Days after an NBC News investigation revealed how adult men on Pinterest openly create sexually themed image boards filled with photos of little girls, the company says it has «drastically» increased its number of human content moderators. It also unveiled two new features that allow users to report content and accounts for a variety of violations.
Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn, and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, sent a letter to the company Tuesday morning demanding to know why the new tools weren’t yet available. among other questions.
“National media coverage of such graphic misuse targeting young children should not have been necessary to galvanize action,” wrote the senators, who are co-sponsors of the bipartisan campaign. Children’s Online Safety Act. “This report is particularly disappointing given that Pinterest has branded itself the ‘last positive corner of the internet.’”
Pinterest’s new safety features allow users to report boards and accounts for «nudity, pornography, or sexualized content,» which the site defines as «intentional misuse involving minors.» Previously, boards couldn’t be marked at all; individual accounts may only be reported for «Spam» and «Inappropriate Cover Image».
As NBC News discovered, dozens, hundreds, even thousands of individually innocuous photos and videos of little girls on Pinterest have been compiled into public boards with titles like «Sexy Girls,» «Delicious,» «Hot,» and «Young Girls.» .” These images, which often show children in bathing suits, leotards and other skimpy attire, are in many cases uploaded to the platform by the children themselves or their family members, who have no idea how they are used.
One woman, whose gymnastics videos of her 9-year-old daughter have been posted to more than 50 such boards, told NBC News she was «shocked and upset» by the discovery.
“I thought that Pinterest was a place to be creative and inspired,” he said.
His daughter’s profile had also been inundated with direct messages, including «nice ass» and «Mmmm.» The senders appeared to be adult men, based on their usernames and profile photos.
Pinterest spokeswoman Crystal Espinosa said the platform has implemented sweeping changes in recent days, including adding thousands of human reviewers.
The company also «took immediate, broad and aggressive action to disable thousands of bad actors and anyone who engages with content inappropriately,» it said in a statement.
Espinosa declined to elaborate, saying the company does not disclose details about its Trust and Safety mechanisms to prevent people from circumventing those systems.
Espinosa previously told NBC News that the company would also introduce new age verification measures at a later date. Pinterest requires users to be at least 13 years old; however, as with other social media pagesmany younger children seem to be on the 450 million user platform.
The NBC News investigation also found that Pinterest’s recommendation engine was inadvertently selecting photos and videos of young girls in scantily adult clothing who were searching for such content. As of Monday, that still seemed to be happening, although some Search terms that included «young girls» had recently been banned.
The Pinterest account used for the initial NBC News review, which involved reviewing hundreds of accounts belonging to boys and the men who follow them over a month-long period, has continued to receive images of little girls in large numbers via algorithmic recommendations on the home page, its TikTok-style «Watch» tab, and through the platform’s suggested content notifications.
On Monday, within minutes of creating another Pinterest account and interacting with photos and videos of underage girls, the platform curated more of the same on the home page and in the «View» tab.
Espinosa said that Pinterest has updated its machine learning models «to better understand and distinguish between legitimate uses and inappropriate engagement with content» on the platform. He added that these tools will get stronger over time.
In their letter to Pinterest, the senators were particularly interested in how the company handled the potential for contact between minors and adults, asking to what extent it restricts the ability of adults to message or follow children.
Seara Adair, a mom and influencer who has spent years independently studying Pinterest, believes she intercepted a predator posing as a teen in an effort to groom her 12-year-old daughter on the platform in January.
While Adair wishes the new security features were introduced «much sooner,» he called them a big step in the right direction.
“Predators are always changing their ways to exploit [social media websites]”, he said, “so I hope that Pinterest continues to adapt to the security needs of its platform”.