Social media platforms have become the new censors of cannabis culture. Josh Kesselman posts at 2am India time. Edible Dee rewrote four books. Riley Cannabichem puts on a metaphorical white coat. Here’s how the sharpest minds in cannabis content are surviving the algorithm — and what they’ve learned the hard way.
Here’s a quick exercise: imagine you’re at a penthouse party—pool, great guests, great vibe. A Velvet Underground record is playing in the background (or an old reggaeton playlist, it doesn’t matter), and you have to explain to someone what you’re “carrying” without triggering the algorithm, that digital bouncer running on HAL 9000 logic. The problem? At this event, there are no written rules: the bouncer will kick you out if you say “marijuana,” but might let you continue enjoying the party if you spit out “grass,” “broccoli,” or “lettuce.” A logic that’s hard to predict.
That’s how things are on the internet today—this silicon Matrix run by bots (those snitches programmed in zeros and ones) where Mark Zuckerberg, Google, and Chinese tech platforms have donned their cop caps, and social media plays at being a modern-day Inquisition. That’s why, for those of us hardened by the ups and downs of cannabis culture, posting a picture of a joint can be a risky business: one day you’re the king of engagement with thousands of likes piling up; the next, you wake up to find your account shadowbanned, and good luck complaining to who-knows-who.
But as the saying goes, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” And in this chess game against censorship, those in the know move stealthily like the ronin in The Lone Wolf and Cub. So, to put it bluntly: the gist comes down to semantics, …
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Author: Hernán Panessi / High Times
