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Instagram, Facebook Bans Influencers From Getting Paid To Promote Vaping, Tobacco, and Weapons (cnbc.com) 32

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Facebook and Instagram will no longer allow influencers to promote vaping, tobacco products or weapons on its platforms using "branded content." Instagram announced Wednesday it would no longer allow "branded content" that promotes those goods on either platform. In June, Instagram introduced a change that would let advertisers promote posts from influencers, or users who work with brands to promote services or products. Users see a "paid partnership with" tag on a post when viewing that branded content on Instagram.

This change closes a loophole in Facebook's advertising policies. Even though Facebook's ad policies have banned the advertising of vaping, tobacco and weapons, private users can post about them, and until now advertisers could theoretically put paid promotion behind those posts. The company said it would begin enforcement of the new rule "in the coming weeks." An Instagram spokesperson said this is the first time it's implementing restrictions around the type of items that can be promoted for branded content. The company also said branded content that promotes goods such as alcohol or diet supplements will require "special restrictions" once new policies go into effect next year.

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Instagram, Facebook Bans Influencers From Getting Paid To Promote Vaping, Tobacco, and Weapons

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  • You can still buy candy cigarettes. Most tobacco store I have been in sell them. They aren't expensive and kids like them. You can buy them online from a few sites, too. Give them to kids.

  • by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @08:52PM (#59534486) Journal

    So facebook and Instagram would strive to become like network television, and ban/heavily regulate the "sin ads", while a good portion of the rest of the internet dissent? Didn't work that well for the once powerful networks.

    • Weapons aren't a sin though, they are useful tools in the hands of good citizens.

      • by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @09:10PM (#59534522) Journal

        Weapons aren't a sin though, they are useful tools in the hands of good citizens.

        Agreed; it's just that good citizens are perhaps as common, as common sense.

        • Weapons aren't a sin though, they are useful tools in the hands of good citizens.

          Agreed; it's just that good citizens are perhaps as common, as common sense.

          Reminds me of a quote, what was it? oh yes now, it was something about "people are dumb", er ah hmm lessee "an average person", mumble-mumble "half are dumber" - George Somebody

          Yeah, that's it.

          • Good threads all revert to Carlin... an alternative reality Godwin's, if you will.

            • Good threads all revert to Carlin... an alternative reality Godwin's, if you will.

              Carlin's Corollary

          • Another quote: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

            In other words, one person with a gun is likely a responsible, good citizen. A thousand people with guns is an unruly mob that will do shit you can't even imagine.

        • Tens of millions of gun owners in the USA are NOT committing crimes with their guns.

          Meanwhile, most the gun crimes are committed by inner city criminal gangs.

          • You'll also find that tens of millions are vaping without consequences because they're not stupid enough to mix dangerous crap into their vaping fluids.

            • True, I was thinking of the smokers not vapers being "sinners", harming themselves, harming others, being a huge financial burden... besides stinking to high heaven.

        • This is absurd .... so, if good citizens were as common as common sense we would be seeing gun violence increasing in a staggering manner rather than dropping in a continual manner over time to the point that we are at half where we were just 30 years ago while the number of guns in the hands of civilians increase exponentially in that same time. If legal gun owners were the real problem, with 420 million guns in civilian hands legally, you would see the opposite.
      • >"Weapons aren't a sin though, they are useful tools in the hands of good citizens."

        While that is true, I don't really see how "vaping" or "tobacco" are "sins" either. It all depends on how one defines "sins."

        So I have to ask- do they also ban alcohol ads? Sugary or fattening or overly processed foods? Motorcycles? Roller-blading? Caffeinated products? Predatory lending agencies? Lawyers promising disability payments? Lottery? I could go on...

        • I don't see how vaping mainstream product is a sin (hurts self or others), tobacco is definitely harmful to oneself and second hand smoke increases chances of asthma in children and places financial burden on society.

