I remember a few years ago when @ned did a post about the possibility of running ads on Steemit. Back then the topic was open to discussion within the community and he talked about a profit-sharing model for ads that were placed on an individual's post. That was back when the crypto bull run had everyone excited about different ways to monetize the platform besides Steem/SBD rewards and much of that enthusiasm faded when the price dipped in 2018.
I understand there are overhead costs the company needs to cover and selling ads is one way to pay for them. I even understand their decision to not share in any of the potential advertising revenue and am fine with that. After all, we as users are getting incredible value from using this platform without the risks and costs of running a blockchain or the hassles of keeping the site running.
But what I don't understand is why would Steemit place ads from companies with questionable business practices?
I saw a banner ad at the top of the page on Steemit today from a Bitcoin mining company called MiningSky.io, a company that offers cloud mining contracts for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
What is Bitcoin Cloud Mining?
Cloud mining or cloud hashing enables users to purchase mining capacity that of hardware in data centers.
Two operators, Hashflare and Genesis Mining, have been offering contracts for several years.
Bitcoin cloud mining enables people to earn Bitcoins without bitcoin mining hardware, bitcoin mining software, electricity, bandwidth or other offline issues.
Bitcoin cloud mining, sometimes called cloud hashing, enables users to buy the output of Bitcoin mining power from Bitcoin mining hardware placed in remote data centers.
Then all Bitcoin mining is done remotely in the cloud. This enables the owners to not deal with any of the hassles usually encountered when mining bitcoins such as electricity, hosting issues, heat, installation or upkeep trouble. source
Mining Sky claims to be a smart cloud mining service developed for affordable cryptocurrencies mining, meanwhile designed to provide frequent mining payouts within the shortest possible time frame.
Some mining companies are legit but there have been some that turned out to be scams after taking peoples money for two-year contracts those companies closed shop and took everyone's money. So, before investing in a mining contract you should do some research on the company to see if they do indeed make payments to their customers and that the maintenance fees are really what they say they are.
I did some research on MiningSky and couldn't find a single good review, in fact, all I could find on them was complaints from people who were scammed out of thousands of dollars, higher than advertised maintenance fees, non-existent customer service, and untrue claims about the company as whole such as when they started.
This site appears to be passing itself off as MiningSky.com which is a Canadian company founded in 2016 but the domain for MiningSky.io was registered in 2019 and appears to be a scam site.
As mentioned earlier, It's understandable that Steemit Inc. needs to be sustainable to continue operating and advertising is one solution to achieving that, but whoever is selling advertising to companies needs to do a better job of vetting those companies before placing those ads on the platform.
I would like to think that the Steem community, for the most part, is a community that has each others backs. We don't rip each other off and have systems in place to call out scammers. We have flags, reputation scores, and now a downvote button for a reason. So we can self regulate and to help keep people and the content they post legit, but there is no downvote button or flag on the banner ad for MiningSky.io that is plastered all over Steemit leaving users of this platform open to being scammed by that ad and others like it.
Steemit Inc and the people selling ad placement on the platform need to do the vetting necessary to protect its users from being abused. No amount of ad revenue is worth opening up your user base to fraud. It would be a shame if even one user of this wonderful platform were to get ripped off by a company like MiningSky.io after clicking an ad on the Steemit website and I would really be upset if that person clicked that ad when they visited my post.
I have no control of what ads Steemit places on my blog but the least they could do is make sure the ads they place are legit companies that are not scamming people. Am I the only one who thinks that is a reasonable request? Do we need a @steemcleaners for the advertising department?
Also, the banner ad often blocks the top of the posting page so I cannot access the title box to add my post title. Is it possible to remove ads from the publishing editor page so we can have full access to the screen when publishing a post?
If anyone knows who the ad manager is for Steemit please let me know or pass this post on to them and if you have found other ads placed on Steemit to be of questionable validity let the community know. We have each others back here and Steemit Inc. so should you.
What do you think about advertising on Steemit?
