8 - Misinformation and Fact-Checking

 

Pinterest and Misinformation

    Pinterest is on a mission to ban climate change misinformation. This past Wednesday, the site announces new policy which prohibits users from sharing climate misinformation on its platform. This policy change makes it the rare social platform to outright ban such content. The update states, "Our new policy makes Pinterest the only major digital platform to have clearly defined guidelines against false of misleading climate change information, including conspiracy theories across content and ads." The site is working to remove content that denies climate change. This ban is said to include content that denies the existence or impacts of climate change, as well as denies that humans influence global warming. It is also stated that inaccurate posts about natural disasters and extreme weather events will also be removed.  Pinterest has been graced with the expansion of sustainability searches on its platform, and they didn't want to allow misinformation to slip through the cracks. 

    This is just another step in Pinterest's efforts to remove misinformation from its site. In 2016, ads showing cultural appropriation and inappropriate costumes were banned. In 2017, anti-vaccination content was banned. Then political ads were banned in 2018 and weight-loss ads were banned in 2021. The 2017 ban on anti-vax content got ahead of the coronavirus pandemic and didn't allow for any of that content to come across its platform during that time. The sites health information policy states that any content that could result in immediate, negative effects on someone's health of on the safety of the general public has no place on the platform. There are no exceptions for prominent political leaders of celebrities.

    Pinterest's head of policy, Sarah Bromma, stated "We always want to make sure our policies are forward-leaning, that we're not waiting until we're overrun with some harmful content and then move. At that point, it's kind of too late." Pinterest's goal is to spread positive content, and their misinformation rules help keep negative content off of their platform. "Content that incites violence, or false and misleading health information, or hateful content - all these things we see as antithetical to inspiration."