The big question is now why?
It was last summer over July 4th weekend that a few cannabis pages were removed from Facebook
and now on the heels of hate speech violations from Alex Jones and Infowars (find URL)
the likes of cannabis advocates, dispensaries, cannabis groups, are now shadow banned.
What is shadowbanning?
Wikipedia defines it as:
Shadow banning (also called stealth banning, ghost banning or comment ghosting[1]) is the act of blocking a user or their content from an online community such that it will not be readily apparent to the user that they have been banned.
By making a user’s contributions invisible or less prominent to other members of the service, the hope may be that in the absence of reactions to their comments, the problematic or otherwise out-of-favour user will become bored or frustrated and leave the site.[1][2]
Facebook is taken another line in the sand with censorship enforcement- intersecting free speech and policy.
Remember, Mark Zuckerberg took the stand in March in Congress and apologized to the American people for Cambridge Analytica and for Russians manipulating the newsfeed during the U.S. elections.
What is Facebook doing about it?
Facebook is doing exactly what its promising, taking responsibility for what is published and holding to their policy terms.
They’re fixing it and just like other big tech companies they’ve invested in AI to do the job. Which it has, for the most part, with close to 60% of content being blocked thats considered terrorist propaganda, hate speech and in the case of cannabis, shadow banning
With more cannabis groups being shut down everyday. I know of one that had to change the name using the keyword “flower” to replace cannabis and the group is being seen again in search, that is until AI picks up on it. (after reading this)
Let’s not forget about GDPR which changes privacy policy in May combined with censorship guidelines released in April, its still effected consumer trust with confidence of the big social media platform being so low that its stock prices took the biggest dip of over 20%.
[Tweet “There’s a big void to fill and email and especially mobile channels can fill it by building your own audience.”]
It takes time to cultivate a list by using social media platforms to gain audience share of your product or service, as you can’t continue to rely on them to keep your members or any group.
Simply move your audience to a mobile channel to engage and continue on with your messaging , accept now its seen on the lock screen.
Take control of your client base before Facebook takes it away and its not over then, just wait until they start doing the same Instagram.