Pinterest has published its latest Transparency Report, detailing all the content it removed or otherwise took action on based on rule violations over the first half of 2021.

Which feels like an eternity ago, right? The first half of 2021 was now over four months ago - but reporting delays aside, the report provides some interesting perspective on how Pinterest is being used and the issues it's seeing as it works to keep its community safe.

Compared with increases in content violations, Pinterest saw a significant rise in Pins deactivated for conspiracy theories in Q2 2021:

"In Q1 2021 we deactivated 24,134 unique images, which amounted to 166,189 Pins, for violating this policy. In Q2 2021, we deactivated 16,204 unique images, which amounted to 1,148,947 Pins, for violating this policy. Of those Pins, 95% were never viewed by users in this reporting period.

So, despite not holding much of unique conspiracy content, the overall prevalence skyrockets, probably linked with the broader roll-out of the COVID vaccine and also the several concerns linked to the pandemic.

Pinterest also had a surge of Pin removals for adult sexual services content-more than double the number actioned in Q2 compared with Q1-and a much higher number of deactivations for harassment and criticism, although many of these involved error.

In Q1 2021, we removed 5,540 unique images, which included 124,713 Pins, for breaking this policy. In Q2 2021, we removed 7,238 unique images, which included 1,238,782 Pins, for breaking this policy. We discovered that a very small number of such unique images, and their over 990,000 machine-identified corresponding Pins, were mistakenly removed, and that content was subsequently restored after noticing the mistake.

This would point toward the problems of lingering malfunctions when trying to use automated content ID systems for that aim-that is, without the nuance and discrimination of a human, there will be errors. But at the same time, involving people puts those laborers susceptible to the influence of viewing such, so there is no better option from this standpoint.

Pinterest also stepped up removals for dangerous goods and activities, albeit many of these removals were part of a catch-all sweep.
In another vein, deactivation rates for graphic violence and threats, as well as self-injury and harmful activity, declined significantly between Q1 and Q2. Spam prevalence was also down, according to the data.

Some interesting trends of note here generally reflect broader social media trends-though interesting to note such from a pin-specific angle, with the platform generally not considered to be as impacted by those behaviors as other apps.

But Pinterest now has 444 million users and, as such, significant influence in its own right. Which, of course, attracts more ill-intentioned actors seeking to use that reach to boost their messaging, which is really why we need more uniform, industry-wide approaches to dealing with these issues and concerns to make it clearer what's acceptable from a broader perspective, and what should be enforced by these groups.

Given the numbers above, Pinterest is doing a pretty good job to address these issues and stop such content from ever reaching the users; however, universal agreement and understanding would enhance these efforts.