Pinterest Is Blocking Disinformation

Julia Carrie Wong, writing for The Guardian:

Schiff’s search results were indeed alarming: autofill suggestions for phrases such as “vaccination re-education discussion forum”, a group called “Parents Against Vaccination”, and the page for the National Vaccine Information Center, an official-sounding organization that promotes anti-vaccine propaganda. And while search results on Facebook are personalized to each user, a recent Guardian report found similarly biased results for a brand new account.

If the congressman had tried to search “vaccines” on the rival social media site Pinterest, however, he would have had little more to screenshot than a blank white screen. Recognizing that search results for a number terms related to vaccines were broken, Pinterest responded by “breaking” its own search tool.

Via Jason Snell, who says:

Pinterest’s solution isn’t perfect, but at least they’re trying. Which is more than we’ve seen from Facebook and Google.

Renee Diresta, back in August: “Free Speech Is Not the Same as Free Reach” — to me that gets to the core of what Pinterest is doing here.

★ Friday, 22 February 2019