Social media giants are accused of ‘hypocrisy’ as campaigners say they are blocking vital women’s health information despite allowing the publication of sexualised images

Information about women’s health is being blocked on social media platforms that allow the posting of sexualized images, campaigners say.

Charities and health campaigners have accused Instagram, Facebook and other tech giants of “hypocrisy” for removing or restricting educational posts, without cracking down on inappropriate images.

Experts said it was important for qualified professionals to be able to share advice on women’s sexual health and wellbeing on social media to combat misinformation and reach a wider audience.

But new research has revealed that posts with practical health information, including warnings about how to identify cancer, were being wrongly flagged as pornographic or inappropriate because they used anatomical terms such as “breast” or “vagina.”

Nine in ten accounts that shared women’s health content 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 activists say these automated systems are biased because they typically classify terms for female body parts as “inappropriate” without considering 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 in their posts because female nipples were banned, while a gynecological cancer awareness campaign had restrictions placed on their account after using the word “vagina”.

Nine out of 10 respondents reported censorship on Instagram and four out of 10 had problems on Facebook. Some issues were also reported on other platforms, such as TikTok and LinkedIn.

Commenting on the survey, Janet Lindsay, chief executive of the charity Women’s Wellbeing, said: “Using anatomical terms to provide accurate health information is essential to helping women advocate for their health and get the care they need.”

“Social media companies must help empower women by ending this censorship.”

CensHERship campaign co-founder Anna O’Sullivan, whose FutureFemHealth account shares news about advances in women’s health technology, said: “This is a totally avoidable situation if social media platforms [would] agree to adjust their policies to avoid restriction and censorship of women’s health content.’

Author and campaign co-founder Clio Wood flagged her Instagram account for “inappropriate content” after she posted an innocent video of herself dancing in a bikini to promote body positivity and self-confidence.

However, there are currently over 48 million posts on Instagram with the #bikini hashtag, many of which are highly sexualized images and some feature very young women.

She said: “What’s especially galling is that every day men’s health topics go uncensored, and hypersexualized women’s bodies, unsolicited images and fake accounts using profile pictures of nearly naked women are spread. they make their way onto social media and into inboxes unchecked.”

“It’s hypocritical.”

Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, says it does not have an outright ban on words like “menopause” or “vagina,” and declined to comment on the survey results.