Facebook brought the hammer down on “misleading financial products” on Tuesday, January 30, by effectively banning any and all advertisements for cryptocurrency exchanges, initial coin offerings, and binary options trading from any Facebook platform. That includes Facebook proper, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger.
“Two of our core advertising principles outline our belief that ads should be safe, and that we build for people first. Misleading or deceptive ads have no place on Facebook,” Facebook said.
It might sound like a sweeping policy, and that’s because it is. Facebook claims the policy was designed to be broad, so it might be refined in the future. According to Facebook, the goal here is to protect consumers from potential scams, first and foremost. Accommodating potentially hazardous financial service companies isn’t a part of the equation.
“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,” Facebook’s release states. “This policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices, and enforcement will begin to ramp up across our platforms including Facebook, Audience Network, and Instagram.”
As interest in cryptocurrency skyrockets, it makes sense that Facebook would slam the door on ads that could prey on its users. Cryptocurrency is notoriously hard to regulate and its volatility makes it fertile ground for scammers and predators. Earlier in January, one of Japan’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges lost $400 million in NEM tokens to theft. It wasn’t part of a scam, granted, but it does illustrate the larger problem here: There’s a lot of money flying around in cryptocurrency exchanges and even the legitimate ones have a hard time securing their investors’ money.
“We also understand that we may not catch every ad that should be removed under this new policy, and encourage our community to report content that violates our Advertising Policies. People can report any ad on Facebook by clicking on the upper right-hand corner of the ad,” Facebook said.
Cryptocurrency advocates might see this move as unnecessarily draconian, but given the recent scrutiny Facebook has been under, a crackdown on cryptocurrency advertisements makes sense — addressing a problem before it gets out of hand.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.