Marijuana And Drug Groups Press Meta About Shadowbanning And Censorship Of Content On Facebook And Instagram

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”:

1. *End discriminatory bans and shadowbans* on accounts related to
cannabis, psychedelics, and harm reduction when they operate within legal
guidelines.
2. *Establish clear, transparent, and consistent content policies* that
distinguish between promotion of the sale of illegal substances and
legitimate drug education and advocacy.
3. *Create a dedicated appeals and accountability process specific to
drug-related **content* that includes community stakeholders and
subject-matter experts.
4. *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:*

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The post Marijuana And Drug Groups Press Meta About Shadowbanning And
Censorship Of Content On Facebook And Instagram appeared first on Marijuana
Moment.