Ad Removed for Using the Word "Pregnancy"... Social Media Algorithms Keep Blocking Women's Health Information

UK-Based Civil Society Group CensHERship Publishes Report
Anatomical Diagram Explaining Gynecological Cancer Also Removed

Cases of women's health content being unfairly blocked are on the rise, including ads for pregnancy pillows being removed from social media platforms such as Instagram because they contain the word "pregnancy." This is happening because social media companies are misclassifying women's health information as sexual content or sensitive material.

On Oct. 15 local time, the BBC reported on such cases, citing a report on the issue by CensHERship, a civil society group campaigning against censorship of women's health content.

CensHERship is a UK-based group that conducts research alongside campaigns related to women's health. Its name combines "censorship" with "HER."

According to the BBC, in January last year, Irene Breen received a notice that an ad for a full-body pregnancy pillow sold by her company had been removed from Instagram. Breen questioned what could be wrong with a pillow designed to help pregnant women sleep comfortably. She later learned during a call with Meta, Instagram's parent company, that the word "pregnancy" in the product name had triggered the removal.

"We had to remove the word from our entire company website and from the product name," Breen said. "We even had to change every webpage address whose URL included the word pregnancy." The ad restriction was later lifted, but it took 10 months to resolve the issue with Meta. In the process, the company suffered significant financial losses.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, did not provide the BBC with a specific response about individual cases. It said, however, that while businesses can advertise products and services related to wellness, sexual health, and reproductive health, it imposes certain restrictions to prevent users in different countries and cultures from having negative experiences.

Content creators, healthcare providers, charities, and educational institutions in the women's health field also reported similar harm. They said they had experienced three main types of restrictions: post removals, content filters, and reduced visibility. In a survey of around 200 people, including women's health content creators, healthcare providers, health brand representatives, charity workers, and educators, CensHERship found that 96% of respondents had experienced some form of content restriction.

The share of respondents who said they self-censored out of concern about shadow banning, which reduces the visibility of content, rose from 53% last year to 65% this year. Shadow banning refers to a phenomenon in which a post appears to have been published normally but receives less exposure in search results, recommendations, feeds, and other areas.

Athena Lamnisos, chief executive officer (CEO) of Eve Appeal, a charity focused on gynecological cancers, pointed to problems with some hashtags not appearing properly on Instagram. She said it was difficult to understand why searches for or use of the hashtag "#vaginalcancer" were restricted.

Lamnisos said that Eve Appeal had posted educational content on Instagram showing the anatomy of the vulva to explain vulval cancer, but the post was removed for violating the platform's policies. The charity appealed, but its appeal was initially rejected. The post was restored several weeks later, but it was labeled sensitive and blurred.

Sensitive-content warnings are generally applied to visually graphic posts, such as nudity or violent scenes. They blur the post, requiring users to press a separate button to view the original.

Deirdre O'Neill of fertility testing company Hertility said that a woman with endometriosis had a similar experience after posting a video on Facebook and Instagram describing her pain. "She isn't selling our services or talking about Hertility. She's just describing her pain," O'Neill said. "But Meta removed the video and classified the post as 'political content.'"

Clio Wood, co-founder of CensHERship, criticized the trend, saying, "Women's health has historically been accompanied by shame and guilt," and "this trend is getting worse."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.