00:06:55.400So since I did the like pre-show, everything's the worst.
00:06:58.540have to bring in. This is a solution and it's coloring, small coloring books that with wonderful
00:07:04.100markers. Yes. Yeah, that can be the antidote to our troubling times. Have you considered just
00:07:11.720diving headfirst into the world of markers and penmanship and calligraphy and journaling and
00:07:17.120coloring? It is quite nice. It is quite nice. Annie, I will leave some for you. I know you're
00:07:23.160about to house it for me so I will leave some for you to try out yourself you know I have I have two
00:07:29.200main thoughts from this one is that I I hate when this happens where your birthday is coming up
00:07:35.860Samantha and I wish I had known this earlier oh no that would have been a great gift but then
00:07:41.020I think Bridget you should come on one time and let us talk about something that's not so stressful
00:07:48.140let's give let's give ourselves a little break we could talk about markers i know you mentioned
00:07:53.020like reality tv we could have a whole thing where it's not something so doom and gloom
00:07:59.260we make you do all the like dark stuff we should make let you come in with the joys that you have
00:08:04.200because we just talked about the adirondacks and everything yeah i feel like people who listen to
00:08:10.040my content might not know that i experience joy i have i have my my all the only things i talk
00:08:17.320about are not the crushing weight of fascism I also enjoy reality television I think this would
00:08:25.320be fun I think we should look at this all right I like it oh but unfortunately before that we're
00:08:33.080not doing that today this is also the timing is interesting because we're Samantha and I are
00:08:40.120working on an update on CPCs crisis pregnancy centers I know them very well yes and we in
00:08:47.240our research ran into a lot of stuff about how tech companies were basically paying for them to
00:08:53.560advertise or accepting their money and being misleading about things. So this is very much
00:08:59.300related. What are we talking about today, Bridget? Well, that is such a good transition because it's
00:09:04.900all related. But tech companies really have put their thumbs on the scale when it comes to being
00:09:11.100able to get accurate content about abortion on social media. Your point about crisis pregnancy
00:09:16.860centers and the way that Google essentially is like paying an advertising network for them to
00:09:22.880exist is a great example. But today I really wanted to talk about how social media is heavily
00:09:29.640moderating and even in some cases like suppressing and censoring content about abortion. I think that
00:09:36.180we all talked about this back in January, but did y'all remember when Mark Zuckerberg had that
00:09:41.360moment that people sort of talked about as his mask off moment back in January when Trump came
00:09:45.820back into office i think that we were talking about how he really started dressing like a
00:09:50.320divorced nightclub promoter and was saying things like oh we're taking the tampons out of the
00:09:55.880washrooms at the restaurant in here at facebook hq just really was sort of having a moment where
00:10:02.280he was saying a lot of things do you remember this oh yes oh yes he was like he leaned in hard
00:10:09.100he was like oh yeah he's been waiting for this moment and yes oh my gosh you can tell i mean i
00:10:14.880I almost quibbled when people were like, oh, it's his mask off moment, because I don't think that Mark Zuckerberg has any kind of like I don't I wouldn't call it a mask off moment because I think that he is the definition of a hollow, empty person.
00:10:29.300And so I think he is the mask. He will say anything.
00:10:33.520I think that he has no he's I'm honestly fascinated by him as a tech leader because I think that he has no value, scruples, morals.
00:10:40.960There's just nothing. He will say anything. He will do anything. However the wind blows, that's how he will blow. And I don't think it's fair to call that a mask moment when truly like what the mask is not is not hiding anything. This is just genuinely like who you are, who you always have been. Just a soulless person who is waiting to see who they should kiss up to. And we'll do that if it means holding on to power.
00:11:04.300Right. He was just waiting in the background.
00:11:06.140Like his true personality was just waiting in the shadows.
00:11:08.700And then it was like, oh, this is my moment.
