There are traces of misinformation even on Pinterest’s seemingly pristine platform. On that note, Pinterest is taking a big step toward tackling misinformation about climate change, announcing that it’ll now exercise full bans on any misleading climate change claims on its platform.
It’s a significant step for Pinterest and, as it notes, it’s the first platform to do so. This goes beyond the mere allowance of free speech but actually touches more on the tediousness and complexities of policing such.
Not With Climate
As Pinterest explains:
“Ensuring that Pinners find ideas from trusted sources no matter what type of inspiration they are looking to discover on the platform is important to Pinterest. That’s why today, Pinterest is rolling out a new climate misinformation policy to keep false and misleading claims around climate change off the platform. Our new policy makes Pinterest the only major digital platform to have clearly defined guidelines against false or misleading climate change information, including conspiracy theories, across content and ads.”
Based on this statement, Pinterest’s new policy will cover:
Content that denies the existence or impacts of climate change, the human influence on climate change, or that climate change is backed by scientific consensus.
False or misleading content about climate change solutions that contradict well-established scientific consensus.
Content that misrepresents scientific data, including by omission or cherry-picking, in order to erode trust in climate science and experts.
Harmful false or misleading content about public safety emergencies including natural disasters and extreme weather events.
These new regulations will be enforced across all Pin content, including ads. The platform’s advertising guidelines will also explicitly prohibit any ads that contain conspiracy theories, misinformation, and disinformation on or related to climate change.
Again, this is a big step, but the bigger issue is concerned with enforcement. What makes things difficult here is qualifying what mis- or disinformation is – basing on different sources can be complicated and, at times, even contradictory, as is identifying the intent or motive for posting.
To cite an example, the full causes behind climate change is not yet definitive, and so are the debates and arguments that revolve around such. In this case, one could see why it would be difficult to determine exactly what would be misinformation or simply under-information. What if someone just unwittingly shared something even remotely controversial about climate change science? Would they be subject to sanction? It’s slight nuances like these that make such a process rather iffy.
In Pinterest’s case, the fact-checking and cross-referencing will be done in partnership with the Climate Disinformation Coalition and the Conscious Advertising Network, which both play a role in developing its policies to address harmful claims.
The Wrap
It would make for a good case study. If Pinterest is indeed able to formulate an effective policy framework to address the concern, then it basically just supplied a working template that other platforms could adopt to do the same. At least in this sense, Pinterest would be the ideal platform of focus, given its lower direct alignment with social interaction, likely reducing the amount of misinformation in the app overall.
It’s an interesting experiment nonetheless and what’s more interesting is seeing how various platforms are starting to take more definite stances on divisive issues, along with how each of them can protect their own networks from possible misuse.
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