Chinese-owned widely popular app TikTok has changed its policy to block all financial products and services, including preventing influencers from supporting cryptocurrency.
The firm says the change is targeted at preventing the increasing abuse of the platform to commit scams and other dishonest actions that might infringe upon someone’s privacy.
But it has come only weeks after the CCP cracked down on crypto-mining over their alleged “climate concerns,” forcing miners to move out of China. TikTok’s new policy will harm legitimate financial companies, which won’t be able to take advantage of influencers for promotion.
Without the ability to pay for advertising or influencers, cryptocurrency’s time on TikTok could be over. However, their ad policy, which lets financial services advertise to those older than 18, stays unchanged.
TikTok changed their policy about cryptocurrency
In their new policy, the company says under the title that “Globally Prohibited Industries” that all content promoting financial products are not allowed, including credit cards, loans, trading platforms, forex trading, cryptocurrency and so on.
Many crypto-centered companies use influencers on the TikTok platform, which is known as “Fintok” advisors, to increase their reach. Sometimes this leads to some of them delivering unregulated and misleading financial advice about putting money into assets such as Bitcoin and Dogecoin to young investors who wish to grow their funds quickly without any understanding of crypto.
Google follows
Just like TikTok, even Google took a hard stance on scammy ads on its platform. A few weeks back, Google UK had said that from Sept. the company will request that financial services companies prove their identities to reduce the scam advertisements on the platform.
Meanwhile, the CCP has increased their crackdown on crypto with authorities recently blocking the trading in highly volatile coins in the Anhui province to get the power consumption lowered to a manageable level. The action effectively started in late May, starting with large mining hubs like Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, and Xinjiang, which led to a massive decrease in the crypto market. Before the crackdown, China had made up around 70 per cent of total Bitcoin production.
Author: Scott Dowdy
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