00:11:11.740And so when that all was going on, he also announced that Meta was going to be scrapping their community notes feature
00:11:18.540and scrapping all third party fact checking on the platform because, as he said,
00:11:24.020it was time for the company to get back to their roots when it comes to free expression.
00:11:28.380I will play a little bit of a video that he put out talking about this.
00:11:32.960Hey everyone. I want to talk about something important today, because it's time to get back
00:11:37.660to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. I started building social media
00:11:43.200to give people a voice. I gave a speech at Georgetown five years ago about the importance
00:11:47.820of protecting free expression, and I still believe this today. But a lot has happened over the last
00:11:52.980several years. There's been widespread debate about potential harms from online content.
00:11:58.460Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more.
00:12:02.480A lot of this is clearly political, but there's also a lot of legitimately bad stuff out there.
00:13:32.720all of that. So this is when he was really talking about how important it was to protect
00:13:37.680free expression on social media platforms. Y'all might recall that around this time,
00:13:41.380he was in the headlines for saying that he felt the Biden administration had been trying to
00:13:46.000pressure Facebook into removing COVID misinformation. The White House had a different
00:13:50.040take saying, quote, when confronted with the deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged
00:13:54.920responsible actions to protect public health and safety. Our position has been very clear
00:13:58.940and consistent. We believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account
00:14:03.120the effects their actions have on the American people while making independent choices about
00:14:06.960the information they present. So, you know, Zuckerberg in this moment was like, we are not
00:14:12.820going to be moderating political content the way that we have been. We are going to lift
00:14:17.860restrictions on topics that are part of mainstream discourse and really just focus on the enforcement
00:14:23.200of illegal and like high severity violations. So yay for free speech, right? That all sounds great.
00:14:29.720Well, all of that is only the case if that part of the mainstream discourse is not abortion,
00:14:36.440which Facebook continues to suppress and moderate quite heavily with zero transparency and zero
00:14:42.600consistency. So it seems like if you're spreading COVID misinformation, well, that is protected
00:14:47.940speech that needs to be left up for freedom. If you are sharing accurate information about abortion
00:14:53.000that isn't even against Metta's policies, they will take it down.
00:14:57.460Yeah. And like you said, without warning or transparency or nothing just is gone. And you
00:15:03.180might not know why or, well, you could probably figure it out. But one of the things that's
00:15:07.480really frustrating about all of this is that, you know, like you said, they're kind of lying
00:15:12.440to our faces, right? Like they're saying one thing and doing something completely different.
00:15:18.920Yeah, that's what really makes me angry about this. You know, I cover a lot of tech companies.
00:15:24.580The thing that gets me is when they lie, when they say one thing publicly, when they publish
00:15:30.140something in their rules and regulations and policies, you know, no one's putting a gun to
00:15:34.600their head and making them put these things in their rules. They put them in their rules and
00:15:37.660then they do a completely different thing. And then when advocates or organizers call them out
00:15:42.760on it, there's just no they're just like, oops, what are you going to do that? For some reason,
00:15:47.020that just really gets me because they are allowed to enjoy all of this positive press of putting
00:15:54.300this thing in their policy and then continue doing the shady work of going against that policy.
00:16:01.080It never it never comes back at them. They're able to just do whatever they want while saying
00:16:05.000one thing and doing another. And I just don't feel like they really get held accountable. And so
00:16:08.200a Metta spokesperson said that taking down abortion content goes against Metta's own
00:16:14.620intentions. A spokesperson told the New York Times, we want our platforms to be a place where
00:16:19.580people can access reliable information about health services. Advertisers can promote health
00:16:24.260services and everyone can discuss and debate public policies in this space. That is why we
00:16:29.960allow posts and ads discussing and debating abortion. But they're not doing that at all,
00:16:35.140because the big thing to know here is that Meta says one thing in their policies and then does
00:16:40.360a completely different thing when it comes to how they are actually moderating abortion content.
