Marijuana And Drug Groups Press Meta About Shadowbanning And Censorship Of Content On Facebook And Instagram
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Nearly 100 organizations in the U.S. and abroad have signed on to an open letter to Meta—the social media behemoth behind Facebook, Instagram and Threads—condemning the company for its censorship of marijuana- and drug-related content, which can limit users’ access to health, policy reform and educational materials.
“Accounts committed to public education, legal and policy advocacy, research dissemination, and harm reduction services—including those of licensed healthcare professionals, nonprofits, and legal businesses—have been routinely shadowbanned, deplatformed, or had their posts removed with little explanation or recourse, despite operating in full compliance with local laws,” says the letter that was sent on Monday.
“This suppression is not merely an inconvenience,” the letter, which was led by Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), adds; “it is a form of digital marginalization.”
Among the dozens of other groups that have already signed on to the statement are Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), Marijuana Policy Project, NORML, Harm Reduction International and others in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia.
“Censorship of science, public health, legal, and public policy discourse is not an act of neutrality; it causes harm.”
As of Monday, the petition is also open for individuals to add their names.
“So many groups we work with have been flagged for promoting get out the vote efforts, policy panels and events, information about preventing opioid overdoses, and more,” SSDP’s executive director, Kat Murti, said in a statement.
SSDP has also repeatedly faced challenges with its own social media accounts, Murti said, “greatly limiting our ability to reach our audience and hobbling our efforts to reduce harmful drug use and promote necessary policy change.”
At the beginning of this year, Meta announced that it was revising its content moderation policies and “getting rid of a number of restrictions…on topics…that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate.” It was part of the company’s move away from intensive moderation of controversial topics like immigration and gender.
The company didn’t immediately change its practices around marijuana—continuing to block search results on its platform for terms such as “marijuana” and “cannabis” and instead displaying a notice encouraging users to report “the sale of drugs.”
While the company appears to have quietly updated that practice, the letter says that Meta continues to disproportionately and overzealously target topics such as cannabis, psychedelics and harm reduction.
The letter urges Meta to make five specific reforms to ensure access to what it calls “crucial conversations impacting the health and wellbeing of our community”:
- End discriminatory bans and shadowbans on accounts related to cannabis, psychedelics, and harm reduction when they operate within legal guidelines.
- Establish clear, transparent, and consistent content policies that distinguish between promotion of the sale of illegal substances and legitimate drug education and advocacy.
- Create a dedicated appeals and accountability process specific to drug-related content that includes community stakeholders and subject-matter experts.
- Engage in regular dialogue with the psychedelic, cannabis, and harm reduction communities to better understand our work and co-create equitable guidelines for content moderation.
“Censorship of science, public health, legal, and public policy discourse is not an act of neutrality; it causes harm,” the letter concludes, noting the increasing scientific evidence for the effectiveness of cannabis and psychedelic therapies. “As the cultural and legal landscapes around these issues evolve, so too must your policies.”
SSDP’s Murti said the group alerted Meta to obstacles caused by the company’s censorship more than a year ago, but that it is “continuing to see members of our community be deprived of access to online fundraising tools and digital advertising.”
Groups have also been “denied the opportunity to livestream panels and other events” and had posts about science, health and public policy “be artificially limited in reach,” she said. In some cases, Meta has also deactivated accounts.
While many platforms have policies against the illegal sale of drugs or require age-gating for content around controlled substances, critics say Meta’s filtering has often been overbroad.
SSDP asserted in a press release on Monday, for example, that “cannabis and psychedelic-related content, as well as public health information about drug checking and lifesaving naloxone, is backed by education, research, and blossoming legislative reform, yet Meta’s moderation policies fail to distinguish between illegal activity and legal, evidence-based content meant to educate and support communities.”
It’s unclear when Meta may have enacted the recent change to search filtering, nor has the company said whether other changes are forthcoming. Meta and Facebook press contacts did not responded to emails from Marijuana Moment sent on Friday.
Morgan Fox, political director at NORML, said last week that he hoped the search issue had been fixed for good.
“I hope these apparent changes are permanent and pervasive, and not just a temporary fix with limited scope—which we have seen in the past,” he wrote in an email to Marijuana Moment. “Without structural changes to content moderation and a clear process for addressing instances of inappropriate censorship in a more systemic manner, advocates and educators are going to have to remain vigilant to ensure that social media platform users can continue to effectively access their information.”
It’s an issue the legal cannabis industry has long grappled with. Fox noted in an email on Monday that he first started a petition on the issue in 2018 on behalf of the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA).
“It looked like the issue had been resolved for a while,” he said, “but it was only temporary.”
