Afraid of the Meta "Tarot Ban?" Here's Some Facts.

Do you have a metaphysical, astrology, or tarot business and rely heavily on social media for promotion? Have you seen a post talking about "Facebook Censoring Tarot" or conversations about spiritual bans and worry about how it'll impact your business?

This thread from @Cobra_Crescent on Twitter is beneficial in understanding the shift that's happening: https://twitter.com/Cobra.../status/1493641206286278657. Whitney is a rockstar and explains it all brilliantly! (Seriously, we should all buy her a coffee for her work in spelling this out).

Meta (Facebook/Instagram) is scaling back the ability to target audiences based on personal characteristics. The updates you see folks circulating pertain very specifically to how companies reach their audiences in ads. Social and tech companies collect gobs of personal data on every one of us, and that's not necessarily a good thing. These changes force them to be more specific and targeted in their efforts.

Facebook's new rules are the platform's response to laws and regulations put in place over increasing privacy concerns and the abuse of some ad targeting. This regulation spans over protected categories to limit the way targeting tools can be abused and used in ways that negatively impact underrepresented groups. As Whitney explained, "...allowing targeting based on protected/sensitive categories leads to things like excluding Black people and single moms from seeing real estate ads. Targeting works as both include (show these people) and exclude (don't show these people)." Businesses and social platforms alike need accountability to ensure that this sort of censorship and prejudice doesn't happen going forward.

This isn't engineered as a ban. (Although, we need to continue to keep social and tech companies accountable to ensure that doesn't happen down the road). The New York Times has a great article from November, 2021 that further explains the role that these changes are taking to protect audiences: nytimes.com/2021/11/09/technology/meta-facebook-ad-targeting.html

So, what can you do as a business to pivot and adjust your advertising? There's a help article in the Facebook Business Help Center that talks about Alternative Targeting, which will help you navigate through these new rules: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/458835214668072

Advertising is changing. This is just another reason not to lean so heavily on social platforms for your business. Work on building your web presence with a website and some organic SEO. Think about creating spaces for our specific niche—Discord servers to talk about tarot/astrology, websites with forums, and so on. 

Hopefully, we're headed in the direction of more unique and meaningful content.