Facebook may be the nation's hottest social networking site, but the company is no friend to the nation's hottest political issue. A marijuana legalization ad from the Just Say Now campaign has been banned for its use of a pot leaf image, stirring controversy among Facebook's massive population of marijuana reform activists. FireDogLake reports:
Just Say Now, our campaign for marijuana legalization with Students for Sensible Drug Policy, ran ads promoting our campaign that showed our logo, which uses a marijuana leaf.
Despite the ad running more than 38 million times, Facebook flip-flopped and started censoring our ads and our political speech.
I think I can guess how all of this went down: Facebook ran the ad millions of times, resulting in a few angry letters from crazed anti-drug types who ignored the political message of the ad and mindlessly accused Facebook of promoting drug use. Facebook responded by censoring the offending ad and now they've got an exponentially greater mess on their hands.
Facebook may be within its rights to choose what it considers appropriate ad content, but attempting to suppress a surging national debate is plainly idiotic. Criticism has erupted across the site and is spreading like wildfire thanks to Facebook's excellent news-sharing functionality. That's good news for the Just Say Now campaign, but bad news for Facebook, which would do well not to alienate its massive population of marijuana users and activists.
Please help out by sending Facebook a message that the movement for marijuana reform cannot be silenced. Oh, and in case you haven't noticed, Just Say Now's ads can be found uncensored here on our site.
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