"Dear Tech Firms": Woman Furious Over Baby Ads After Child Was Stillborn

I know you knew I was pregnant. It's my fault, I just couldn't resist those Instagram hashtags - #30weekspregnant, #babybump. And, silly me! I even clicked once or twice on the maternity-wear ads Facebook served up. What can I say, I am your ideal "engaged" user.

You surely saw my heartfelt thank-you post to all the girl friends who came to my baby shower, and the sister-in-law who flew in from Arizona for said shower tagging me in her photos. You probably saw me googling "holiday dress maternity plaid" and "babysafe crib paint." And I bet Amazon even told you my due date, January 24th, when I created that Prime registry.

But didn't you also see me googling "braxton hicks vs. preterm labor" and "baby not moving"? Did you not see my three days of social media silence, uncommon for a high-frequency user like me? And then the announcement post with keywords like "heartbroken" and "problem" and "stillborn" and the 200 teardrop emoticons from my friends? Is that not something you could track?

You see, there are 24,000 stillbirths in the United States every year, and millions more among your worldwide users. And let me tell you what social media is like when you finally come home from the hospital with the emptiest arms in the world, after you and your husband have spent days sobbing in bed, and you pick up your phone for a few minutes of distraction before the next wail. It's exactly, crushingly, the same as it was when your baby was still alive. A Pea in the Pod. Motherhood Maternity. Latched Mama. Every damn Etsy tchotchke I was considering for the nursery.

And when we millions of brokenhearted people helpfully click "I don't want to see this ad," and even answer your "Why?" with the cruel-but-true "It's not relevant to me," do you know what your algorithm decides, Tech Companies? It decides you've given birth, assumes a happy result, and deluges you with ads for the best nursing bras (I have cabbage leaves on my breasts because that is the best medical science has to offer to turn your milk off), DVDs about getting your baby to sleep through the night (I would give anything to have heard him cry at all), and the best strollers to grow with your baby (mine will forever be four pounds, one ounce).

And then, after all that, Experian swoops in with the lowest tracking blow of them all: A spam email encouraging me to "finish registering your baby" with them (I never "started," but sure) to track his credit throughout the life he will never lead.

Please, Tech Companies, I implore you: If your algorithms are smart enough to realize that I was pregnant, or that I've given birth, then surely they can be smart enough to realize that my baby died, and advertise to me accordingly - or maybe, just maybe, not at all.

Regards,

Gillian

Addendum:

Rob Goldman, VP of advertising at Facebook, responded to an earlier version of my letter, saying:

"I am so sorry for your loss and your painful experience with our products. We have a setting available that can block ads about some topics people may find painful - including parenting. It still needs improvement, but please know that we're working on it & welcome your feedback."

In fact, I knew there was a way to change my Facebook ad settings and attempted to find it a few days ago, without success. Anyone who has experienced the blur, panic and confusion of grief can understand why. I've also been deluged with deeply personal messages from others who have experienced stillbirth, infant death and miscarriage who felt the same way I do. We never asked for the pregnancy or parenting ads to be turned on; these tech companies triggered that on their own, based on information we shared. So what I'm asking is that there be similar triggers to turn this stuff off on its own, based on information we shared.

But for anyone who wants to turn off parenting ads on Facebook, it's under: Settings>Ad Preferences>Hide ad topics>Parenting.

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Brockell is a video editor in the Opinions section of The Washington Post.