00:16:45.960Yeah. And it's it's it's so difficult right now to get that good information. And there's so much
00:16:52.700misinformation, disinformation out there. And to remove it is just really piling onto a problem
00:17:01.660that really doesn't need any more piling onto. It is already really bad and people are already
00:17:07.880very confused. This is not helping. No, that's a really good context to set that, you know,
00:17:16.940we're in a time where the Supreme Court struck down Roe. It is so much harder to access accurate
00:17:25.200information about health so that people can make health decisions for themselves. And when social
00:17:30.500media platforms like Facebook put their thumb on the scales and make these kinds of moderation
00:17:36.940decisions with no transparency that go against their own stated policy, it just makes that climate
00:17:42.500It makes it so much harder. It makes it harder for the people who are trying to do this work, abortion providers and abortion advocates. It makes it harder for people who need to make decisions about their health and the people that support them. It makes it so that people cannot access information to figure out what they want to do with their own bodies and lives.
00:18:00.960And these companies do that while saying, oh, we promote the ability to use our platforms to get this kind of information.
00:18:09.740I would prefer that they say we don't like abortion.
00:18:12.980We don't want people using our platform to talk about abortion.
00:18:27.540Right. I mean, the true, honest answer probably is that they are taking money or they know that they are just buying time until the entirety of our rights and reproductive rights may be completely dismantled in every way.
00:18:43.420And that way they can already say, hey, leaders of this fascist regime, we have done everything for you.
00:18:49.840So can you keep supporting our platform and give us more money?
00:18:52.800Oh, I mean, the way that you've got the Fox watching the henhouse here, the way that platforms are able to cozy up to really, I mean, it's not even really the Trump administration, just whoever is in power.
00:19:06.880And then that administration is also the administration that is meant to be overseeing and regulating them.
00:19:12.480It's horrible. And so we really it's I'm glad that you brought that up, because I think that helps us peel back the layers of what exactly is going on here and why it's so unacceptable.
00:19:22.540And in understanding that that the whole confusion part is probably the point.
00:19:28.340I think that's true. I mean, in looking at some of the ways that Facebook says one thing and does another when it comes to moderating abortion content, I think that's exactly the point.0.98
00:19:36.280It's like, you know, if we and we'll get into this a little bit in a moment, but if we create a confusing, inconsistent, not transparent climate, people will just stop posting this information on our platforms.
00:19:47.840And so we don't have to crack down on all of it.
00:19:50.080We don't have to have a policy that does not allow for abortion content to be on our platform.
00:19:54.000It'll there'll be a chilling effect and people will do it on their own.
00:19:56.440They'll just stop posting on their own.
00:19:57.820And I think, in my opinion, that's the why and why this is happening.
00:20:07.020Run a business and not thinking about podcasting.
00:20:37.580If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:20:43.520This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:20:55.980I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:21:02.960I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:21:06.120from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments
00:21:11.120nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling
00:21:17.660characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart
00:21:22.940pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much
00:21:27.680you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever
00:21:34.160you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held
00:21:41.560captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what
00:21:48.020should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember
00:21:54.360this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week I'm with0.97
00:22:03.240survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going
00:22:10.060to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started
00:22:16.760screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories
00:22:23.480about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:22:28.840Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:22:38.500I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.
00:22:42.960If you know me, you know I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.
00:22:49.480So this podcast lets us uncover those things together through meaningful conversations with fascinating people.
00:22:57.460Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to
00:23:04.000stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with
00:23:10.320you. You have something in your guts. You go with it. And Shawn Johnson recalled the moment she
00:23:16.060realized her now husband, Andrew, was the one. He was just so unapologetically himself and knew
00:23:23.020nothing of Hollywood. He hadn't been on a plane before without his family. It was so pure.
