Pinterest has just released its latest Transparency Report, outlining all of the content it has either removed or has taken action on based on regulatory violations over the 1st half of 2021.

The first half of 2021, considering that it’s now almost year’s-end, was barely 4 months ago when we all hit 2021’s midway-mark. Reporting delays aside, Pinterest’s transparency report provides interesting perspectives on how Pinterest is being used, and what issues are prevalent, as it works to maintain its community safety.

Reporting In 

As opposed to its active user count, Pinterest content violations experienced a significant jump in Pins deactivated for conspiracy theories during Q2. The report states that:

“In Q1 2021, we deactivated 24,134 distinct images, which comprised 166,189 Pins, for violating this policy. In Q2 2021, we deactivated 16,204 distinct images, which comprised 1,148,947 Pins, for violating this policy. Of these Pins, 95% were never seen by users in this reporting period.”

While there wasn’t too much of an increase with regards to ‘unique’ conspiracy content, its prevalence did skyrocket; there’s not much when it comes to new theories popping up per se, but rather an increase in the circulation and instances of already-existing ones. This is likely related to the broader COVID vaccine rollout and various other pandemic-related subjects.

Pinterest also saw increased Pin removals related to adult sexual services. Q2 data shows that the amount of sanctioned content nearly doubled from the results during Q1, while simultaneously seeing more deactivations for harassment and criticism, many of which were found to be erroneous; of the 1,278,782 deactivated Pins, 990,000 were incorrectly deactivated. These point to ongoing challenges regarding the use of automated content ID systems — ironically, without human intervention, even machine processes will make “human-errors”.

Pinterest also saw an increase in removals related to its dangerous goods and activities policy, but many of these were also related to an overarching cleanup activity for the entire platform.

To end on a positive note, Pinterest did see huge reductions in deactivations related to graphic violence and threats between Q1 and Q2. To add, the same holds true for deactivations related to self-injury and harmful behavior. Perhaps best of all, Spam prevalence also went down.

The Wrap 

These are some very interesting trends to note and actually highlight a few positive opportunities with regards to the broader evolution of social media. Pinterest, which holds significant influence in its own right, showcases, at least in this example. What it means to actively combat the ill-inclusions of online progress.

So far, Pinterest is doing good when it comes to addressing concerns revolving around its accountability and content regulation. It provides you with a case upon which future methods can be based on and a clearly-defined safety framework can be molded from.

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Sources

https://bit.ly/3bYSj8C