Seems like a good question to ask:
Proponents of marijuana legalization, which is on the California ballot in 2010, have hit a Facebook wall in their effort to grow an online campaign to rethink the nation's pot laws. Facebook initially accepted ads from the group Just Say Now, running them from August 7 to August 16, generating 38 million impressions and helping the group's fan page grow to over 6,000 members. But then they were abruptly removed.
aron Houston, the executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, said that Facebook was out of touch with its customers.
"Their business will suffer if they don't reverse this decision. We're way beyond reefer madness and censorship. Facebook should get with the times," he said.
While Facebook is banning the ad, a number of conservative and liberal blogs and news outlets have agreed to run it beginning on Tuesday. The Nation, The New Republic, Human Events, Red State, Antiwar, Reason, Drug War Rant, Stop The Drug War, Daily Paul, Lew Rockwell, The Young Turks, MyDD, AmericaBlog, Pam's House Blend and Raw Story are among them.
To protest Facebook's decision, Just Say Now is launching, naturally, a Facebook petition, cognizant that the social networking company often responds to user feedback. The group is also asking people to replace their profile picture with an image of a censored pot leaf.
Facebook says they already have a ban that covers this decision, however, it appears that Facebook rules only ban tobacco advertisements.
Huffpost got an update from Facebook today:
The Libertarian Party has had the same problem. Spokesman Kyle Hartz emailed HuffPost to say that after initially approving the ad, Facebook reversed its decision and censored the ad on July 23rd.
"Thanks for writing in to us," a Facebook representative wrote to the party. "I took a look at your account and noticed that the content advertised by this ad is prohibited. We reserve the right to determine what advertising we accept, and we may choose to not accept ads containing or relating to certain products or services. We do not allow ads for marijuana or political ads for the promotion of marijuana and will not allow the creation of any further Facebook Ads for this product. We appreciate your cooperation with this policy."
Facebook users' privacy isn't respected by Facebook.com, but let's make sure we ban Prop 19 ads!
Good job, Facebook...
[www.drcnet.org for all the latest and greatest (I've been a huge fan of that website for quite some time, and have heartily recommended it over the years. My past diaries with the latest breaking news usually link over there.]
