Spanish Securities Watchdog Calls for Search Engines, Social Network Operators to Stop Promoting Unregistered Investment Platforms – The CNMV, Spanish securities regulator, has ordered social media platforms and big search engines to quit advertising platforms which aren’t registered to provide financial or investing services.
If these corporations fail to solve the issue, the regulator has stated that it will take matters into its own hands and promote regulation on the subject.
The Spanish securities regulator CNMV is concerned about the amount of advertising space given to unregistered investment platforms by large internet firms.
Rodrigo Buenaventura, the organization’s president, addressed the matter in a speech titled “Supervisor, Cryptoactives, and Advertising: Good Practice in the Sector,” in which he clarified the CNMV’s position on the topic.
According to Buenaventura:
“I believe it is unreasonable for companies to display paid advertising on social networks or search engines while benefitting from advertisements from pirate firms that are openly identified as unregistered platforms.”
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Furthermore, Buenaventura stated that these businesses are endangering their own consumers by advertising such services to them, forcing them to fall victim to numerous scams.
The group has previously identified non-authorized platforms as the source of the majority of the fraud cases currently before Spanish courts, which have resulted in millions of dollars in losses.
These issues, according to Buenaventura, could have been avoided if platforms had used the lists that the CNMV and other European agencies frequently provide to prevent unregistered platforms from making use of advertising services.
In this regard, he stated:
“We’re asking them to guarantee, through self-regulation, that their networks or pages will not be used to promote fraud and maybe criminal activity in exchange for more money.”
The Spanish authority will give these companies some time to implement the changes outlined above in order to protect their users from such services. However, if its demands are not met, it also stated that it will take matters into its own hands by proposing rules to compel firms to meet these standards.
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According to El Mundo, CNMV sources claimed that this regulation would be proposed in a matter of weeks. These companies claim that technical challenges, approval from parent corporations, and time to study and execute steps have stopped them from complying with the standards.
The CNMV has already enacted legislation requiring crypto-related advertising campaigns with a reach of more than 100,000 users to inform the regulator ahead of time.