          • >"I don't see how vaping mainstream product is a sin (hurts self or others)"

            That leads back to my previous posting. Is that "sin"? To "hurt self or others?" If that is the case, an absolutely massive variety of activity is on the table for consideration as "sin." As for vaping- that is not without risk or possible harm to self. It might be 10,000 times less than cigarettes, but it is most certainly not zero. So where is the cutoff for "harm" before something is not a sin. And why is harming yourse

            • I don't vape but I truly have seen not one shred of evidence mainstream commercial product is harmful. On the other hand, smoking has killed and maimed many family and friend of mine (yes, was their own damn stupid fault) and even harmed children who didn't smoke causing them to have severe asthma.

              Yes pipe smoking less risky but still causes throat and other cancer at 16 times the smoke-free populace's rate, I know several people that got it. One idiot that lived across the street even smoked through the

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        It is not about weapons of vaping it is all about mass corporate censorship, do not support the corporate message expect to be mass censored. Those idiots who continue to use mass censorship platforms, will only find social media turned into corporate advertising media, advertisements as the only approved content, broken up by more advertisements and the screens covered with advertisements.

        Do not buy and support the right products and you will be censored. Why people continue to adhere to advertising platfo

        • by Jzanu ( 668651 )
          Do you understand that companies who own things get to decide how customers use them? That has always been true, just as Internet-Lawyer BS by random unqualified people has always been a waste of everyone's time.
      • Weapons aren't a sin though, they are useful tools in the hands of good citizens.

        And our Constitution specifically has a provision guaranteeing firearms rights. So equating an ad for, say, a Smith and Wesson pistol, to an ad for Marlboro cigarettes is not only a bit dishonest, but seems to be a policy taking an affirmative position against a constitutionally protected right. Facebook can do whatever it likes. It's a privately owned platform. But the weapons ad ban seems like political virtue signaling.

    • by AK Marc ( 707885 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @10:13PM (#59534740)
      Part of it is that they know if they don't do something, the government will. They would rather over-react early and avoid government interference.
    • So facebook and Instagram would strive to become like network television, and ban/heavily regulate the "sin ads", while a good portion of the rest of the internet dissent? Didn't work that well for the once powerful networks.

      Considering I think it was the '70s when the updated "sin bans" hit TV, I'd say fifty years worked well enough. We'll take a look in 2060 and see where TwitFace(tm) etc. is then.

      PS: while those bans were being put into place, the ban for a human, heterosexual, married and spousal couple was removed and you could see them in the same *gasp* bed together! On TV!!

      • So facebook and Instagram would strive to become like network television, and ban/heavily regulate the "sin ads", while a good portion of the rest of the internet dissent? Didn't work that well for the once powerful networks.

        Considering I think it was the '70s when the updated "sin bans" hit TV, I'd say fifty years worked well enough. We'll take a look in 2060 and see where TwitFace(tm) etc. is then.

        PS: while those bans were being put into place, the ban for a human, heterosexual, married and spousal couple was removed and you could see them in the same *gasp* bed together! On TV!!

        Sextroverts, God will not take your mocking lightly.

        Ludicrous, right, yet censors of the era felt perfectly justified in allowing bloody violence as long as there was no mention of sex outside of marriage.

        • Ludicrous, right, yet censors of the era felt perfectly justified in allowing bloody violence as long as there was no mention of sex outside of marriage.

          It was a more subtle time, with lots of double-entendre's that would go over the kid's heads. F'rinstance, it was ok for a cowboy to kiss his horse back then.

        • as long as there was no mention of sex outside of marriage.

          ..and if a married couple went to be, it was in different beds.

  • by slashmydots ( 2189826 ) on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @09:39PM (#59534618)
    There goes my niche account that covers rail-mounting tobacco vapes.
  • US politics, movies, art, Germany... a new list for the good censor...
    Whats next for the good censor?
    Feel free to add new politics, terms, words, objects, history, reviews, art to be found sinful.
  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday December 19, 2019 @05:27AM (#59536220)

    Is it me or does that sound like a disease?

  • ALL "influencers" are basically running a scam.
  • "The company also said branded content that promotes goods such as alcohol or diet supplements will require "special restrictions" once new policies go into effect next year."

    Gotta squeeze a few more $$ outta those first. The political and social 'revenue' from banning tobacco (long the leper) and vaping (competition to the leper) is worth more than the cold, hard cash. I'd say the opposite is true because obviously nobody is talking about taking away alcohol...we tried that already and it didn't work!

    I'm s

"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will." -- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"

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