Empowering Outdoor Businesses and Enthusiasts Amid Social Media Censorship

Written By Nick Italiano

The Situation

Small businesses in the outdoor industry have long relied on social media platforms to help their businesses grow their customer base and create meaningful ways to interact with their loyal fans. Over the last few years, this has become increasingly difficult because the implementation of AI algorithms and absurd rules social media platforms have placed around the tools and skills we rely upon. Both content creators and makers of products are very familiar with this, and now, even everyday outdoor enthusiasts are starting to be affected. 

Before I dive into the rest of this I want to make it very clear that the purpose of this article is not to just complain, I am writing this to create awareness of the situation and to help others understand what is going on with these platforms so that they can make informed decisions to best find the content they are looking for. Many of the topics in this article will discuss aspects of politics but are used as examples and do not represent my personal political beliefs.

The Beginning

Just over three years ago, I began to see the writing on the wall with Instagram. Content that featured firearms and knives was beginning to be throttled by the algorithm. Many accounts were getting “shadow banned” so the content was not reaching non-followers. While representatives of the company swore up and down that these shadow bans did not exist, they were later confirmed to be a method that Instagram used to suppress content that did not meet their very vague community standards. As time went on and outrage grew, Meta, the parent company of Instagram, implemented transparency changes that included fleshing out community standards and allowing people to see when the content they were posting was being restricted.

Meta was decidedly anti-weapon which pretty much doomed hunting and firearms and while the rules were more vague it was quickly bleeding over into the realm of knives. When the argument was raised by myself and other businesses in the industry that these knives were tools similar to saws and hammers, we were told that the context of the photo was a big factor and knives being used as outdoor or EDC tools should not be an issue. We were encouraged to use the appeals process the get the “violations” removed as a photo or video of a knife not being used in violent ways did not actually violate community standards. This was a great solution for the outdoor and EDC knife users and businesses.

For those of us that make, feature, or review outdoor and EDC knives this process worked for a little while but came to a screeching halt as Instagram became more reliant on AI to do these tasks and appeals began to go nowhere. When you were actually able to get a human, they would reassure you that your content did not violate anything but could not give a reasonable solution to avoid being flagged or remove existing flags. Many people tried to come up with creative ways to include knives and other tools in their posts, and the AI became increasingly good at picking them up. The whole “there’s nothing we can do about it thing” rang very hollow as it seemed that large companies with lots of money to spend had no issues posting and creating paid advertisements for their knives, where consumers, small businesses, and content creators continued to be the target of Instagram’s ire.

The Slow Decline

While it is not what I consider justified, I understand the argument that many make that a knife can inherently be a weapon, and that is why Meta can attempt to reasonably justify suppressing the content the same way they suppressed firearm related content. While many people in the greater outdoor community have little interest in firearms and may not be incredibly enthusiastic about knives, everything starts somewhere, and social medias crusade against knives and firearms are just the tip of the iceberg for the outdoor community.

We all remember the recent pandemic that caused chaos in our lives. It was around that time we started seeing a lot of “false information flags related to pandemic related posts all over our feed. It was now a violation of community standards to disagree with what Meta considered to be the correct medical science. I’m not here to argue about vaccines and the pandemic, I will just say that I do not agree with censorship and the suppression of information and opinions. The point behind mentioning this comes with Meta’s new community standards around medical information content and their ability to suppress anything that does not agree with what Meta considers established medical science including all forms of holistic medicine which impacts those who forage and use natural remedies for many common ailments.

Foraging and herbalism, the science of sourcing wild edible and medicinal plants is practiced by many outdoor professionals, content creators, and enthusiasts. These practices have been in place for many generations and are a big part of many cultures throughout the world. Despite many of these practices having modern scientifically proven applications, Meta has actively and willingly suppressed another large group of outdoor enthusiasts and professionals under the guise of safety, when in reality it is a social media company that was forcing its own ideals and the interests of their advertisers on their users.

The false information flag continued to fly on Meta’s platforms and quickly spread to other areas, including many political posts. These seemed to be very one-sided, targeting mostly those posts that contained conservative ideology. Once again I’m not here to argue the validity of that information or endorse any political stance, but it is a clear demonstration of active censorship of a targeted group and their opinions. While this seemingly does not impact outdoor business or enthusiasts, somewhere along the line it seemed that any content that was related to prepping, survival skills, and self sufficiency was deemed to be exclusive to conservatives and extremists and was now on the ever growing list of things that Meta would actively suppress.

As you are aware, the desire to have self-sufficiency skills, being prepared for natural disasters, and having general wilderness survival skills is not something that is exclusive to any political ideology. I have known outdoor enthusiasts that are conservative, liberal, and everything in between. Despite this, over generalization allowed Meta to, once again, suppress a large part of the outdoor community to keep us “safe” from views they and their major advertisers don’t agree with.

