Meta—the social media juggernaut behind Facebook, Instagram and Threads—appears to have rolled back a restriction on searches for words like “marijuana” and “cannabis” after criticism that the company’s censorship was overbroad and limited access to education, public health information and political advocacy.

At the beginning of this year, Meta—the social media behemoth behind Facebook, Instagram and Threads, among others—announced it would change its content moderation policies, “getting rid of a number of restrictions…on topics…that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate.” It was part of the company’s move away from intensive moderation of controversial topics like immigration and gender.

But the company didn’t immediately change its practices around marijuana, continuing to block search results on its platform for terms such as “marijuana” and “cannabis” and instead displaying a notice encouraging users to report “the sale of drugs.”

Now that appears to have changed, however. Searches that were blocked earlier this year currently yield results without the warning that was previously displayed.

While many platforms have policies against the illegal sale of drugs or require age-gating for content around controlled substances, critics say Meta’s filtering has often been overbroad, censoring content focused on education, political advocacy and public health.

Earlier this year, for example, Facebook queries for “Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission,” “Marijuana Policy Project,” or “Marijuana Moment,” for example, would return no results and instead display a notice encouraging users: “If you see the sale of drugs, please report it.”

Users who included terms like “marijuana” or “cannabis” in their Facebook searches earlier this year instead served this notice that encouraged the reporting of illegal drug sales.

The warning no longer appear for those searches as of Friday.

It’s unclear when Meta may have enacted the change. Meta and Facebook press contacts on Friday did not immediately respond to a requests for comment from Marijuana Moment.

Morgan Fox, political director at the advocacy group NORML, said earlier this year that it was “incredibly disappointing” that cannabis-related accounts were dealing with ongoing restrictions, adding that search restrictions were “still preventing advocates from being able to get exposure to the general public and the huge number of people that use these services.”

In an email Friday about the company’s seeming removal of the search restriction, Fox said he hoped the search issue had been fixed for good.

“I hope these apparent changes are permanent and pervasive, and not just a temporary fix with limited scope—which we have seen in the past,” he wrote. “Without structural changes to content moderation and a clear process for addressing instances of inappropriate censorship in a more systemic manner, advocates and educators are going to have to remain vigilant to ensure that social media platform users can continue to effectively access their information.”

Kat Murti, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, called the updated search function “wonderful news” but noted that there are other ways Meta continues to interfere with access to even public health-focused information about drugs.

“We had met with Meta over a year ago and brought up the issue of both the search—the lack of ability to find things in the search—as well as how the algorithm was shutting these [accounts] down,” she said in an interview. “They’ve been shutting down access to businesses that are in full compliance with local laws, but also harm reduction groups that are working to save lives, drug education groups [and] folks who are working on policy change.”

“Meta is one of the biggest sources of information in our society, and people need to be able to connect,” Murti added. “They need to be able to find information about how to save lives from overdose, how to engage with their local governments, how to get involved in changing policy. They need to be able to find information about harm reduction, about getting out to vote, about legislation that’s on the ballot—and all of that is still getting censored.”

One cannabis-focused content creator who’s called out Meta in the past is cartoonist Brian “Box” Brown, who’s previously complained to Marijuana Moment that the company has flagged his posts, limited his accounts’ visibility and “killed my reach and growth.”

“My mind was boggled,” he said earlier this year. “My comic strip thats frankly TOO wonky about policy is getting flagged for selling drugs.”

In an email this week about the search function, Brown said he’s picked up on a shift in Meta’s handling of his and others’ content.

“It’s weird,” he said. “I’m not even totally sure what’s happened. *Something* has changed. Stuff isn’t getting suppressed in the way it was before. But at the same time, it kinda is.”

Unlike in recent months, “I’m not getting warnings every day,” the cartoonist continued, but some posts still seem to get throttled.” He noted that other accounts, such as “a bunch of hashmakers and other influencers” have moved to other platforms after Meta “nuked” their accounts.

“It’s kind of a mixed bag,” he said, adding that he’s going stop censoring his own content—which he’d begun doing to avoid being flagged by the company’s algorithms—and see what happens going forward.

Ahead of this past holiday season, vape device manufacturer Puffco similarly complained about Instagram and parent company Meta for what it described as an overly aggressive campaign to flag and remove cannabis-related content. A video from the company asserted that Instagram’s policing of cannabis posts by brands and individuals effectively stifles efforts at community building among veterans, medical marijuana patients and legal adult-use consumers.

“The world didn’t want us, so we made a safe space for our community on Instagram where we could just be ourselves and share what we love,” the video said. “Isn’t that the point of this place?”

Despite more and more states having legalized and regulated marijuana for adults, social media companies have regularly flagged cannabis-related content as violations of their terms of service. The practice has led to suspensions of accounts belonging to state-regulated cannabis brands, informational websites and individual content creators, who now often create backup accounts to avoid the loss of a key line of communication to thousands of followers.

In 2018, concerns arose that Facebook was “shadowbanning” marijuana pages, including those of state cannabis regulatory agencies, by blocking them from search results. An internal presentation at the company the next year noted that it was considering loosening cannabis restrictions, but many have continued to run into problems

In July 2023, Meta announced that it had updated its cannabis advertising policy to permit the promotion of some non-ingestible CBD products and also loosen restrictions on hemp ads. It said businesses could begin promoting the sale of CBD if they receive written approval from Meta and if the products are certified with the payment compliance company Legitscript and comply with local laws. Ads also could not target people under 18.

“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services on our technologies,” Meta said. However, it added that “advertisers will continue to be prohibited from running ads that promote THC products or cannabis products containing related psychoactive components.”

Earlier that year, Meta faced criticism over a feature of its microblogging app, Threads, for prompting users with a “get help” message about federal substance misuse resources if they searched for “marijuana,” various psychedelics and other controlled substances. Meanwhile, alcohol- and tobacco-related searches were exempt from the prompt. The feature no longer appears to be in place.

Twitter, now known as X, had a similar practice in place in 2020, cautioning users about “marijuana” searches as part of a partnership with SAMHSA. Alcohol and tobacco were excluded from the search restriction. But in late 2022, after being acquired by Elon Musk, Twitter suspended that practice.

Also, Twitter since updated its cannabis advertising policy, aiming to give cannabis businesses that are “certified advertisers” the ability to feature “packaged” cannabis products in the ad creative that’s promoted on the social media site.

Google, for its part, updated its policy in January 2023, making it so companies can promote Food and Drug Administration- (FDA) approved drugs containing CBD, as well as topical CBD products with no more than 0.3 percent THC.

Video game streaming company Twitch, meanwhile, updated its branding policy for streamers, prohibiting promotions of marijuana businesses and products while explicitly allowing alcohol partnerships. Twitch had previously clarified rules in a way that was inclusive of cannabis—exempting marijuana-related references from the list of banned usernames, just as it does for alcohol and tobacco.

In an update to Apple’s iPhone software that was instituted in 2022, users were given an option to track medications and learn about possible drug interactions with other substances—including marijuana.

In 2021, Apple ended its policy of restricting cannabis companies from conducting business on its App store. The marijuana delivery service Eaze subsequently announced that consumers were able to shop and pay for products on its iPhone app for the first time.

In contrast to Apple, Google’s Android app hub updated its policy in 2019 to explicitly prohibit programs that connect users with cannabis, no matter whether it is legal in the jurisdiction where the user lives.

In 2022, New York marijuana regulators asked the social media app TikTok to end its ban on advertising that involves the word “cannabis” as they worked to promote public education on the state’s move to legalize.

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Image element courtesy of Anthony Quintano.