The Great American Condom Campaign is a national youth-led effort that seeks to educate young people about the importance of safe sex. However, when the Washington-based nonprofit organization behind the effort, Advocacy for Youth, tried to promote one of their ads on Facebook, it was rejected for violating the site’s ad guidelines concerning “adult content.” This has been a problem for various social media platforms, where organizations seeking to educate the public about sexual health are finding their ads lumped in with prohibited content like pornography and ads for sex toys. This issue has been highlighted by the American Sexual Health Association, whose efforts to increase the profile of vaginismus on Facebook were denied due to the platform’s inability to distinguish between sexual health and sexual gratification.
Let’s Talk About Sex — Or Not
Despite being hailed as beacons of progressivism, major tech companies such as Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Google Inc. have been found to be quite conservative when it comes to sexual or graphic content in advertising. Twitter’s advertising policy, for example, allows messages that promote safe sex, but only if they are not “sexual” in nature. Facebook’s ad guidelines, meanwhile, prohibit adult content, including nudity, depictions of people in explicit or suggestive positions, or activities that are overly suggestive or sexually provocative.
This dichotomy, which some see as a reflection of America’s notorious puritanism, perpetuates the idea that sexuality is acceptable as an advertising commodity as long as it doesn’t bear real-world consequences. Health professionals have voiced their desire for the companies to adopt more inclusive advertising guidelines, and key figures such as Leslie Kantor, vice president of education at Planned Parenthood, have expressed frustration at Silicon Valley’s unwillingness to engage in meaningful dialogue.
Amber Madison, a therapist and journalist who writes about sex and relationships, has taken on the cause of sexual health on social media as her own. She recently launched a petition on Change.org asking the parent companies of the major platforms to work with sexual health organizations and come up with less restrictive policies. Madison also wrote about the topic in an article for the Atlantic in which she cites some interesting case studies.
For example, Bedsider, an organization that works to improve access to birth control, said that Facebook rejected one of its sponsored posts, which contained the text, “You’re so sexy when you’re well.” This contrasts with an approved sponsored post from the clothing company Nasty Gal, featuring photos of a young blonde woman stripped down to her underwear on a mall escalator.
It is unclear whether automation or human judgment calls are behind these decisions, but Madison believes that something needs to be done to address the issue. She said: “It was the journalist side of me that just felt, ‘This is a really crazy story,’ and then there was the advocate, sexual-health side of me that really felt like this needs to change, and somebody needs to bring some attention to the issue.”
