Remember how Facebook banned cryptocurrency advertising? Twitter and Google did the same right? Or did you forget? You might have forgotten, because you probably see adverts for currencies, start ups and ICO’s everywhere. Maybe you’re like me and see them in your sleep, thus can’t determine the difference between your subconscious and your reality, but then maybe I spend too much time reading cryptocurrency news? Why hasn’t the ban really worked? Obviously, cryptocurrency companies weren’t going to lie back and just accept their fate. Social networks are key in the marketing strategy of any business or company and in a democratic network, you would expect to be able to advertise your business so long as it follows legal regulations, therefore it is wrong that Facebook et al. have decided to ban cryptocurrency advertising, so I do sympathise with the companies that have suffered as a result of this. But, getting past the border patrol at Facebook is not as difficult of a task as one would expect. The ban, incorporates keywords such as ‘ICO’ and ‘Cryptocurrency’, so marketing experts around the world have put their heads together and decided that the use of the words ‘C-Currency’ and ‘C-Trading’ might be enough to trick the Facebook algorithms into thinking the advert is benign and nothing to do with cryptocurrency, indeed it is. Check out this Reddit thread, whilst it takes a slightly comical approach, you can see here that this cover up, seems to work- https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/8at0sq/when_facebook_bans_crypto_ads_so_you_call_them/?st=jftgf4dw&sh=38846a93 Right okay, it’s hardly ground-breaking and I’m pretty sure if people start referring to c-currency, Facebook will pick up on it quite quickly. What this does demonstrate however is the liquid nature of the internet and its capacity to adapt. Think of slang language and how many words where developed to mask intentions from authorities like the police, most notably during prohibition periods. Code-words and slang almost come naturally to us. Those who are attuned to the custom languages of slang are established as part of an in-group that can understand and relate to messages, the out-group, in this case the ‘Facebook Police’ are left to be none the wiser, meaning illicit and banned messages (or cryptocurrency advertisements) can make it into the network, undetected. As the out-group learn more about the language and the techniques used by the in-group, they can adapt but indeed, the in-group remain sophisticated enough to adapt at a quicker rate, thus driving a new language back underground. Basically, in short, no matter how much social networks and tech companies try to ban cryptocurrency advertising, the cryptocurrency advocates will just keep adapting and will keep developing new strategies to beat them. It’s the human anti-establishment nature and its very difficult to extinguish. So, you should expect to continue to see these adverts across your social networks. Yes they may be few and far between but they are still there, masked under the guise of c-currency and c-trading how about ‘eye see Oh’s’ and blok chainz too?