Me versus Pinterest, Part 1

I will introduce a new series that I expect to be irregular. Or at least I hope will be irregular. I have used Pinterest to bookmark a lot of news articles and web pages of interest for quite a few years, and found it especially convenient to use for my own particular purposes. That has worked without incident for several years. I've maintained several boards which had been left publicly facing (in the hopes that something I pinned might be of use to others) until recently. This past summer, I started to get bombarded with alerts that several of my pins had been deactivated as inappropriate content or promoting violence. I do pin quite a few articles published in mainstream news sites dealing with dark topics such as fascism, genocide, torture, and the like. The articles I pin are ones opposed to each of those aforementioned topics. 

My initial thought was that there was a MAGAt or two who had stumbled on to my boards and that I was suddenly in the middle of a harassment campaign. Not wanting any part of that, I made all of my boards private. However, the content alerts continued to happen, including for the article I will link to here in just a few moments. I think I can rule out some sort of vendetta against me at this juncture. I am guessing Pinterest decided to utilize some AI algorithm and that is perhaps the source of my consternation.

Now, this is probably a fairly petty blog post in the grand scheme of things. I do think the concern is a bit less than petty. A company's value is only as good as it can be trusted to ensure its products function as they should. If Pinterest is deleting pins (which are equivalent to bookmarks) that are tackling difficult topics, it loses its value to me. I also don't want to be censored by algorithms which are incapable of good human judgment.

The latest pin to get me in hot water is from an article with this title: Say it loud: this is fascism, and we must all resist it. The image I pinned is of Sir Oswald Mosley giving a Nazi salute in 1933. Those with some historical knowledge will understand that fascism and Nazism were alarmingly popular in much of Europe and the US during the 1930s. I have repinned the link and the image on one of my boards and will see what happens. I do study authoritarianism from a psychological perspective, so understanding fascism and critiques against it are of paramount importance to me. The content of the letters published in this particular article is very relevant to what I am interested in preventing from being repeated. Let's see if this pin holds, and if it does not, if I can mount a successful appeal. 

Trivia: I first heard of Pinterest sometime over a decade ago and was disappointed to find out that the site was not devoted to pints of beer. So it goes.

Quick update (2/25): Sure enough, my pin was flagged as "hateful activities". I have appealed that decision and it is under review. I am hoping that mentioning the pin was to an article in a mainstream news site (The Guardian) decrying fascism will drive the point home. We shall see. 

Update 2 (2/25): And sure enough the pin was deactivated. I will try once more with a slightly different strategy: pin the image with the Guardian logo and see if that solves the problem. I will post further updates here as warranted.

Update 3 (2/27): For a moment, I thought my plan mentioned in my previous update would work. That pin also got deactivated for the same reason as before. I am trying yet again. My previous attempts to pin this article were done using a browser extension. This time I have manually entered the pin and included a detailed description including the fact that this saga is being blogged publicly, as well as discussing my cred as a student activist who was involved in anti-fascist causes in the 1980s. As I have probably said elsewhere, I was antifa before there was antifa. We will see how that approach works (along with an appeal for the latest deactivation).  

Update 4 (2/28): So far the latest attempt at pinning the image from this particular news article has held. A pleasant surprise so far for what was an otherwise ugly day.

Update 5 (3/4): The pin is still up. Knock on wood.

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