The Tasmanian Hemp Association (THA) has had its ability to advertise on Facebook completely disabled, with the social media giant labelling what it sells as "illegal products or services".
The state government-funded group, headed by hemp producer Andi Lucas, went to advertise its annual Community Education Day, only to find out they could not.
In rejecting the ads, Facebook said the association's website name did not comply with the company's advertising policy, deeming it illegal.
"When we've looked into it, we've been told we're effectively selling a drug product, which is completely untrue," Ms Lucas said.
"It sounds so ludicrous you wouldn't think it could possibly be true.
"Hemp is a plant that's used by humans to make food, for fibre, it's sold in supermarkets, people have it in their smoothies, they build houses out of it, they wear T-shirts made of it."
Ms Lucas said the organisation could not dispute the "clearly wrong" decision in any way.
She said it meant ticket sales were down about 70 per cent compared to previous years when they could use social media advertising.
"We're trying to do is get the word out to people who don't like and follow our page … to people who may have a false understanding about what hemp is," Ms Lucas said.
"We really wanted this opportunity to educate people to the difference between hemp and marijuana, so it's ironic Facebook has made the same mistake."
After a request for comment from the ABC, a spokesperson for Facebook's parent company, Meta, said the association's ability to post ads had been restored.
But Ms Lucas said they were still being rejected.
Algorithm issues
Ms Lucas said the word "hemp" triggered the algorithm to flag ads nationally and internationally.
"This is happening to hemp companies all around the world, they're making products that are completely legal to sell in the state or country they're in, yet they're not able to tell people about them," she said.
"It's really holding our industry back.
"I see how hard the farmers work, how hard the processors work, and yet you've got an algorithm making an arbitrary decision that's wrong and that's really having an impact."
KingThing marketing agency chief executive Rob King said he worked with a Facebook contractor that helped businesses with their advertising on the platform, but even she could not initially do anything about this situation.
"I understand there needs to be these protections in place, but in this case we're talking about a food item, some ingredients," he said.
"Who knows how they flag these things.
"The algorithm is complicated and regularly updated but the advice that we're getting is because the hemp association's page includes the word 'hemp' — that's the issue."
Mr King said it was not just Facebook.
"If we've been trying to push products, like T-shirts made with hemp, Google will flag the word 'hemp'," he said.
"But their algorithms aren't quite as sensitive."
