"What does my baby look like at six weeks? When's my due date? When should I book my first midwife appointment? These are just some questions women type into search engines when they find out they're pregnant. For Sammi Claxon, it was no different. Soon after she started searching for answers, algorithms picked up that she was pregnant, and began targeting her with adverts. But when she lost her baby due to a miscarriage, the adverts didn't stop."
"After her first miscarriage in 2021, Sammi had four more over the next three years. "As soon as you get that positive test, you feel like a mother," Sammi says. "You have this future plan in your head and when that's stripped away from you, it's awful." Feelings of shame and embarrassment left Sammi feeling isolated. She turned to social media for support, and remembers seeing her feed littered with baby-related adverts, which for her were devastating."
Many people search pregnancy-related questions online and are identified by algorithms that then deliver targeted adverts. Targeted pregnancy-related adverts have continued to appear even after miscarriages, causing distress, shame, and social isolation for some women. One woman experienced five miscarriages over three years and removed herself from social media to protect her mental health after seeing baby-related adverts. Another pursued legal action over personalised adverts and obtained an agreement from Meta to stop using her personal data for individual targeting, while Meta maintained that adverts target groups of at least 100 people and the Information Commissioner's Office disagreed.
Read at BBC News
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