Women taking Meta to task after their baby loss (www.bbc.co.uk)

Women across the UK are publicly confronting Meta after pregnancy-related searches and activity led to targeted adverts that continued even after miscarriages and stillbirths, causing emotional distress. Several women described being bombarded by pregnancy apps, pram offers and milestone notifications while seeking online support; one litigant, Tanya O’Carroll, sued and secured an agreement from Facebook to stop using her personal data for direct marketing under UK rules. Meta maintains ads target groups (claiming a minimum audience size of 100) and offers ad-topic opt-outs, but users report those controls don’t work reliably, the Information Commissioner’s Office disputed Meta’s group-size defence, and more than 10,000 UK users have filed objections—potentially leading to further legal challenges. Technically and commercially, the dispute highlights tensions between behavioural ad systems and user wellbeing: ad delivery relies on profile-building from searches, app usage and inferred signals, while “mark as spam” and topic controls appear disconnected from enforcement. Meta’s new UK “consent-or-pay” option (£2.99/month for an ad-free feed) reframes privacy as a paid choice, underscoring conflicts between personalization-driven revenue models and regulatory/ethical responsibilities to vulnerable users. Regulators, ex-employees and affected users argue this exposes limits in algorithmic sensitivity, opt-out mechanics and accountability—issues likely to shape future enforcement and platform design for personalised advertising.