Digital platforms use different techniques to censor and suppress content. Most can generate violations of freedom of expression, reproduce biases through algorithms, and violate users’ privacy. These are some of the most frequently used techniques:
Recommendation algorithms:
- Content filtering: Recommendation algorithms filter certain types of content based on keywords, images, or behavioral patterns. This may lead to removing content that is considered inappropriate or controversial.
- Content customization: Platforms can personalize recommendations, resulting in a “filter bubble” where users only see content that reflects their own opinions, limiting the diversity of perspectives.
Content moderation:
- Algorithmic moderation: It consists of using algorithms to detect controversial content automatically.
- Human moderation: Platforms also employ human moderators to review and remove content that violates their policies, with the ongoing risk that the moderator’s biases will determine which content to remove.
- Labeled: Instead of directly removing certain content, platforms can label it or include warnings to inform about its possible controversial nature.
Downranking:
- Algorithm manipulation: Platforms can adjust their algorithms to “relegate” certain content, making it less visible to users.
Shadow Banning:
- Hide content: This consists of hiding a user’s content without informing them so that they can continue interacting and producing content on the platform without knowing that they are invisible to other people.
Different States and technology companies censor content related to women’s sexual and reproductive rights, and more and more initiatives from anti-rights sectors promote digital suppression and the blocking of information on abortion. These are some examples of these actions applied by companies and governments:
Censorship and suppression:
- Organizations such as Women on Web, the Oriéntame Foundation, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation have been blocked from publishing or promoting information about abortion, but also about other sexual health and reproductive health topics. IMG_0578.JPG
- The company Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) constantly removes accounts and posts for having content about safe access to abortion. The company excuses itself by saying that this is “adult content” or that it is promoting products or services for adults while allowing false information to be spread about abortion and advertising related to male sexuality.
- The social network Tiktok prohibits advertising of abortion services, especially those related to abortion pills. Activists and health workers have denounced that this company systematically deletes content related to abortion.
- In Colombia, Google has put obstacles for organizations that provide legal abortion services to advertise and appear among the first results of their search engine. Google only allows this possibility in some countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, and limits it in other countries where abortion has also been decriminalized.
Government restriction:
- In 2022, Facebook handed over to Nebraska police the Messenger conversations of a mother and her daughter, in which they allegedly planned to buy pills to have an abortion. This information was used to accuse them criminally.
- Brazil has blocked access to several websites, including www.womeonwaves.or.
- Poland has imposed severe restrictions on access to safe abortions, accompanied by inflammatory rhetoric, disinformation, and misinformation campaigns. A bill was presented to prohibit any information or promotion of the possibility of having an abortion, not only in Poland but also abroad. The project was ultimately rejected.
- A bill in Texas would force Internet service providers within the state to block sites that provide abortion information. If approved, it would be illegal to “create, edit, upload, publish, host, maintain or register a domain name for an Internet website, platform or another interactive computer service that assists or facilitates a person´s effort to obtain abortion-inducing drugs”.
