While also reportedly restricting vital information from abortion providers and reproductive rights groups.
The fight for reproductive rights is happening on social media — and major tech giants may not be helping the cause.
A new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and global charity MSI Reproductive Choices (MSI) says that Meta and, in a few instances, Google, are restricting abortion information, while furthering misinformation and abuse across countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The CCDH reports that some abortion providers are restricted from advertising on Meta and Google platforms globally, while Meta also profits from anti-abortion ads placed from within the U.S. that aim to deter people seeking abortions overseas.
How are abortion ads being restricted?
The report claims that ads from MSI have been rejected or removed by Meta in Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, and Vietnam, for indeterminate reasons such as “sensitive content”, and that Meta has placed blanket advertising restrictions on MSI’s local teams based in Nepal and Vietnam, without thorough justification.
Meanwhile, ads on “pregnancy options” in Ghana were reportedly blocked by Google. More specifically, MSI’s local team in Ghana said that when planning a campaign using Google Adwords themselves, they were banned from using the term “pregnancy options”.
In addition, the report outlines that Google and Facebook both feature fake pages and websites that imitate MSI’s content, with the intent to scam users in Kenya, Nigeria, and Vietnam; some of these pages are described as asking prospective clients to make mobile money transfers.
Speaking to Mashable, Google representative Michael Aciman said, “This report does not include a single example of policy violating content on Google’s platform, nor any examples of inconsistent enforcement. Without evidence, it claims that some ads were blocked in Ghana for referencing ‘pregnancy options’. To be clear, these types of ads are not prohibited from running in Ghana – if the ads were restricted, it was likely due to our longstanding policies against targeting people based on sensitive health categories, which includes pregnancy.”
Aciman also noted that Google does not prohibit ads using the term “pregnancy options”; however, as a part of Google’s Personalized Advertising Policies, advertisers cannot target curated audiences when running ads for products or services related to “sensitive interest categories”. Therefore, if MSI or other advertisers tried to run a targeted campaign for their own audience list in any these categories, this campaign would not run.
Ryan Daniels, a spokesperson for Meta, said in a statement to Mashable, “We allow posts and ads promoting health care services, as well as discussion and debate around them. Content about reproductive health must follow our rules, including those on prescription drugs and misinformation, and ads promoting reproductive health products or services may only be targeted to people 18+.” Meta reiterates this policy in its Transparency Centre
