What happened next was a head-scratcher. Facebook blocked the ad at least six times because the social network said it was political.

"This is the least political thing I do, and it's pretty innocuous," said Hopkins. The problem, it turned out, wasn't that the event was called Smack Dab Open Mic, or that it was advertised as being for the queer community.

The problem was that the bio of a featured attendee, florist Guy Clark, mentioned that years ago he'd received a small business award from Mark Leno, who'd been a California assemblyman at the time. That invited more scrutiny from Facebook.