The women taking tech giant Meta to task after their baby loss

What does my baby look like at six weeks? When is my birth date? When should I make my first midwife appointment?

These are just a few of the questions women type into search engines when they find out they are pregnant.

The situation was no different for Sammi Claxon. Shortly after she started looking for answers, the algorithms realized she was pregnant and began targeting her with ads.

However, when she lost her baby due to miscarriage, the advertisements did not stop.

After Sammi’s first miscarriage in 2021, she had four more miscarriages over the next three years.

“As soon as you get that positive test, you feel like a mother,” says Sammi. “You have a plan for the future in your head and it sucks to have that plan taken away from you.”

Feelings of embarrassment and embarrassment caused Sammi to feel alone.

She turned to social media for support and recalls that her feed was filled with ads for babies and it was devastating for her.

Sammi, from Blidworth in Nottinghamshire, says she distances herself from social media to protect her mental health.

Like Sammi, Tanya O’Carroll was subjected to targeted ads from Facebook when she found out she was pregnant in 2017.

“I found it frustrating; that was before I told people about it in my private life,” he told the BBC.

After Tanya filed a lawsuit in March, Facebook agrees to stop targeting ads to an individual user using personal data.

Tanya’s case argued that Facebook’s targeted advertising system fell within the UK’s definition of direct marketing and individuals were given the right to object.

Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram, said ads on its platforms can only be targeted to groups of a minimum of 100 people rather than individuals, so they don’t count as direct marketing.

But the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) disagreed.

Tanya said Meta agreed to stop using her personal data for direct marketing purposes; “which, in legal terms, means I can turn off all creepy, invasive, targeted ads on Facebook.”

As far as he and his legal team know, he is the only one of more than 50 million Facebook users in the UK who is not the target of personalized ads.

Tanya adds that more than 10,000 people have now appealed to Meta to stop using their data for direct marketing, which could lead to more lawsuits.

But this hasn’t changed anything for many women who have lost their babies but are still “bombarded” by pregnancy-related ads.

These include Rhiannon Lawson from Suffolk. She told the BBC that seeing the two blue lines on the pregnancy test “filled her and her partner Mike with hope”.

Like many expectant mothers, they gave their growing baby a name.

“We named them Fantus, after a child character we kept seeing when visiting friends in Denmark,” says Rhiannon.

But after an early bleed, testing showed Rhiannon had miscarried at eight weeks.

In October last year she found out she was pregnant again and this time it was reassured by some early scans.

But then the 20-week scan came and it was revealed that the couple’s boy, whom they named Hudson, had a serious illness. hypoplastic left heart syndrome.

“There was no way forward,” she says, and Hudson was stillborn in March at 22 weeks.

Devastated Rhiannon and her partner had been taking to social media for support and playing word games online together.

But after saying goodbye to their little boy, the couple were still receiving ads about the baby on their phones.

Rhiannon says: “Pregnancy apps still send out milestone notifications. Baby stores offer discounts on items we’ll never need. Ads for baby strollers and newborn essentials pop up in between mundane scrolling.”

“Technology does not understand loss, and when we least expect it, it reminds us with devastating precision of what we no longer have.”

In late September, Meta announced that it would introduce a new product. subscription service For users in the UK who do not want to see ads.

This means you’ll have to pay £2.99 a month to stop seeing ads.

The advertising model known as “consent or pay” is a way for digital platform owners to generate revenue from users who refuse to be tracked.

But Rhiannon says that won’t help.

“If they [Meta] “It cares about its users, it unreasonably charges them not to display offensive content,” he said.

After three rounds of failed in vitro fertilization (IVF), Hayley Dawe and her partner Anthony were stunned to discover they were expecting twins and immediately joined many online twin groups, scouring the internet for tips and advice.

They already had a six-year-old daughter, so they were excited about the two new additions.

But that excitement turned to devastation when an early scan confirmed that one of the twins had died a week earlier.

On the day of the next scan, the room was silent as her other twin also had no heartbeat and had died the day before.

“I’m broken,” he says.

Hayley sought support in online forums but found herself faced with ads for maternity clothes, pregnancy pillows and pregnancy tracking apps, among other things.

For Hayley, leaving social media “wasn’t an option” because she saw other women had similar experiences.

On Facebook, users can access advertising topics they do not want to see, such as wrestling, chocolate, and board games.

But Hayley says she was shocked to discover pregnancy wasn’t among those options.

She flagged some of the ads as spam but said three weeks later she was still being bombarded with pregnancy promotions over and over again.

Like Rhiannon, Hayley is not in favor of paid subscriptions.

It says: “Why do I have to pay when there are options to change preferences that don’t work?”

Sammi, Rhiannon, and Hayley’s content-triggering experiences come as no surprise to former Meta employee Arturo Bejar.

“Mark as spam [button] “It wasn’t connected to anything,” says Arturo, who was part of the senior management team.

“We have seen in some cases that aid reports are being thrown out because they are too much.”

He worked for Meta between 2009 and 2015 and 2019 and 2021. In 2023, Arturo also presented evidence to the US Congress about how he believed Meta was not keeping users safe.

Arturo adds: “They like to say they care, but they care about getting more users to their platform so they can make more money. I think that’s inexcusable. It’s inhumane.”

In response, a Meta spokesperson said: “We take these concerns seriously and continue to improve the precision and accuracy of how ads are delivered.

“Our systems are designed to share the most relevant and useful content, but they’re not perfect, and some ads may seem inconsiderate or out of place at times. As we continue to improve our models, we encourage people to opt out of certain categories.”

I know how sad these ads are because I’m part of the parenting club that no one wants to join.

I gave birth to my daughter Liliana on April 18, 2020.

I carried him for 40 weeks and two days after his due date his heart stopped beating inside me.

I spent several precious hours trying to memorize his face, his weight in my arms, and the feel of his skin to the touch.

I struggle with the word “lost” because I didn’t lose it like the keys behind the couch.

Since Liliana’s death, I have had a daughter, a son, and two more miscarriages. I always say that I am a mother to two babies that I can hold in my arms and three babies that I hold in my heart.

In my most vulnerable moments, as I scour social media for support, I am slapped in the face with targeted ads of giggling babies, blooming pregnancy bumps, happy families that remind me of everything I’ve lost.

If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can visit: BBC Action Line for help.