Is it okay to talk about abortion on social media? New moderation challenge in sight

Pandemics, elections in certain countries and the war in Ukraine have forced platforms to react to control problematic content and sometimes even to take sides. The latest episode in this list of examples is the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the fifty-year ruling that allowed abortion in the United States. The response of the platforms to this event, at least the initial one, has raised criticism and suspicion. 

As expected, the Court's decision - which overturned the precedent of Roe v. Wade - triggered a very critical debate on social media. Some users, as a show of support and solidarity, began to offer medications - mainly misoprostol and mifepristone - to women who wanted to terminate their pregnancies. Immediately, Facebook and Instagram reacted by deleting the content. 

Indeed, Meta has a regulated goods policy that establishes the rules for certain items whose trade is restricted or illegal, such as drugs, endangered species, firearms or medicines. Regarding the latter, the rule prohibits content that seeks to buy them, sell them, give them away or order them with very few exceptions, such as when it is a pharmacy offering its products. 

What was striking, however, was the speed with which Meta applied its policies, as content related to abortion pills was removed within minutes. Sometimes, publications that did not seek to offer them, but simply referred to them, were sanctioned. A Vice journalist made the experiment of posting on Facebook "abortion pills can be mailed". The statement, rather than an offer, is a fact, since the U.S. authorities allow some telemedicine companies to provide this service. However, Meta deleted the content and suspended the journalist's account for a few hours.

An AP reporter did a similar exercise to check that these kinds of publications were being removed, but found an additional finding: publications offering drugs or weapons did not suffer any kind of sanction, despite the fact that these behaviors - in addition to being illegal in many countries - are also prohibited by the regulated goods policy.

It's not the only evidence that Meta applies its rules much less consistently when it comes to guns. According to a Media Matters for America investigation published last June, on Facebook and Instagram Marketplace it was possible to get almost all the parts needed to build an assault rifle homemade and, therefore, without registration.

At Circuito we also put the algorithm to the test. A Facebook account posted messages in Spanish offering to send "abortion pills" by mail to those who needed them. A week later, the content was still intact. However, when those same posts were made in English, they were deleted just eleven minutes later.

These isolated experiments - which may offer little indication of the problem - point to two criticisms of Meta's moderation systems that can be extended to other platforms. On the one hand, the algorithms are much more effective at detecting problematic content in English than in any other language. In this case, however, the 'inefficiency' ends up protecting the dissemination of content in Spanish, which would be protected by freedom of expression. On the other hand, this automatic detection works more quickly in some categories than in others, when in theory they are all equally infringements of EU rules.

In response to the criticism of Meta, only Andy Stone, the company's director of communications, has spoken out, reiterating that the company's policies prohibit offering medications and that they were working to correct some cases in which the rules had been applied in error. However, this episode only highlights a trend of the company, which for years has reduced visibility or applied labels to content related to abortion drugs, as denounced by various organizations.

With the Supreme Court's decision, social media platforms will face a major content moderation challenge in the United States. Wade case, state regulatory projects that prohibit information related to the termination of pregnancy will gain strength. This will trigger new conflicts regarding freedom of expression and women's reproductive rights. Civil society organizations have expressed their concern and are now preparing for a new front of activism.

‍

‍

‍