Curated from Deeplinks — Here’s what matters right now:
This is the seventh installment in a blog series documenting EFF's findings from the Stop Censoring Abortion campaign. You can read additional posts here. For users hoping to promote or boost an abortion-related post on Meta platforms, the Community Standards are just step one. While the Community Standards apply to all posts, paid posts and advertisements must also comply with Meta's Advertising Standards. It’s easy to understand why Meta places extra requirements on paid content. In fact, their “advertising policy principles” outline several important and laudable goals, including promoting transparency and protecting users from scams, fraud, and unsafe and discriminatory practices. But additional standards bring additional content moderation, and with that comes increased potential for user confusion and moderation errors. Meta’s ad policies, like its enforcement policies, are vague on a number of important questions. Because of this, it’s no surprise that Meta's ad policies repeatedly came up as we reviewed our Stop Censoring Abortion submissions. There are two important things to understand about these ad policies. First, the ad policies do indeed impose stricter rules on content about abortion—and specifically medication abortion—than Meta’s Community Standards do. To help users better understand what is and isn’t allowed, we took a closer look at the policies and what Meta has said about them. Second, despite these requirements, the ad policies do not categorically block abortion-related posts from being promoted as ads. In other words, while Meta’s ad policies introduce extra hurdles, they should not, in theory, be a complete barrier to promoting abortion-related posts as boosted content. Still, our analysis revealed that Meta is falling short in several areas. What’s Allowed Under the Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Policy? When EFF asked Meta about potential ad policy violations, the company first pointed to its Drugs and Pharmaceuticals policy. In the abortion care context, this policy applies to paid content specifically about medication abortion and use of abortion pills. Ads promoting these and other prescription drugs are permitted, but there are additional requirements: To reduce risks to consumers, Meta requires advertisers to prove they’re appropriately licensed and get prior authorization from Meta. Authorization is limited to online pharmacies, telehealth providers, and pharmaceutical manufacturers. The ads also must only target people 18 and older, and only in the countries in which the user is licensed. Understanding what counts as “promoting prescription drugs” is where things get murky. Crucially, the written policy states that advertisers do not need authorization to run ads that “educate, advocate or give public service announcements related to prescription drugs” or that “promote telehealth services generally.” This should, in theory, leave a critical opening for abortion advocates focused on education and advocacy rather tha
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Original reporting: Deeplinks