As the US midterms approach, Pinterest further listed the latest steps it is taking against the spreading of false information through Pins about the current political issues.

Which, to a casual observer may not seem to be an issue. The aesthetic of Pinterest, and its Pins is unlikely to spin anyone's head at the prospect of some kind of political manipulation. However, like every other platform, Pinterest has had its coordinated attacks in the past, and so would do well to take steps, as well, to combat the spread wherever it can.

Pinterest, it is also worth noting, has 433 million active users, a huge audience that will doubtless attract those seeking to influence opinion about elections, if they can.

In this respect, to begin with, Pinterest is rolling out a new search advisory message for terms of search that could be linked to voting or elections.
Pinterest will roll out a pop-up notifier on related searches which will refer users to Vote.org for more information.

These types of prompts are small steps within the whole scheme, but even such minimal nudges can serve well to guide users toward more reputable, official sources.

According to Pinterest, it's also working with the network analysis group Graphika to identify and remove potentially misleading political content, and, in fact working to ensure community guidelines against false or misleading content concerning the integrity of an election, or interfering with someone's or a group's civic participation - and this includes information on how to register to vote, how to vote, or how to get counted in a census.

Further more, it states that Pinterest does not sell political campaign ads on Pinterest.

"In addition, around elections time, we will not monetize election-related content. That means for the months leading up to the midterms, we won't show any ads when you search for common election-related search terms like candidate names, "vote," and "election campaigns."

Pinterest was another social platform that prohibited political advertising. The company took an official stance regarding such as early as in 2018, after the controversy surrounding the 2016 US Presidential Election. It has since broadened that to encompass election issue ads, while it also banned all climate change denial content earlier this year.

Which, no doubt, is easier for a platform like Pinterest compared to others like Twitter or Facebook that both seem to focus more around discussion on a very broad scale about current events. But even so, it would be interesting to see the efforts Pinterest is making in this regard, which are yet another part of the broader efforts across these social networks to combat misinformation.