One cannabis-focused content creator who’s called out Meta in the past is cartoonist Brian “Box” Brown, who’s previously complained to Marijuana Moment that the company has flagged his posts, limited his accounts’ visibility and “killed my reach and growth.”
“My mind was boggled,” he said earlier this year. “My comic strip thats frankly TOO wonky about policy is getting flagged for selling drugs.”
In an email last about the search function, Brown said he’s picked up on a shift in Meta’s handling of his and others’ content.
“It’s weird,” he said. “I’m not even totally sure what’s happened. *Something* has changed. Stuff isn’t getting suppressed in the way it was before. But at the same time, it kinda is.”
Unlike in recent months, “I’m not getting warnings every day,” the cartoonist continued, but some posts still seem to get throttled.” He noted that other accounts, such as “a bunch of hashmakers and other influencers” have moved to other platforms after Meta “nuked” their accounts.
“It’s kind of a mixed bag,” he said, adding that he’s going stop censoring his own content—which he’d begun doing to avoid being flagged by the company’s algorithms—and see what happens going forward.
Ahead of this past holiday season, vape device manufacturer Puffco similarly complained about Instagram and parent company Meta for what it described as an overly aggressive campaign to flag and remove cannabis-related content. A video from the company asserted that Instagram’s policing of cannabis posts by brands and individuals effectively stifles efforts at community building among veterans, medical marijuana patients and legal adult-use consumers.
“The world didn’t want us, so we made a safe space for our community on Instagram where we could just be ourselves and share what we love,” the video said. “Isn’t that the point of this place?”
Despite more and more states having legalized and regulated marijuana for adults, social media companies have regularly flagged cannabis-related content as violations of their terms of service. The practice has led to suspensions of accounts belonging to state-regulated cannabis brands, informational websites and individual content creators, who now often create backup accounts to avoid the loss of a key line of communication to thousands of followers.
In 2018, concerns arose that Facebook was “shadowbanning” marijuana pages, including those of state cannabis regulatory agencies, by blocking them from search results. An internal presentation at the company the next year noted that it was considering loosening cannabis restrictions, but many have continued to run into problems
In July 2023, Meta announced that it had updated its cannabis advertising policy to permit the promotion of some non-ingestible CBD products and also loosen restrictions on hemp ads. It said businesses could begin promoting the sale of CBD if they receive written approval from Meta and if the products are certified with the payment compliance company Legitscript and comply with local laws. Ads also could not target people under 18.
“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services on our technologies,” Meta said. However, it added that “advertisers will continue to be prohibited from running ads that promote THC products or cannabis products containing related psychoactive components.”
Earlier that year, Meta faced criticism over a feature of its microblogging app, Threads, for prompting users with a “get help” message about federal substance misuse resources if they searched for “marijuana,” various psychedelics and other controlled substances. Meanwhile, alcohol- and tobacco-related searches were exempt from the prompt. The feature no longer appears to be in place.
Twitter, now known as X, had a similar practice in place in 2020, cautioning users about “marijuana” searches as part of a partnership with SAMHSA. Alcohol and tobacco were excluded from the search restriction. But in late 2022, after being acquired by Elon Musk, Twitter suspended that practice.
Also, Twitter since updated its cannabis advertising policy, aiming to give cannabis businesses that are “certified advertisers” the ability to feature “packaged” cannabis products in the ad creative that’s promoted on the social media site.
Google, for its part, updated its policy in January 2023, making it so companies can promote Food and Drug Administration- (FDA) approved drugs containing CBD, as well as topical CBD products with no more than 0.3 percent THC.
Video game streaming company Twitch, meanwhile, updated its branding policy for streamers, prohibiting promotions of marijuana businesses and products while explicitly allowing alcohol partnerships. Twitch had previously clarified rules in a way that was inclusive of cannabis—exempting marijuana-related references from the list of banned usernames, just as it does for alcohol and tobacco.
In an update to Apple’s iPhone software that was instituted in 2022, users were given an option to track medications and learn about possible drug interactions with other substances—including marijuana.
In 2021, Apple ended its policy of restricting cannabis companies from conducting business on its App store. The marijuana delivery service Eaze subsequently announced that consumers were able to shop and pay for products on its iPhone app for the first time.
In contrast to Apple, Google’s Android app hub updated its policy in 2019 to explicitly prohibit programs that connect users with cannabis, no matter whether it is legal in the jurisdiction where the user lives.
In 2022, New York marijuana regulators asked the social media app TikTok to end its ban on advertising that involves the word “cannabis” as they worked to promote public education on the state’s move to legalize.
Read the full SSDP sign-on letter to Meta below:
Snoop Dogg Expands His Cannabis Brand Again, With New THCA Hemp Product Sales Website
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