theymos asked this for obvious reasons. What I'm curious about is whether any law enforcement was there behind the decision.
Of course it's because of law enforcement and the 3 letter agencies[1], theymos is trying to avoid future trouble and I think it was the right call, he also stoped offering forum adverts a while back, maybe it's related? It's better to separate the forum and its staff from endorsing any gray/black services.
Nevertheless, staff were asked to stop advertising mixing services. We are promoting mixing services. Will it be an issue for bitcointalk forum in general? What about the people advertising the mixer? Would it be better to quit advertising mixer services? I was thinking about this ever since I have seen OmegaStarScream's quoted post. Is it time to think about this?
I'm not a lawyer, but as far as I understand the forum itself is protected under section 230[2] that protects "interactive computer services" from any liability as a publisher for what the users post.
As for users advertising mixers or any other service really, they can do whatever they want as long as it's not promoting something illegal (e.g. drugs, etc...)
[1]
https://wiki.c2.com/?ThreeLetterAgencies[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230