pinterest You are following in YouTube’s footsteps. An investigation of NBCNews he discovered that the social network is becoming the favorite place for pedophiles. The platform not only offers decoration tips, cooking recipes or lists of healthy habits, but also photos of minors in scantily clad. These posts are riddled with inappropriate comments from adults, who store the content on dedicated boards on their profiles.
The middle comment who spent a month reviewing hundreds of girls’ Pinterest accounts, as well as their fan pages. In her investigation, NBCNews found that the algorithm recommends photos and videos of minors, in some cases, dressed in shorts or bathing suits. A constant of all the images have suggestive comments from men.
Some photos are part of collections such as “girls in bikinis”, “guilty pleasures”, “sexy girls” or “hot”, created by his followers. By clicking on some of the tags, the algorithm returns dozens of similar photos. With this, Pinterest is ceasing to be a social network used by creatives to become a gold mine for pedophiles.
Although the terms of use state that users must be over 13 years of age to create an account, there are no guidelines to prevent these images from being uploaded. Crystal Espinosa, a spokeswoman for Pinterest, said that “the company has a strict zero-tolerance policy for content that may exploit or endanger minors.”
Pinterest is aware of the issue, but hasn’t done anything to prevent it.
Upon investigation, NBCNews reports that Pinterest removed some pages shared by the medium. The company will implement a feature that will allow users to report sexually suggestive boards, as well as individual profiles that might break the rules. Age verification, a feature that seems important in this case, is at the bottom of the company’s priorities.
While Pinterest claims to have removed profiles and boards, we ran an image search and found the same issue. Thanks to the algorithmthree clicks were enough to access photos of minors in sexualized poses. All of them with comments from adult men, some of them with a confirmed profile picture and location.
The photos do not always belong to profiles created by minors. Some publications in Amazon profiles or stores that promote children’s clothing are also targeted by pedophiles. Experts say that while adding potentially suggestive images is a horrible practice, in many cases it is legal.
Unlike other social networks, Pinterest is considered a relatively safe platform. Who would look for photos of minors where there are beauty tutorials, tips to be productive or meditation advice? Some parents have realized that this is not the case, after discovering more than 500 obscene messages in the inbox of his daughters.
In an attempt to compete with TikTok, Pinterest allows minors to upload short videos of them dancing or singing, unaware that they will end up on pedophile boards.