The Threat

I’ve been threatened. It’s censorship related. It’s pretty minor as far as how it will affect my life, more of an annoyance. But the principle of it, and the personal proximity, has my attention.

what came up Thursday on my Pinterest home feed

the email Pinterest sent me
November 28, 2022

I got an email Monday afternoon from social media site Pinterest. My daughter got me interested in this website more than a decade ago when we were planning her wedding. I had a board I called “Mother of the Bride Frenzy.” I was hunting for a dress, and reception decoration ideas, and various other things. Having a place where I could place a picture linked to a webpage was something I found useful.

The site itself was something like looking through the pictures in a magazine. Enjoyable and fun. I have boards for food, pet care, holiday ideas, various skills, crafts, arts. I don’t spend a lot of time on this site, but it’s enjoyable when I do. I also use it for looking up things—how-to tutorial videos, quotes, recipes. I’m glad this little corner of the world exists.

Some years ago, I’m thinking 2-3, I discovered you could make a private board. You could save things without sharing them to anyone who happened to follow your feed; only you could see the things on this private board. I found it handy for things I wanted to read and explore more later, or get back to—to make it easy to find those things again—without having my curiosity exposed to strangers, or even maybe family members. I’m not talking nefarious things. I’m talking things political, or health related. Sometimes these are things I may consider writing about later. Or it may just be something I don’t have time to give my full attention when I come across it, and rather than leave it indefinitely in an open tab, I place it on this board.

If you have read this blog, you know such a collection may include things related to COVID-19 and associated “vaccines” and early treatment protocols. It might relate to election integrity—including stories questioning election outcomes. It might relate to climate studies. Often these “Pins” I create are to data-related sites, but many are articles or opinion pieces. Occasionally I may even save a story I strongly disagree with, because I want to go over it in detail later—maybe to understand other viewpoints, maybe to craft more effective counterarguments.

Note that because this is a private board, there is no question about my spreading “misinformation, disinformation, or mal-information,” because I’m not spreading them at all; I’m just preserving sources.

What got deleted? I don’t know. They have told me it was from my private board, but not which Pin it was. Unhelpfully, they mention, at the bottom of the email, “If you think we've made a mistake, you can submit an appeal within 7 days.” Maybe there are people who memorize all their Pins, so they can tell exactly which one is missing; I am not one of those people. But if I could identify a deleted Pin and wanted to submit an appeal, I couldn’t actually do that, because the link they give me goes to an error message. Hmm. Nothing on their help center allows me to submit an appeal either.

The link Pinterest's email provided to submit an appeal took me here.

Here was the most troubling paragraph, with the threat highlighted:

These rules apply to all Pins, including ones on your secret boards. Please take some time to go through your Pins and remove any that may be in violation of our Community Guidelines. If we notice more Pins that conflict with our guidelines, we may take further action on your account.

I take that to mean, “You’d better go through your board and remove Pins yourself, or you’ll lose your account—including everything you’ve saved to all those safe, innocuous boards—you rebellious non-comrade, you.”

So I did. I went back through a few months’ worth of Pins, removing any I thought might offend the censorship overlords, and I saved the links in a document. And I just won’t use this app in the way I have been using it. Because I do not need to. I don’t need to use it at all, but I prefer to be able to keep my decade's worth of collecting.

This is disappointing, because, up until now I haven’t felt the same censorship there as on Facebook and YouTube (and I suppose Twitter, if I used it, but I’ve never had an account there and don’t know if I will, even with recent changes). Pinterest is a private company, and not created as part of a conglomerate with other social media or tech giants (background story and video here). So why the same adherence to “woke” censorship as those other places?

I went through the Community Guidelines; they had provided several helpful links, intending that I would. There are, of course, many prohibitions I appreciate: adult content (porn), exploitation (more porn), hate and mocking aimed at individuals or ethnic/religious groups, profanity, private information, self-harm, graphic violence or threats, violent actors (groups), dangerous products or harmful or illegal activities (such as drug use), harmful or deceptive practices, impersonation (I’m assuming non-obvious parody), spam (which apparently doesn’t apply to advertising, which looks to be welcome).

It's not a bad list. But there in the middle—which I haven’t listed yet—are some rather nebulous prohibitions:

Misinformation (with some specifics):

o   Medical related, particularly anything not pro-vaccination

o   Civic participation misinformation (election related)

o   Climate misinformation

        

The Misinformation section of Pinterest's Community Guidelines.

I have to laugh about the "conspiracy theories" one. A recent meme suggested, if you're keeping score, "conspiracy theorists" are turning out to be right a lot more often than not.

meme found on Facebook, here

These are things they listed in the email, so I’m assuming my infraction must be related to the “misinformation” category. So those were the topics I considered removing when I went through to “cleanse” my private board.

I am bothered that this threat changed my behavior at all. It’s not that I feel weak, or as if I’m giving in. I’m simply not willing to use their site in the way it’s intended to be used—excluding ideas they don’t approve of. Fluffy magazine picture site it is; I will save important ideas someplace more secure. I appreciate learning the mentality of this public square site toward censorship. They will not change my views; they just will not have access to them.

That’s the thing about thought policing. You can silence people, but that makes them only more likely to think what they were thinking.

By the way, profanity and nudity are not well policed. It’s not a huge problem in my feed—but since these things are "against their community guidelines," they shouldn’t be coming up “randomly” in my feed at all. Yet they do. Hmm. Maybe it’s not about “community” standards; it’s about the standards of the thought controllers.

What to do about censorship? Go elsewhere to speak. But keep being a truth seeker and truth speaker. Keep thinking, considering, gathering information, forming conclusions. And definitely keep speaking—where you can be heard.

There are so many major issues going on right now; this one seems small. But if an entity is investigating my private—non-spreadable—idea collection, then that is pervasive. Which means it’s much bigger than this tiny personal story of mine. It is indeed threatening.