Meta Under Fire for Rejecting Sexual Health Ads

The nonprofit Center for Intimacy Justice filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against Meta, accusing the social giant of systemically rejecting advertisements and information from women’s sexual health brands. These rejections lead to suspended accounts, diluted brand messaging and missed marketing opportunities.

The organization, which filed the complaint in March but is announcing the action today, alleges Meta engages in unfair and deceptive trade practices by purporting to allow women’s sexual health brands to advertise on its platform, but in practice rejecting their ads. Several representatives of Congress, including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Mazie Hirono, Peter Welch and Representative Adam Schiff, signed a public letter sent last week supporting the CIJ’s complaint.

“We have had to water down our messaging, and because we can’t use specific words, our ads are less direct,” said Jenny Dwork, vp of marketing at reproductive healthcare company Wisp, who said hundreds of their ads have been flagged, and that ads that have been approved can be later rejected in future campaigns. “As a result, our mission and brand commitment to destigmatize sexual and reproductive health does get diluted.”

The latest scuffle between sexual health brands and Meta reflects the challenges the social platform has had in balancing free expression with content moderation efforts, intended to make the platform more palatable for users and advertisers. For example, Meta has been found to allow content that violates its policies around climate misinformation and misleading health claims. Meta also has tools to let people report content that could violate its policies, which has led to the accounts of creators receiving backlash being suspended, even if the creator has not actually violated any policy.

Lauren Wang, founder of menstruation product Flex, estimates that the company has lost $10 million in online revenue due to censorship of its ads from Meta and other digital channels since its founding in 2016.

“We use honest portrayals of periods in our marketing and advertising so menstruators everywhere understand that their bodies are beautiful,” Wang said. “Bleeding is completely normal, and periods are nothing to be ashamed of.”

Meta says it allows advertising of sexual health products, so long as they conform to the platform’s policies.

“We welcome ads for women’s health and sexual wellness products but we prohibit nudity and have specific rules about how these products can be marketed on our platform,” said Meta’s spokesperson Ryan Daniels.

The CIJ has requested the FTC take legal action and investigate Meta’s policies, urge the platform to improve its advertising appeal process and order Meta to increase resources to monitor advertising acceptance and rejection, among other requirements.

In January 2022, the CIJ published a report, in partnership with pelvic health startup Origin, that sampled 60 organizations serving women and people of diverse genders on their experience with Meta. All brands in the sample, including a startup helping with the consequences of endometriosis and a nonprofit offering sexual health education in Kenya, had their ads rejected. Further, 50% of organizations had their accounts suspended by Meta.

In October 2022, Meta updated its advertising policies, including those around sexual health products. The company said the updates were less substantive changes than ones to improve clarity, though claimed enforcement has improved. In practice, sexual health ads have still been routinely rejected since October, said Jackie Rotman, founder and CEO of CIJ. Wang agrees that Meta’s censorship has not improved since October.

Uneven enforcement

Flex is a disc that people can use on their periods, with one of its primary use cases being mess-free period sex. In order to explain how the product works in its advertisements, Flex needs to show blood, though this has been labeled as “too graphic” by Facebook, according to Wang.

“Since we couldn’t initially say period, period sex, or show period blood as red, we had to fight all of the platforms (including Meta) at the executive level to have their policies changed,” Wang said. “But from time to time the policies go back and then (without notice) block our ads, so we go back to the drawing board.”

A key talking point of the CIJ is the inconsistencies in Meta’s policies. The policy explicitly states that ads can’t promote products focused on sexual pleasure or enhancement, like sex toys, but can advertise products to prevent erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation.

Many sexual pleasure brands have felt the sting of these policies. When sex toy brand Womanizer saw its account banned in summer 2021 without ever knowing what policy it violated, the company had to ask its customers to submit complaints to Instagram to reinstate its account, in exchange for a product giveaway. The company even went so far as to offer Meta employees a complimentary toy if they submitted a short anonymous testimonial. Womanizer eventually got its account reinstated after two weeks.

“We hoped by asking an independent agency to take action that they could impact …. a wider array of companies,” CIJ’s Rotman said. “The calls to action about injunctive relief are actually to require change at Meta.”