00:23:29.640Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
00:23:35.860podcasts. So Meta says that they really want to focus on moderating posts that deal with
00:23:48.160illegal content. Side note, they don't always do such a great job of that either, but that's
00:23:53.080for another episode. So Meta's Dangerous Organizations and Individuals, or DOI policy,
00:23:58.900was supposed to really be like a narrow policy focusing on preventing the platform from being
00:24:04.540used by terrorist groups or organized crime, like violent or criminal activity. But according to the
00:24:10.860Electronic Frontier Foundation, over the years, we've really seen those rules be applied in far
00:24:16.260broader, and troubling ways with little transparency and significant impact on
00:24:21.220marginalized voices. And this has essentially allowed Meta to suppress factual content about
00:24:26.180abortion that does not actually break any of the platform's rules. So the reason why we know this
00:24:31.280is because the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, have really given us a snapshot into
00:24:36.060what's happening and provided some very clear receipts with their Stop Censoring Abortion
00:24:40.500campaign. EFF says they collected stories from individuals, healthcare clinics, advocacy groups,
00:24:45.680and more. And together, they've revealed nearly 100 examples of posts and resources being taken
00:24:51.120down, ranging from guidance on medication abortion to links of resources supporting
00:24:56.160individuals in states with abortion bans. What is important to note is that the posts that they
00:25:02.140found that were taken down or that resulted in sometimes a ban did not break any of Meta's rules.
00:25:09.200EFF said, we analyze these takedowns, deletions and bans, comparing the content to what platform
00:25:14.480policies allow, particularly those of meta, and found that almost none of the submissions we
00:25:19.700received violated any of the platform stated policies. Most of the censored posts simply
00:25:25.120provided factual educational information. So it really is a system where you don't know. I mean,
00:25:33.640I guess you could guess why this content is being taken down. There's no consistency. There's no
00:25:37.540transparency. And Facebook just gets to be like, oopsie, when it happens. Here's a great example
00:25:42.840of a post that was removed from a health care policy strategist named Lauren Kerr discussing
00:25:47.580abortion pills availability by mail. Her post reads, FYI, abortion pills are great to have around
00:25:53.640whether you anticipate needing them or not. Plan C pills is an amazing resource to help you find
00:25:58.660reliable sources for abortion pills by mail no matter where you live. Once received, the pill
00:26:03.200should be kept in a cool, dry place. The shelf life of Miffy Pristone is about five years. The
00:26:08.240shelf life of misopristal is about two years. There is a misopristal only regimen that is
00:26:13.400extremely safe, effective and very common globally. So that post is just here is some factual
00:26:19.080information about these pills. However, Facebook removed that post and the explanation they gave
00:26:26.600Lauren was that they don't allow people to buy, sell or exchange drugs that require a prescription
00:26:32.160from a doctor or a pharmacist. But as you can tell, that post isn't about selling or buying
00:26:37.580or trading medication it is just fact-based information about that medication yeah it's
00:26:44.980one of those things where you read it and you're like i don't see the i don't see the thing the
00:26:50.860thing that you're saying is there it's just it's just information oh oh it makes me bad
00:26:59.600yeah and eff points out that this post does not break any of meta's rules and should not be
00:27:04.980removed. But you don't have to take their word for it or my word for it because Metta said the
00:27:09.660exact same thing. EFF points out that Metta publicly insists that posts like these should
00:27:15.000not be censored. In a February 2024 letter to Amnesty International, Metta's human rights policy
00:27:20.740director wrote, organic content, i.e. non-paid content, educating users about medication abortion
00:27:27.120is allowed and does not violate our community standards. Additionally, providing guidance on
00:27:32.420legal access to pharmaceuticals is allowed so what the hell is up like why if it's allowed
00:27:38.240why are you taking it down i'm so curious about because if the moderators are essentially kind
00:27:46.000of removed then is this just a they have like a keyword like how is this happening is there a
00:27:52.440person or that is a great question if i had to guess i would say just knowing what i know about
00:27:59.160content moderation, I would say this is probably overuse of AI moderation and then not caring
00:28:06.300enough to correct that. If I had to say, I would say, because honestly, content moderation is a
00:28:13.000job for not just a human, but a culturally competent human. When you don't have culturally
00:28:17.820competent humans making moderation decisions, it's a problem. And it's a problem that leads to
00:28:23.460the content of marginalized people being suppressed much more on these platforms,
00:28:27.540Right. And so if I had to guess, I would say this is somebody using an AI content moderation and then not caring enough to correct that it is consistently taking down content that does not break any of the platform's rules.
