Content with words like abortion, breast and vagina or that deal with menstrual or sexual health is being flagged as sexually explicit and removed from sites like Amazon, Google, TikTok and Meta, and charities and businesses are concerned this is entrenching a rollback of diversity policies and reproductive rights.
From women’s health start-ups to reproductive healthcare groups, many say their social media posts are being censored, online paid advertisements rejected and digital accounts suspended, reports TimesLIVE.
“We’re not saying that online safety does not matter,” said Clio Wood, co-founder of UK-based group CensHERship, which launched a campaign last week urging the European Commission to probe the online suppression.
“But what we are saying is that there is an issue, because the algorithms don’t distinguish between explicit content and legitimate women’s health educational content. It might be talking about the same body part, but it’s doing it in very different ways,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
‘Dangerous place to be’
A recent report by US advocacy group Centre for Intimacy Justice revealed that in a global survey of nearly 160 women’s health businesses and charities, more than 60% had posts removed by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and more than a third had their accounts suspended on Amazon.
More than half of the respondents, which included menopausal health businesses or sexual education groups, had content removed by TikTok, and nearly 70% had advertisements rejected by Google, the February report said.
In comparison, posts and advertisements using sexual innuendo and explicit images to promote men’s sexual health products were allowed across the platforms, the report added.
Tess Cosad, co-founder of Bea Fertility, said her at-home insemination product business was blocked from using the word vagina in an Amazon showcase page but was able to include semen.
An Amazon spokesperson said the company encouraged sellers to contact the support team if they believed an error in classification had occurred and it has a “robust appeals process in place”.
Cosad said she toyed with the idea of using “birth canal” instead but eventually left Amazon altogether.
“We have to be able to use medical terminology,” she said. “If we have words we’re not allowed to use, that’s erasure. That’s the beginning of a very dangerous place to be.”
The report comes as US President Donald Trump is terminating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives throughout federal government, and major global companies, including Meta and Amazon, wind down their own programmes.
The UN warned earlier this month that “women’s bodies have become political battlegrounds”, and rights advocates fear further setbacks.
Mikayla Dawson, a senior social media strategist at the US-based Physicians for Reproductive Health, said her group’s visibility on Facebook and Instagram has dropped significantly since the start of the year.
Meta did not respond to requests for comment.
Search engine giant Google was criticised in 2022 when people seeking abortions were instead directed to “crisis pregnancy centres”, which steer woman away from the procedure.
Plan C, a group which explains how people can access abortion pills in the US, said it has been banned from advertising on Google for years and its accounts on Meta and video-sharing platform TikTok are regularly taken down.
In a statement, Google said it encouraged groups to appeal if they disagree with rejections of their paid ads.
“We have long allowed ads for a variety of sexual health products and services, and recently updated our policies to allow for even more products,” it said.
TikTok said its community guidelines applied to “everyone and everything,” and content creators are able to appeal decisions.
Alternative words?
Campaigners say community moderators and algorithms are not trained in the nuances of women's health, often leading people to use alternative words, which can perpetuate stigma.
Fatma Ibrahim, founder of The Sex Talk Arabic, which raises awareness on gender violence in the Arab world, said its Facebook and Instagram content is intentionally “radical” to break taboos, but can often lead to critics reporting them to moderators, resulting in suspensions and censorship of posts.
“Online is the only space where we can do such work. We use social media platforms because we want to normalise the talk around these things,” she said.
Dutch charity Neighbourhood Feminists, which helps people who cannot afford menstrual products, said it noticed a drop in online engagement over the past year on Instagram and believes it was due to the direct way it describes menstruation.
“We refuse to move towards using euphemisms because that completely reinforces the shame and the stigma that we’re pushing back against,” said co-founder Tammy Sheldon.
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