How to Talk About Weed on Social Media Without Getting Banned

Social media may be a place where you hide food, cats, and landscape photos, or it may be a convenient way to keep in touch with distant friends and family, but it is arguably a vital center of modern human culture anyway. Sure, it’s important for brands, content creators and influencers who keep it running, but even more important for conglomerates that launch platforms to keep ad dollars flowing and the balance of power begins to emerge.

People who talk openly about cannabis, sex, activism and other topics seem to be deprived of social media reach, and the impact is enormous. Users feel like their audience is shrinking , their accounts are downsized, and their content is isolated from various growth paths.

Media platform Salty recently published a report and analysis of content censorship among marginalized users who are BIPOC, LGBTQIA +, large, disabled, sex workers, or some combination of these. The study shows alarmingly that “[d] disproportionate removal of content results in marginalized groups facing serious challenges and repercussions when trying to exploit online spaces such as Instagram.”

While not all marijuana users are marginalized, many marginalized people use marijuana. Cannabis use is also strictly controlled in communities of color . If you add up the existing tax on some personalities with this online cannabis tax, you can find your account in the no-go.

How did weed get on the shitty social media list?

Some of us have been working on platforms like Instagram for almost a decade – ever since it was an alternative to Facebook, not a Facebook product . Until 2015, there were no advertisements on IG. Now whistleblower Frances Haugen has confirmed what many have been saying all along: for this platform (and, frankly, everyone else), profit is paramount.

You may have already heard about XCheck , the program, which ” shall be entered in the white list” of specific users, to protect them from the moderation of content, according to which we are all forced to live. To the layman, it looks like they were protecting some users in order to protect their finances, and that is exactly what Haugen claims. But why is the talk of weed being controlled – and can anything be done to avoid the shadow ban?

Courtney Wu, CEO of Amnesia Media , works with brands and influencers to help them succeed on social media. We’ve spoken over email about a myriad of policies that can lead to unequal content moderation.

Wu believes inconsistency is one of the hardest things to navigate with. “Trying to monitor all cannabis content to comply with ever-changing state and local laws is a big problem with moderation, in which social media platforms have not invested.”

This means that while you may be in a legal state, your content may still be removed because the drug is federal illegal and still banned in many areas, a circumstance that turns out to be incredibly frustrating for both the growing industry and for her clients.

According to Wu, “These platforms have implemented general rules that are sometimes applied arbitrarily, and the question of whether content is being violated depends on the interpretation of strict algorithms or inconsistent reviewers.”

It’s not just about advertising

Ray Ting, co-founder of Amnesia, highlighted an important point: Cannabis messages aren’t just about sales or branding. Weed is now a cultural institution and is considered a consumer by 12% of the population.

“Social media platforms are interested in building support systems for as many content creators as possible, but their mindset about cannabis creators needs to evolve,” he said. “These are moms, dads, brothers, sisters, business owners, athletes, you name it – if they legally consume and share cannabis consumption with an older audience, they should be able to freely share that part of their lives online. … “

Other platforms are slightly more intelligent about cannabis, although not geared towards it. Twitter allows registered brands to advertise only in Canada, where cannabis is federally legal, and allows for topical CBD ads in some US states, while non-commercial users can post about weed without delay. Twitch appears to allow consumption in streams if the user is in an authorized legal market, but that may change as advertisers weigh – after all, Twitch has recently become another social media platform for tit censoring.

It might seem logical for a company that makes money selling ads to enforce bans on illegal content, but cannabis is not illegal everywhere, and where it remains, people are asking for reform. A poll by Pew found that 91% of Americans support federal legalization, which makes social media bans almost authoritarian.

Not everyone wants to monetize their content on these platforms – for most, it’s just a way to communicate. It’s unfair to punish people for content because of monetization, but it’s important to keep these forms of media in mind: if it’s free, then the product is YOU. If you are a product and they cannot sell it, you cannot sell to them.

Ting also mentioned the elephant in chat, recent whistleblower posts about Facebook’s moderation policy or lack of it. “In light of Facebook’s revelations, social media platforms are clearly aware of how much the content on their platforms creates culture and culture. community, and while they’ve taken the position of a benevolent content moderator, we now know this couldn’t be further from the truth. What remains true is that content creators play a key role in defining, creating and spreading culture, and cannabis is part of our cultural spirit. “

Motives for censorship

The anonymous online collective The Greed Rush is using social media to draw public attention to its industry analysis of cannabis hypocrisy and fraud.

When asked via DM about cannabis censorship, they shared something instructive: “The censorship of cannabis on social media has been around for years. After a long delay in collaborating, one might wonder if big technologies are creating a problem in order to present a possible solution: a progressive social media platform that allows or even encourages cannabis and psychedelic content as these sectors continue to emerge. What reasons does big technology have to suppress the industry? The answer to this question is likely to lead a person down the rabbit hole. “

Until the big reports dropped a few weeks ago, we could only suspect that profit was a motive for the suppression of cannabis content; we still don’t have concrete evidence, but now it certainly seems much more credible. At the time of this writing, requests for comment from Facebook have not been answered. (Doo.)

How to avoid blocking / shadow ban

Amnesia and others who work closely with content creators and cannabis brands must adapt to changing algorithms and expectations, but CEO Wu gives some tips to keep your account safe from banhammer:

• Focus on telling your unique story rather than just talking about products or tons of consumption.
• Avoid depicting anything that resembles a pack of cigarettes.
• Avoid mixing cannabis and alcohol in your content.
• Do not try to sell directly or post content that could be construed as actively trying to sell (for example, product launches, price discussions, or even use of money-related phrases such as “spend your money”).
• Adhere to a consistent process of reviewing what you post to social media before posting.

It may seem like a minor inconvenience that people are not always able to publish information about weed, but between its medicinal usefulness and cultural importance, this censorship is detrimental to livelihoods, income, and a sense of community. If social networks like Facebook have a weed problem because they can’t monetize it, that’s bad for us.

What people want from social media platforms doesn’t always match what they want to allow, and that’s true. But given how many hate speech manage to stay awake, even after being reported , while nipples and clouds of smoke are punished and removed, they don’t seem safe for everyone.