't discuss any related topics in peace. There will always be scammers joining in, pretending to be a celebrity in the cryptocurrency field, and then trying to make a quick buck to defraud people of their money." Professor Sirer was very angry about this. This complaint even attracted the attention of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who replied to the tweet, "We are investigating."

However, at this stage it is difficult to accurately determine which users are using social media legitimately and which behaviors are engaging in fraudulent activities.

On Twitter, the account "Bitcoin" has been restricted. When visiting the banned user page, a warning pops up: "Note that this account has been temporarily restricted. You see this warning because there is some unusual activity in this account." According to the Bitcoin account's description of itself as "Bitcoin news, information and prices", there is no obvious violation of the law.

Kraken, one of the major cryptocurrency exchanges, also had its Twitter-verified customer support account banned for being "involved in potential malicious behavior," which prevented it from issuing timely warnings to alert customers to various online thefts of digital assets. However, Kraken's customer support account was unbanned soon after. Kraken was clearly not involved in any scam, and this was just a misjudgment by Twitter itself. This misjudgment further highlighted the issue of whether it was legal or not.

Twitter's method of applying website policies is indeed a bit unreasonable. If it can target malicious users who commit fraud, it will indeed put the interests of users at heart. Otherwise, arbitrarily shutting down cryptocurrency-related accounts will damage the reputation of cryptocurrency exchanges, related authors, investment bloggers and users, which will also make more Twitter users realize the good side of cryptocurrency.

Although there are some cases of accidental injury, the general direction of public opinion still supports users to be cautious about cryptocurrency-related advertisements. KitGuru gave some references to the situation on Twitter: "Most activities on Twitter are unregulated, and ICO and cryptocurrency-related hashtags have become a big platform for some people to commit fraud. Although Twitter has made improvements to quell related fraud, we recommend that you still be cautious about what you click on."

Facebook has the same attitude. Although it claims that it hopes people will continue to "explore and learn" about cryptocurrency products and services through the website, its product director Leathern said that many companies promoting binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies are not currently operating in good faith. Facebook's advertising policy will continue to improve the security of website advertisements, making it difficult for scammers to profit from Facebook.