SID view on Facebook and Google announced Ads ban

Article by: Jose Merino, Chairman of SID Limited

Date: March 19th, 2018.

Firstly, SID Limited is proud to announce the addition of two more distinguished Board Advisors. Simon Cocking, the undisputed number one global Crypto & Blockchain influencer on “icoBench”. Vladimir Nikitin, renowned member of the crypto community making a meteoric leap to number 6 on www.icoBench.com.

Let’s remember the Company mission of SID:

“To lift as many people out of poverty as possible, by means of giving those less fortunate a way to access free internet through nearby users who Share Internet Data with other nearby SID Users.”

SID (https://ShareInternetData.com), had released its 1st commercial APP for both Android and iPhone to their respective stores on 8th February 2018. The SID product is currently still free to use, until the SID token is created and quoted in the future on a public exchange.

SID recently concluded the feasibility study on which blockchain we would allow future trades of tokens for shared megabytes by nearby SID users. Two were selected, Stellar and Bix Ledger, and currently the R&D software coding is on its way to integrate the interfaces between SID and the BIX Ledger. The target is to complete that development on or before the future public token sale. This will then allow any potential future public token buyer to actually test the principle of trading tokens for shared Megabytes between SID users through a SID APP variant that we will make available on the Google Play Store.

In future we may also decide to integrate a SID interface to Stellar or any such other similar cost of transactions blockchain as a long-term business protection, as competition between different 3rd party block-chains will ensure that transaction costs will always remain competitive in the long term when mass adoption would be achieved.

There is a real buzz of excitement and optimism around SID:

-      SID management has been meeting with medium sized potential equity investors. This has been well received by some investment firms who received the full investor packs from SID under NDA.

-      A follow up meeting with a major global WiFi internet sharing provider has been scheduled for next month. If successful, this could result in a press announcement as yet another endorsement of SID by a major player in our industry sector. This would be in addition to the endorsement by a 1st third party firm, namely a franchise of Dunkin Donut called Dunkin Coffee.

-      The interest for our SID project and company mission was also clearly measurable on my own LinkedIn feed and has been little short of amazing. Coming from under a thousand LinkedIn contacts at the end of January 2018 to just over 15 thousand today is just mind blowing, yet very encouraging.

-      Facebook banned ICO related Ads as of last month and a few days ago Google announced as of June it will follow in Facebook footsteps, banning any crypto or ICO related Ads on all their Companies´ marketing channels, insinuating it will also include all the companies they own, such as Instagram, YouTube, etc.

This last point is likely to increase the marketing budget requirements for any future token sales in the crypto – blockchain community, even for those who do everything by the book in full compliance of all laws, regulations and recommendations whilst building up a legitimate business. This means that the entry ticket for new players such as SID is almost certain to rise.

How ironic things got for Facebook!!! The man I admired so much, who promised only a few years ago “free internet to the poor”, namely Mark Zuckerberg, who started his own company on the basis of net neutrality and that same man who didn’t budge on censorship regulations if he were to enter the Chinese market place, somehow has turned 180 degrees.

Firstly, that promise of providing free internet to the poor, turned out to become www.internet.org and is mainly an acquisition marketing channel to attract new emerging market Facebook users. Yes, we could accept that Facebook didn’t have the technology in place to carry through that pledge for free internet BUT SID HAS THAT TECHNOLOGY. So why is he making it so difficult for companies like SID who does have that technology he promised from succeeding through his ban on a legitimate fully legally compliant future token sale funding channel. Unless maybe Mark Zuckerberg was thinking on delivering on his promise and lift people out of poverty by giving them a way for free internet access together as Facebook and SID!

Mark Zuckerberg disliked any attempt to censor his company by China and yet is willing to apply censorship on Ads to a specific market segment even though they are not illegal and in some cases are supported in certain countries by actual explicit rules and regulations or laws. This makes no sense! Actually crypto, blockchain and ICOs are not illegal almost in all countries, except for ICOs being illegal only in a few, such as in China and Korea. So again, why would Mark Zuckerberg´s Facebook do onto others globally (including onto SID) what China did onto him?

And last but not least, the biggest technology start-up icon in history, Google announced it will follow the same path as Facebook. Both are becoming Judge and jury on something that is not deemed explicitly illegal, except for in China and Korea.

Google founder forget his own start-up principles!!! I still have vivid memories of Larry Page, Google´s co-Founder and current CEO of Google´s parent company Alphabet Inc., when was an iconic advocate of un-censored internet and actually Google got virtually kicked out of China by not accepting to obey by the regulated government censorship applicable under Chinese law and for a while even had moved operations from China into Hong Kong at a certain point in time.

On top of that, Larry Page had built up his own massively profitable business funded quite substantially by the masses. Let me explain, it is the Users themselves who pay for the advertising internet data traffic for which not the Users but for which Google is being paid for by their advertisers. So, if the masses are good enough to fund Google and Facebook alike in the past and likely to continue into the future, to the tune of many Billions of dollars of internet data paid for by the Users themselves to upload the Users meta data to Google and Facebook and to download the actual Ads from Facebook and Google alike, why do they not allow crypto & blockchain companies to obtain funding from those same Users pool that are funding Facebook and Google?

That could be possibly be seen as a potential abuse of dominant position in the Ads market place, which in combination of Facebook and Google owned companies together is getting suspiciously close to potential cartel forming with both cutting off Ads to a specific marketing segment, within a short space of time from each other. Specially not acceptable because the Ads they will ban are for a specific targeted industry sector who are NOT deemed explicitly illegal by law in any western country.

It raises the question if Facebook and Google believe they are above Governments who make the laws and enforce them or even worse if they believe they are the law! Actually, no government, except for a very few, such as for example China and Korea have outlawed ICOs but only in their own countries whilst Facebook and Google plan to outlaw or in other words ban ICO Ads at a global scale on the basis of any laws whatsoever,

Entrepreneurs will find a way, this being the spirit throughout history, through this and succeed. In the long term, I guess, it will mean loss of revenue for Facebook and Google which other players picking-up the void in that specific Ads market segment over time.

In my view, now that these two giants, who up to now probably controlled most of the crypto, blockchain and ICO Ads traffic, have decided to block and censor this industry segment indiscriminately: THIS COULD WELL ENABLE THE ONLY 2 COUNTRIES WHO UNTIL NOW HAD BANNED ICOs BY LAW TO MAYBE LEGALLY ALLOW ICOs UNDER A CERTAIN REGULATORY FRAMEWORK. Paving the way for Chinese online giants such as Baidu, Alibaba, WeChat or even a new entrant funded by China or Russia to take over that global Ads market segment being abandoned by Facebook and Google. As they say “one man´s loss is another man´s gain”. The crypto, blockchain, ICO market cake will be therefore sliced differently, by self-excluding Facebook and Google from the party. Let´s hope that Facebook and Google or at least one of them reconsider their position on this, from both a financial and morale stance. I somehow doubt that they will, so most likely the crypto, blockchain funding market place will go on thriving without these two household names.

Ending on a different yet positive note, SID will be actively seeking later-on this year once funding has been overcome, a future Board Advisor, specifically someone who will support our mission statement in the long term, namely to help the less fortunate get basic free internet access from nearby SID smartphone Users. This can be achieved by implementing in our system a feature allowing the earning of tokens in exchange for consuming Ads, without paying a penny. Those tokens can then be used to pay for received internet data shared by other nearby SID smartphone Users.