{"id":19973,"date":"2025-09-03T09:37:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T07:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/03\/i-felt-doomed-social-media-guessed-i-was-pregnant-and-my-feed-soon-grew-horrifying\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T09:37:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T07:37:16","slug":"i-felt-doomed-social-media-guessed-i-was-pregnant-and-my-feed-soon-grew-horrifying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/03\/i-felt-doomed-social-media-guessed-i-was-pregnant-and-my-feed-soon-grew-horrifying\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I felt doomed\u2019: social media guessed I was pregnant \u2013 and my feed soon grew horrifying"},"content":{"rendered":"

The algorithm knew I was expecting before I had had a chance to tell my family, friends or GP. At first, I was served up joyful videos. Then the tone became much darker …<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember where I was when my TikTok feed showed me a video of a woman holding her stillborn baby, but I remember how I felt. At first, it appeared like any other video of a woman holding a newborn. It was tightly wrapped in blankets while she cradled it in her arms. She was crying, but so are most of the women in these post-birth videos. It wasn\u2019t until I read the caption that I realised what I was looking at. Her baby had been delivered at 23 weeks. I was 22 weeks pregnant. I felt doomed.<\/p>\n

My social media algorithms knew I was pregnant before family, friends or my GP. Within 24-hours, they were transforming my feeds. On Instagram and TikTok, I would scroll through videos of women recording themselves as they took pregnancy tests, just as I had done. I \u201cliked\u201d, \u201csaved\u201d, and \u201cshared\u201d the content, feeding the machine, showing it that this is how it could hold my attention, compelling it to send me more. So it did. But it wasn\u2019t long before the joy of those early videos started to transform into something dark.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nThe algorithm knew I was expecting before I had had a chance to tell my family, friends or GP. At first, I was served up joyful videos. Then the tone became much darker …
\nI don\u2019t remember where I was when my TikTok feed showed me a video of a woman holding her stillborn baby, but I remember how I felt. At first, it appeared like any other video of a woman holding a newborn. It was tightly wrapped in blankets while she cradled it in her arms. She was crying, but so are most of the women in these post-birth videos. It wasn\u2019t until I read the caption that I realised what I was looking at. Her baby had been delivered at 23 weeks. I was 22 weeks pregnant. I felt doomed.
\nMy social media algorithms knew I was pregnant before family, friends or my GP. Within 24-hours, they were transforming my feeds. On Instagram and TikTok, I would scroll through videos of women recording themselves as they took pregnancy tests, just as I had done. I \u201cliked\u201d, \u201csaved\u201d, and \u201cshared\u201d the content, feeding the machine, showing it that this is how it could hold my attention, compelling it to send me more. So it did. But it wasn\u2019t long before the joy of those early videos started to transform into something dark. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The algorithm knew I was expecting before I had had a chance to tell my family, friends or GP. At first, I was served up joyful videos. Then the tone became much darker … I don\u2019t remember where I was when my TikTok feed showed me a video of a woman holding her stillborn baby, …<\/p>\n

\u2018I felt doomed\u2019: social media guessed I was pregnant \u2013 and my feed soon grew horrifying<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":19974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19973"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}