00:28:41.360Well, and that kind of relates to another thing I know you're going to talk about, which is something Samantha and I have also talked about on some of our episodes, is shadow banning.
00:28:51.020That's right. I mean, shadow banning is one of those issues that I find very interesting because
00:28:54.780who among us has not posted something on social media, had that post not perform as well as you
00:29:00.080were expecting and wonder, am I shadow banned? I have definitely thought this myself. If you've
00:29:05.280ever thought that, you are not alone. But it does really happen. So shadow banning is when a social
00:29:10.200media platform limits the visibility of someone's content without telling them. And this is
00:29:15.400happening to people and organizations that make content about sexual and reproductive health.
00:29:20.140And it's a real problem because, as we were talking about before, the Internet in 2025,
00:29:25.320that is really where people are going to find information about their health, especially in a
00:29:30.300landscape where that information is more difficult to come by, where it's criminalized and cracked
00:29:34.840down on. So people need the Internet as a resource. And so if the people and advocates and organizations
00:29:41.440who provide that information online are shadow banned, it becomes that much harder to access
00:29:47.440what is often life-saving information to help people make health decisions.
00:29:52.820Earlier this year, the Center for Intimacy Justice shared a report called The Digital
00:29:56.920Gag, Suppression of Sexual and Reproductive Health on Meta, TikTok, Amazon, and Google.
00:30:01.420And they found that of the 159 nonprofits, content creators, sex educators, and businesses
00:30:06.680that they surveyed, 63% had content removed on Meta, 55% had content removed on TikTok.
00:30:13.980And this suppression is happening at the same time as platforms continue to allow and elevate
00:30:18.260videos of violence and gore and extremist and hateful content.
00:30:22.460And this pattern is troubling because it only becomes more prevalent as folks turn more
00:30:26.940and more to social media to find the information that they need to make decisions about their
00:30:30.740health. And so I like that context because we really do have a social media landscape that
00:30:37.120allows for violent content, gory content, extremist or hateful content to stay up while
00:30:43.920taking down accurate content about reproductive health that they agree does not violate any of
00:30:50.820their policies. It's pretty telling, too. You have you have some examples here, and one of them is
00:30:57.860uh from a place near us that i was like oh dear oh dear um emory yeah
00:31:04.960yep uh but i mean it's also as we're doing this research on the cpc episode i consider myself
00:31:16.260pretty you know pretty uh informed about abortion and all of it but i had to look up some stuff
00:31:23.940about like I'm not sure is that legal there I don't know like I I was feeling like I don't I
00:31:30.760don't know if I can trust this information and then you try to go to a place where you're like
00:31:34.600okay I know this place and then you find out it's taken down it doesn't have anything about it
00:31:39.420yeah it's not a good climate yeah and then you have Google allowing CPCs to stay you know high
00:31:49.240ranked in their search and then when you go to CPCs they tell you all kinds of misinformation
00:32:23.240yep uh and so let us get into some of these examples including the one near us so let's
00:32:29.700talk about what happened at emory university so rise at emory university the center for
00:32:34.200reproductive health and research in the southeast they published a post saying let's talk about
00:32:39.120mifepristone and its uses and the importance of access so they post this online two months later
00:32:45.080their account was suddenly suspended flagged under the policy against selling illegal drugs which
00:32:50.720They were not selling or offering illegal drugs. They were just giving fact-based health information.
00:32:56.980They tried to appeal, but that appeal was denied, leading to their account being permanently deleted.
