According to a report by five dozen companies specializing in women’s health products and services, Facebook has often rejected their ads over objections that they contain “adult content.” Center for Intimacy Justice released this week. Facebook’s advertising policies prohibit reproductive health products or services that focus on sexual pleasure, but anecdotes from companies that the Center for Intimacy Justice has either interviewed or surveyed paint a picture of a platform that violates these policies in seemingly arbitrary and interspersed with sexism.
The 60 companies that participated in the report have all had ads disapproved by Facebook. About half said their accounts were also suspended by the social media giant. One such company is Joylux. It offers vFit Gold, a product that women can use to strengthen their pelvic floor. “Because of the nature of our product, its appearance,” Joylux CEO Colette Courtion said the New York Times Facebook and other companies believe it is “pornographic” in nature.
Joylux claims that Facebook has shut down its ad account twice since 2017. It is said the company never gave a reason for these actions. It also claims Facebook automatically disapproved ads containing “vagina.” That’s some meta The parent company of Facebook, disputes. A spokesman for the company told Engadget that it is not enforcing a blanket ban on keywords like “vagina” and “menopause.” Instead, it says it takes into account “how each ad is positioned.”
Center for Intimacy Justice
With the help of an agency that specializes in counteracting ad rejection, Joylux has managed to place its ads on Facebook in recent years. However, the company had to change its copy to the point that this advertisement is no longer helpful to consumers. “We can’t show what the product looks like and we can’t say what it does,” Joylux told the New York Times.
A spokesman for Meta told Engadget that its enforcement isn’t perfect and that it sometimes makes mistakes. The company also noted that it has its current policy in place in part because it strives to consider what people from different countries and cultures are taking away from ads promoting adult products.
“We welcome ads for sexual wellness products, but we prohibit nudity and have specific rules on how these products may be marketed on our platform,” the spokesperson said. “We’ve provided advertisers with details about the types of products and descriptions we allow in ads.”
What makes Facebook’s actions in these cases frustrating for the 60 companies that participated in the report is that they believe Meta didn’t apply the same standards to ads targeting men. “Right now it’s arbitrary where they say a product is allowed or not allowed in a way that we think has really sexist undertones and a lack of understanding of health,” says Jackie Rotman, the founder of the Center for Intimacy Justice, the Times said.
By that time, the organization had found an ad promoting an erectile dysfunction pill that promised a “hot, wet American summer.” Another, promoting a lube, said the lotion was “made just for men to be alone.”
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