Censorship of women’s health and wellbeing content online

Background

Concerns have been raised that online platforms may be disproportionately restricting or removing content relating to women’s health and wellbeing. A March 2025 Context news item claimed that Amazon, Google, TikTok and Meta were “suppressing women's health content on their platforms”. A 2025 study by Essity, a Swedish hygiene and health company, found that social media platforms were “more likely to suppress women’s health content over men’s”.

In 2025, an open letter calling for an end to the censorship of women’s health content online was reportedly co-signed by more than 190 organisations, founders, health professionals and campaigners. The letter urged social media platforms to update their content moderation policies to better reflect medical context and gender equity. Clio Wood and Anna O’Sullivan, co-founders of CensHERship, stated:

It’s time to level the playing field for women’s health content. This isn’t about isolated errors. It’s about an entire digital ecosystem that treats women’s health as inappropriate. This censorship isn’t just frustrating – it’s economically damaging and, in some cases, can cost lives.

In December 2025, the Guardian reported that Meta had restricted or removed dozens of accounts belonging to abortion access providers, queer groups and reproductive health organisations in what campaigners called one of the “biggest waves of censorship” on the platform.

In March 2026, the Independent reported a warning from over 600 women’s health leaders that social media platforms were systematically censoring medically accurate content on topics such as menstruation, fertility and menopause, often misclassifying such content as “adult” material and limiting its reach. Campaigners argued that such “systemic bias” reinforced stigma, restricted access to vital information, and had the potential to harm health outcomes by discouraging people from seeking help or advice.

Regulation of online content

The restriction of online content sits within the broader regulatory context shaped by the Online Safety Act 2023. The act places duties on platforms to protect their users from illegal and harmful content.

Ofcom, the online safety regulator, sets out measures that providers can take to fulfil their safety duties in codes of practice. It also has a broad range of powers to assess and enforce providers’ compliance with the framework.

In November 2025, Ofcom published guidance on protecting women and girls online. This sets out nine areas for technology firms to improve women and girls’ online safety by taking responsibility, designing their services to prevent harm and supporting their users.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has published guidance on content moderation to help platforms comply with the data protection law when carrying out content moderation to meet their online safety duties. The ICO has noted that content moderation decisions can significantly affect people’s rights, particularly when platforms wrongly remove or restrict lawful material due to inaccurate data or flawed processes. It calls on organisations to ensure moderation systems comply with data protection law, emphasising transparency, accuracy, and mechanisms for users to challenge or correct decisions.

Forms of censorship

Reports indicate that censorship can arise through:

• Automated content moderation
• Algorithmic suppression

Automated content moderation

Online platforms maintain policies restricting nudity and sexual content. These policies generally allow for exceptions in specified instances. For example, Meta’s policy on adult nudity and sexual activity states that:

[N]udity can be shared for a variety of reasons, including as a form of protest, to raise awareness about a cause or for educational or medical reasons.

It has been reported that automated systems and algorithms used to identify violations have failed to distinguish between clinical and educational content and explicit material. A 2025 CensHERship report on censorship of women’s health stated:

Terms like vagina, nipple, libido, or menopause can trigger moderation filters that automatically restrict reach or block ad delivery. This is even when clearly used in a medical or education context.

In January 2025, Meta said that it would be revising its automated moderation processes:

We’re also going to change how we enforce our policies to reduce the kind of mistakes that account for the vast majority of the censorship on our platforms. Up until now, we have been using automated systems to scan for all policy violations, but this has resulted in too many mistakes and too much content being censored that shouldn’t have been.

Algorithmic suppression

Some reports indicate that censorship of women’s health content can be the result of algorithmic design. For example, the 2025 Essity study found that posts relating to women’s health received lower engagement and reach than comparable men’s health content. The study also found the practice of “shadow banning” whereby a user’s content is “restricted, decategorised or hidden on a social media platform, limiting reach or engagement”.

What has the government said?

In April 2026, in response to a parliamentary question on the steps it was taking to help prevent the censorship of online information concerning women's health, the government said:

The Online Safety Act does not prevent adults or children from accessing legal content about women’s health. Safeguards for freedom of expression have been built in throughout the framework of the Act, which places duties on platforms to protect users’ rights to freedom of expression when introducing safety measures.

The largest services regulated by the Act will have additional duties meaning they cannot arbitrarily remove content, and they will need to be clear what content is acceptable on their services and enforce the rules consistently. Users will have access to effective complaints procedures to appeal when content is unduly taken down.

Further reading

• Social Media: Women: 28 Apr 2026 | Written questions | Answered | House of Commons | 128765
• International Women’s Day: 06 Mar 2026 | Proceeding contributions | House of Lords | 853 cc1527-1538
• Health: Women: 25 Feb 2026 | Written questions | Answered | House of Commons | 112303