00:33:03.180Sarah Redd, the director of research and translation at RISE, told EFF,
00:33:07.040As a team, this was a hit to our morale.
00:33:09.400We pour countless hours of person power, creativity, and passion into creating the content we have on our page,
00:33:14.760and having it vanish virtually overnight took a toll on our team.
00:33:18.460And, you know, I really think like think about how critical that information is these days and how critical social media is these days.
00:33:28.920They are already doing sensitive work in an area where that work is threatened.
00:33:33.520And so losing your social media that you've put so much time into is like losing a lifeline, both for the staff and for the community that you're trying to do that work in.
00:33:43.720And as EFF puts it, for many organizational users like Rise, their social media accounts are a repository for resources and metrics that may not be stored elsewhere.
00:33:53.280We spent a significant amount of already constrained team capacity attempting to recover all of the content we created for Instagram that was potentially going to be permanently lost.
00:34:01.860We also spent a significant amount of time and energy trying to understand what options we might have available for Meta to appeal our case and recover our account.
00:34:09.760Their support options are not easily accessible. And the time it took to navigate this issue distracted from our existing work. So I totally feel what they are saying, that when you are doing work that is that critical, you know, time sensitive, having to stop that work to figure out, well, how are we going to appeal this decision to Meta? Are all of our years and years of work on Instagram just lost forever? That is a real problem.
00:34:36.460And again, they weren't doing anything wrong there.
00:34:39.360They're nothing that they posted on their account was against menace policies.
00:36:09.420Yeah, and I have to assume that is the point.
00:36:13.540EFF writes, at the end of the day, clinics are left afraid to post basic information.
00:36:19.140Patients are left confused or misinformed, and researchers lose access to these audiences.
00:36:24.180But unless your issue catches the attention of a journalist or you know someone at Meta,
00:36:27.580you might never regain access to your account. And so I really think that that is the sort of
00:36:33.660so what here that Meta is doing this to sort of not explicitly discourage organizations and
00:36:43.420advocates and people from posting this kind of information on their platform while saying the
00:36:47.840opposite, because it is going to have a silencing effect. You know, nobody wants to risk losing
00:36:52.580their entire platform, years and years and years of content and research and resources that they've
00:36:57.320collected, yeah, no one is going to want to take that risk. Right. It's interesting that their
00:37:02.720policy with the things that we're going to actually moderate is about terrorism and gang
00:37:11.700and child endangerment, which is kind of a dog whistle for what the Republican platform has been
00:37:18.840for a jump to all of this morality level of issues. And that the fact that Zuckerberg is like,
00:37:25.780you know what? Yeah, we're going to adopt this, too. But it's purely to protect the peoples.
00:37:30.520We're just protecting the peoples. And again, it does seem like, see, see, we're doing like you.
00:37:36.200We got your back. We also agree with this. This is the only way or this is the best way
00:37:42.160to control what information is being out there. Yes. And if you actually I mean, this is a whole
00:37:48.740other topic. But when you look at the way so they say, OK, we're only going to be cracking down on
00:37:53.440content that creates harm for kids, this dog whistle that they love to pull up. And then when
00:37:59.320you look at the kind of harm for kids that they either allow or advocate, part of me is like,
00:38:05.060what content are you actually taking down? I don't know if you all saw the recent reporting.
