Challenges facing the cannabis industry on social media apps including Instagram and Facebook have come to a crisis point.
It’s become increasingly common to see cannabis industry brand pages with massive, devote followings, deactivated for violating community guidelines. Because of the strict guidelines on “illegal drugs,” and marijuana being lumped into that category regardless of operations in fully legal states, Meta, the company that owns Instagram and Facebook, has cracked down hard on cannabis. Even using the best tips and guideposts for avoiding deletion and shadowbans on social, companies and influencers are getting flagged left and right.
What can be done?
Social media competition is fierce. For years, people within the legal weed industry have speculated that companies purposefully use the “report” feature on many social media apps against their competitors in the space.
Are brands and cannabis influencers really weaponizing social media? “100% yes,” says Tammy Pettigrew, educator and business owner in the cannabis space with a massive following on social as The Cannabis Cutie. “I definitely think that competitors are using this as a tool for taking out their competition. When cannabis brands have stuff taken down for hate speech and bullying, as soon as it’s reviewed, they say it was a mistake. I’ve had my account deactivated 5 times. Every post I’ve had taken down except 1 has been an infraction on bullying and hate speech. Honestly, it’s brilliant.” Pettigrew was on stage for Core Conversations at Hall of Flowers speaking on this exact subject. Pettigrew offers tips on diversifying your digital portfolio to deal with the issues cannabis brands have at Meta. “You can’t allow these companies to control your business,” says Pettigrew. “If I lost my Instagram, I’d be in trouble. Create a newsletter, create a blog, expand as far as you can go. Try not to be at their mercy.”
A new cannabis-only app offers a solution-
Cookies founder Berner and the cannabis tech company Weedmaps have concocted a solution: an entirely new social media app dedicated to the cannabis community. “As the leader in the cannabis technology space, we were tapped by Berner to be the technology partner for his new, cannabis-friendly, social media platform Social Club,” says Chris Beals, CEO of Weedmaps. “The purpose of the Social Club app is to create a social community specifically for cannabis consumers, growers, businesses and more.”
Beals believes the Social Club app, which will be available to people aged 21-and-up and is slated to launch in Q2 of this year, “showcases the ongoing evolution of cannabis and e-commerce coming together. The app is being launched in beta as we speak.” To the tech giant, the social media dispute is personal. Weedmaps’ own Instagram account with over 539,000 followers was deactivated mid-December 2021 and then reactivated in late January 2022. The deactivation was a result of Instagram’s community guidelines, says Beals. Weedmaps and Cookies founder Berner are working on Social Club, a weed-friendly app for people aged ... [+] 21-and-up.
Weedmaps
“Given cannabis is still largely banned from most major marketing channels, the deactivation on Instagram was demonstrative of the ongoing censorship that companies in cannabis continue to face,” Beals explains. The CEO says that Weedmaps has been ‘shadowbanned’ for many years on Instagram, and the hashtag #weedmaps has been banned as well. “We wanted to tackle the ongoing issues Weedmaps and other cannabis businesses face, and so decided to create a digital commercial spot timed to the Super Bowl. The intention behind creating the ad was to shine a light on the challenges imposed on the industry, including the marketing hurdles—like social media censorship and a lack of consistent advertising regulations.”
When it comes to the weaponization of these social media platforms, Beals is skeptical. “I think what’s more likely are the social media companies stepping up their moderation around cannabis,” he says. “One of the reasons I am so excited to see the Social Club launch is the ability to have a space to post cannabis content without having to wonder what step you’re going to have to take to avoid getting your account banned—this in itself is a meaningful step forward for safe and real cannabis conversations.”
A petition to bring Meta to the table
Arend Richard’s company WeedTube was founded as a safe space for cannabis content, partly in an attempt to find a solution to this growing frustration and strict regulations on digital platforms. Richard recently launched a petition for Instagram to ease its regulations on the cannabis industry. The petition on Change.org has amassed over 1,000 signatures as of this writing.
“The goal of this petition is to get Instagram to actually come to the table to start an open dialogue on how to best move forward with the legal cannabis industry,” says Richard. “The current enforcement of their ‘policies’ don't seem to have any sense of consistency.”
Does Richard think that cannabis may receive recognition and solutions from Meta platforms? Yes, because they already do, selectively.
“If Instagram simply had a 0 tolerance policy for canna content, like TikTok, then I would suggest the industry find new means of advertising,” says Richard. “However, plenty of cannabis related brands receive recognition from these platforms already. The problem is, they are usually corporate entities with big dollars behind them.”
The numerical goal on the petition is for a lofty 1 million signatures. Tapping into the mainstream, consumer audience would enable him to reach his goal. “I like to dream big,” says Richard. “Our platform of WeedTube has seen over 5 million unique visitors since the launch of our new technology in 2019, and that's without spending a dollar on marketing our brand. The community is out there to get the 1 million signatures. Will it be easy? Not at all. But I'm not going to let that stop me from trying. 1 million people strong would show Instagram that the cannabis community means business.”
This systematic change won’t come without a fight. “Instagram has already begun deleting posts and accounts just for sharing the petition,” says Richard. “The cannabis industry and community need to come together now for these changes and solutions to happen,” says Richard. If not, he fears, “we will be delivering this industry into the hands of mainstream corporations when federal legalization happens.”
Cannabis insiders hope that changes are on the horizon with Amazon and Apple signaling support for the industry, but Richard warns that those larger corporations run the risk of pushing out smaller business owners. Social media access is also about equity.
“This Instagram petition is just one piece of a much larger puzzle guaranteeing fair and equitable opportunity to the entire industry,” says Richard.
Find out more: Why Do I Need Someone to Do My Social Media For Me?
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