Smoked out: Cannabis party faces Facebook ‘censorship’

Legalise Cannabis MPs David Ettershank and Rachel Payne. CREDIT: JOE ARMAO After getting no joy out of Meta, MP Rachel Payne even appealed to the Victorian Electoral Commission to intervene in what the party alleges is a blatant case of censorship of political expression.

“My colleagues and myself are being unfairly treated and discriminated against through Meta’s refusal to allow us to advertise, post stories about our party [and] even hiding our pages so that people cannot find us through searches,” Payne pleaded.

The commission politely declined to get involved, saying this wasn’t its jurisdiction, it had no authority over “the policies, procedures, or algorithms of social media platforms or companies” and it couldn’t advocate for a political party.

RELATED ARTICLE: Meta rules online racism against Indigenous people meets community standards. | Racism

We approached Meta’s comms people, several times actually, but we got no joy out of them either. So we all might just have to keep an eye on the feeds. Originally published here: https://www.theage.com.au/national/smoked-out-cannabis-party-faces-facebook-censorship-20231022-p5ee3i.html