00:38:10.260There was a very interesting report, I think from the Wall Street Journal, where they had gotten
00:38:15.280their hands on an internal policy document. So this is something that somebody at Facebook said,
00:38:21.360this is our policy, totally fine to have in writing, no problem, that said that Meta's chatbots
00:38:28.160were allowed to engage in sensual play with minors. So kids, it was okay with Meta if their
00:38:38.840chatbots engaged in like sensual, I won't say sexual, but I would say I've seen some of the
00:38:45.160content. And it is sort of spicy that it's okay if their bots do that with children. And part of
00:38:51.960me is like, I cannot believe you'll put this in writing. I cannot believe that someone at Facebook
00:38:55.840said, yeah, this is a document. I'll attach my name to this. Lo and behold, when the Wall Street
00:39:00.420Journal asked about it, they were like, oh no, we have since walked that policy back. That's no
00:39:05.920longer our official on the record. Our official on the record policy is no longer that it's okay
00:39:10.240for our our bots to engage in sexy role play with kids we we've walked that back like i bet you did
00:39:16.780walk that back today as you asked us this question i'm so sure it happened right after the wall street
00:39:23.000journal called them and asked them about it i'm so sure that it was like an hour later we walked it
00:39:26.840back we got this no no we would never right well yeah and i mean you were here bridget
00:39:35.920I guess it was years ago and you were talking about another kind of whistleblower account of
00:39:42.660Facebook knowing it was harming young girls yeah Frances Haugen is what is the whistleblower why we
00:39:49.360know that yeah so it's it is very galling for them to be like we want to protect the children
00:39:56.500and then you have these things that again directly show that clearly you don't not really
00:40:03.160and to be clear that is knowingly harming kids so i just think it's very interesting that facebook
00:40:11.260gets to say well we're too busy focusing on content that harms kids to take down to really
00:40:17.120care that much about what's going on with our abortion content that's that's the content we're
00:40:20.700really working on but really we're not doing that either you know what i mean like they get they
00:40:24.760really it just infuriates me it really does and i think the issue really is to understand is
00:40:32.500In 2025, when you have a question, when I have a question, the first place I go is the Internet. Right. We all that's I think that is the reality for most of us.
00:40:40.800And the Internet and social media really has become this lifeline for folks trying to get information about the world around us, including our sexual and reproductive health.
00:40:50.940And if folks are not able to find what they need in their own communities, which I'm sorry to say is becoming more and more of the reality these days, they are going to go online to turn to social media to fill those gaps.
00:41:03.820That access really matters most for folks whose care is being cut off, like abortion seekers or trans or queer youth living in states where health care is under attack.
00:41:14.020And so if you have these social media platforms kind of adding to a landscape where that information is difficult to access, even if that information is not against their rules, it's just making it that much more difficult.
00:41:29.540I mean, they they some of them are life or death and they really have real world impact on people's lives.
00:41:34.760Absolutely. And unfortunately, this is not this is part of kind of a larger issue, kind of a larger attack, gendered attack. Correct.0.59
00:41:46.460Yes. So this is something I find so interesting. And I actually should come back and do another episode on it in the middle of some research on it right now.
00:41:53.240But the Center for Intimacy Justice, whose report I mentioned earlier, they have another report that really shows how platforms routinely suppress sexual health content for women and trans folks while leaving content aimed at supporting the sexual health of cis men largely untouched.
00:42:10.060Right. So I know lots of people who who run businesses that are focused on like the sexual health of people who are not cis men.
00:42:18.400Right. So if you have pelvic pain, if you need sex toys, like all these different things that are aimed at people who are not cisgender men.
00:42:27.940I have lots of friends who run businesses like that.
00:42:30.760They are essentially not able to do any kind of advertising on Facebook because Facebook does not allow it.
00:42:37.540However, Facebook certainly allows information about the sexual wellness of cisgender men.
00:42:45.580So we really have a climate where, let's face it, mostly men who run these platforms are able to determine whose sexual health is important and who is not, whose health care is health care and whose is like something perverted that needs to be suppressed and isn't allowed on their platform.
00:43:03.060Yeah. Now I'm thinking about it. As I've been looking at Instagram, the amount of GLP one ads that I've been getting, which is interesting because I thought that was medication that you had to get through a doctor, is overwhelming.
00:43:15.680But also on the vice versa of that is Mel's health, sex health, BS. Those are the two ads that I get. Definitely nothing about women in birth control. Rarely. There's a few, but as of late, I think zero.
00:43:32.080But the amount of GLP-1 ads, I'm like, whoa, what is happening, Instagram?