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> 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.

I second that. I actually see it as a positive. The "scammy stuff" that surrounds cryptocurrencies might generate demand and raise prices in the short term, but they are also very likely to deliver devestating blows to public perception and acceptance of cryptocurrencies in the long run.

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.

> 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.

Just because people do it doesn't mean he isn't right about it being ridiculous.

A legitimate ad for a crypto currency is the same usecase as a credit card: you want people to choose your currency/card for their transactions. Note that in both cases the legitimate use is transactions, and in both cases the real motivation is those who fall into a scam (in the case of a credit card high interest rates).

"let's illustrate we're not a monopoly and avoid monopoly regulation by using our market power to arbitrarily ban this one thing"

Mainstream media is driving campaigns against Google in many countries. They do need to do some PR and appear to do "good" things, even when it is quite clear that is just gesturing.

Acai berry is ok, but Bitcoin is bad?

One's ability to use (and therefore consume and therefore buy) acai berry product close-to-fundamentally limited by biology. Not only that, but there is a lag of as least 1 day between ordering an acai berry product and receiving it. Nobody is going to lose $200K investing in Acai berry.

Someone, especially a someone with a smartphone and poor impulse control, might lose $200K investing in a cryptocurrency. The sort of person who has that money to lose is either retired or reasonably wealthy, and therefore has the time or self-advocation skill to have an incremental influence on legislation or regulation.

Also, Acai Berry promotions are unlikely to fall foul of securities marketing laws, no matter how palpably dishonest they are

Yes, acaí berries are tasty and make a lovely addition to a healthy breakfast. Cryptocurrencies are Internet penny stocks with lofty aspirations.

Sorry if I'm out of the loop, but why would açaí be bad? I can walk a couple of minutes and buy a drink of açaí with guaraná, and I've never heard anything negative about these drinks.

Well: "very little research has been done in people on the health effects of acai products." [1]

In general, health supplements, miracle berries, etc. sit on dubious scientific ground: many have either not been extensively studied, or have been studied and shown to have no discernible effect (good or bad). The assertion here is not that açaí itself is bad per se, but that it is marketed as being healthy with little or no scientific evidence to back that up - and therefore that people are being convinced to waste their money through deceptive marketing, in that they imagine themselves to be getting a health benefit that likely does not exist.

[1] https://nccih.nih.gov/health/acai/ataglance.htm

> miracle berries

Is this commonly used to refer to acai berries? The only "miracle berry" I know of[1] is named for the effect on perception of flavor caused by the chemical miraculin, which is produced by the berry.

They're also extremely fun to introduce to people who have never tried them before, and I highly recommend them for your next party.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synsepalum_dulcificum

Ah, fair. I was using it here as more of a general term for all berries caught under the umbrella of various health crazes (antioxidants, etc.), but forgot about this berry (which, as you say, is a lot of fun to play around with).

Your comment is very right, but the conclusion is very, very wrong.

What do you think will cause regulation to happen more quickly:

1) Internet advertisers allowing scammy advertisements ?

2) Internet advertisers using their power for political aims and demonstrating it works for that ?

I think going for 2, as they inevitably do when they outlaw advertisements for almost any reason other than being outright forced by a court to do so, will make politicians see them (correctly or not) as an existential threat and get them regulated faster than you can say "machiavelli".

It's too late for (2) - the huge extent of unregulated foreign lie-based advertising in the last US election makes some kind of backlash inevitable.

(Domestic lie-based advertising is apparently fine in the US so long as the money is from the US)

> is dangerously close to becoming a regulated, or more regulated, industry

You're absolutely right.

And this is an easy, almost childishly obvious end-around to get at free speech. If speech is "political speech," then it is subject regulation suite A. If it is "advertising", then it is subject to regulation suite B. If it is "legal or medical advice," on and on.

Until there are no spaces left between the suites, and all speech is regulated.

Neither Facebook nor Google are ""pure"" free speech zones already, or ever were, and both already have categories of advert that you're not allowed.

Yet they are digital commons with near monopolies.

Should IRL streets be the only place where pure free speech is allowed?

Should the entire internet be a purely corporate space with no constitutional rights permitted, only private access?

If we are advised to avoid their near monopolies, should we simply wait for another corporate giant to take their place?

In order to exercise our rights of free speech, must we erect our own commercial entities? If so, in what way is the government we're supporting working for us?

The constitutional right is country-specific and also limited. You're not allowed to publish fraudulent stock prospectuses offline, even in America.

Good example.

The venn diagram between the free-speech-or-death people and the market-will-decide people is often very overlapped but your example is a concrete existing example where you COULD publish a false prospectus as an expression of your free speech but you would find yourself very quickly more poor and more incarcerated.

But in what way is banning all cryptocurrency-related advertising equivalent to publishing false prospectuses? It's not. There are infinite legitimate uses of advertising w/r/t cryptocurrency.

I agree we should disallow and punish publishing false prospectuses, but I disagree that cryptocurrency advertising should be completely banned from google. I think it's an overreach of monopolistic power.

As a corporate entity, google has too much power to choose what competing businesses succeed, and social progress spreads. I don't even own or have any interest but passing in cryptocurrency, but I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to make their businesses, subject of course to financial regulations.

I appreciate your adhering to the letter of the law, but I'm clearly speaking about ideals. In most democracies, laws are not the final world. We have the ability to change the laws based on our ideals as life evolves.

At one time, we were quite free in many countries, but large corporations have put strangleholds on free speech, a fact so well-documented I'm not compelled to source it here.

W/r/t your non-sequitor on fradulent stock prospectuses, that's moving the goalposts quite a bit from cryptocurrency advertising. It's so far afield, I'm struggling to understand why you included it in this discussion, but out of respect for you, I'm attempting to connect it to the previous ideas about cryptocurrency offerings. It seems you're implying cryptocurrency advertising is, by definition, fraud? Is that the case? Do you care to elucidate?

I posted my open questions because we should be thinking about what we want for societies around the world, not merely conforming to legal precedents set by corporate entities.

Oh, totally.

But I was making a different point:

I was talking about impending regulations (per GP), not about the speech permissiveness of private platforms.