- Campaigners have accused social media giants of ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘censorship’
- Experts say qualified professionals should be able to share women’s health information
Women’s health information is being blocked on social media platforms that allow the publication of sexualised images, campaigners claim.
Charities and health campaigners have accused Instagram, Facebook and other tech giants of “hypocrisy” for removing or restricting educational posts while failing to crack down on inappropriate images.
Experts say it is important that qualified professionals can share advice about women’s health and sexual wellbeing on social media to combat misinformation and reach a wider audience.
The survey found that nine out of 10 accounts sharing women’s health content said they had experienced some form of censorship in the past 12 months
But new research has found that messages containing practical health information, including warnings on how to identify cancer, were wrongly flagged as pornographic or inappropriate because they used anatomical terms such as ‘breast’ or ‘vagina’.
Nine out of 10 accounts sharing content about women’s health said they had experienced some form of censorship in the past 12 months, according to a survey of more than 50 organizations by the CensHERship campaign.
Social media platforms use algorithms to flag and remove content deemed inappropriate, but campaigners say these automated systems are biased because they typically classify terms for female body parts as ‘inappropriate’ without checking whether they have been used in a sexual context.
In examples reported to CensHERship, a post explaining how women should check their breasts for cancer was flagged as “prostitution” and a sex education account was removed from Instagram.
A breast cancer awareness campaign had to resort to using male nipples on its posts because female nipples were banned, while a campaign to raise awareness of gynecological cancers had its account restricted after the word ‘vagina’ was used .
Nine in ten respondents reported censorship on Instagram and four in ten had problems on Facebook. Some problems were also reported on other platforms, such as TikTok and LinkedIn.
Commenting on the research, Janet Lindsay, chief executive of the charity Wellbeing of Women, said: ‘Using anatomical terms to provide accurate health information is fundamental to helping women advocate for their health and get the care they need to have.
“Social media companies must help empower women by ending this censorship.”
Anna O’Sullivan, co-founder of the CensHERship campaign, whose FutureFemHealth account shares news about advances in women’s healthcare technology, said: ‘This is a completely avoidable situation if social media platforms agree to change their policies to address the restriction and censorship of women’s health content.”
Author and campaign co-founder Clio Wood had her Instagram account flagged for ‘inappropriate content’ after posting an innocent video of herself dancing in a bikini to promote body positivity and self-confidence.
Yet there are currently more than 48 million posts on Instagram under the hashtag #bikini – many of which are highly sexualized images and some of which feature very young women.
She said: ‘What is especially distressing is that men’s health topics are left uncensored every day, and hyper-sexualised women’s bodies, unsolicited photos and fake accounts with near-nude female profile pictures find their way unchecked into social media feeds and inboxes.
“It’s hypocritical.”
Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, claims it does not have a blanket ban on words like “menopause” or “vagina” but declined to comment on the study results.