As small businesses and content creators we had to be very careful when writing captions as certain words and hashtags were immediately flagged as content that should be suppressed, any pictures of knives and other outdoor tools, and even first aid kits and supplies were quickly flagged. Posts related to foraging and edible and medicinal wild plants plants also started being flagged. The same could be said for other content related to any form of wilderness survival or self sufficiency skills, where even using words like survival, preparedness, or self-reliant was enough to have a post or profile flagged and suppressed. While some attempts to work with in the restrictions were temporarily successful, every update to the program seemed to bring new challenges.

Where We Are Today

Fast forward to today, all of these issues are now a regular part of Meta’s platform and despite many of the leaders in the outdoor space and other impacted industries having direct contact with Meta we still have no resolution, and at this point I am not expecting to see any. Restrictions are not just limited to non-followers, but followers as well. AI algorithms will not allow photos or videos to be posted based on images, words, and content description in the files meta data. Accounts are falsely labeled as spam and removed from peoples following lists without any input from the person who actively chose to follow that account.

The reality that Meta and similar platforms have no desire to work with us is something I think we all need to accept. We are just a metric they can feed to their advertisers and a mine for valuable data to sell. Ultimately our continued support of their platforms allows corporate greed and ideals to influence our lives, condones their flagrant use of censorship in the “guise of safety,” and they still continue to make money hand over fist by selling our data to the highest bidder and force feeding us advertisements that we often see more then the people we follow.

Challenges to Making Change

While I think there’s still a valuable reason to fight this censorship and all other forms of censorship and suppression of opinions and information, the fight to change Meta’s policies is not so cut and dry. Meta is a corporation, and they retain ownership of their platforms and all areas in which users interact. Instagram, Facebook, and any of their other properties are not considered “public” making the 1st amendment argument difficult in accordance with our current laws.

Change can come in two ways. The first and most obvious, yet most difficult to accomplish would be to change the laws regarding the nature of these platforms actually being recognized as public forum and requiring them to maintain the rules of freedom of speech and expression. The second and traditionally the most effective way to effect change in giant corporations is to impact the bottom line of that company. We are the product, our data, our views, and our clicks are what makes Meta money. If we stop using their platforms and stop allowing them to harvest our data to sell, that may have enough of an impact to actually make a difference.

The Solution

It occurs to me as I write this that I sound bitter, and to be honest, I am. I’ve spent a very long time trying to find a solution that would allow the robust community I know and love on these platforms to return to the way it was in the past.  With all that being said, being bitter and ruminating does my business no good and does not provide any value to our community. The ultimate reason for writing this was to discuss  how to better support the businesses, content creators, members of the outdoor community. As well as create new avenues to see the type of content we want to see!

This is why this website exists. I get to create the content that I want to create without some outside entity telling me what is appropriate or not. I write about the businesses I like, I review the products I think others will find useful. I discuss skills, practices, and techniques that I employ in my outdoor adventures. I do it all because I feel this information can provide some value to other members of our community who share my interests.

I wholeheartedly call other content creators to do the same! Make your own websites, take control of the content you create, and get that out into the world. It is not about the meaningless jolt of endorphins when a bunch of people hit the like button. It is about sharing your passion and knowledge with those who are interested! I take greater joy in the prospect that someone reads an article and begins to develop a new skill or sees a new perspective on something and even if that person never says a word to me about it, it gives me more satisfaction a bunch of heart emojis on a social media platform.  

For the outdoors enthusiasts out there, spend more time on websites like this. Spend more time visiting your favorite makers website, read their blogs, and engage with them on their own websites. Join privately owned forums like Bushcraft USA and LT Wrights Pout House, or if you are enterprising enough, create your own! Get out to in person events like Blade Show and the gatherings held by Georgia Bushcraft and find smaller local groups and gatherings or start one yourself!  We all managed to socialize and find others who shared our interests before social media, and I’m confident that we can continue to do so. It just requires us to take broader responsibility for making that happen, and as a community of adventurers, bushcrafters, hunters, foragers, hikers, herbalists, wilderness survival enthusiasts, homesteaders, and primitive skills practitioners we are no strangers to working hard and improvising to get the job done!

As a whole, members of the outdoor community are a resilient bunch. We are familiar with struggling against adversity to achieve our goals. As small business owners we stand in the shadow of large companies with nearly unlimited advertising budgets, yet our passion and drive shine and give our customers a sense of pride in buying and using the products or service we offer. As content creators we have been in the trenches of this social media battle for years and have worked tirelessly to continue to great content for our audience and support the businesses we work with. As outdoor enthusiasts we know that things rarely go to plan, but we also know with a little elbow grease and a lot of outside the box thinking we can turn a terrible situation into something that works! If we bring that same drive, work ethic, ingenuity, and resilience building our community outside of social media platforms we will not fail and will be better off for it in the long run!