Last week, Pinterest announced that it would be banning climate change misinformation from its platform, including content that denies the existence of the environmental phenomenon and humans’ contribution to it. “Our new policy makes Pinterest the only major digital platform to have clearly defined guidelines against false or misleading climate change information, including conspiracy theories, across content and ads,” a company statement read.
Pinterest, an image curation site that’s often used for interior design and recipe brainstorming, isn’t a particularly political platform compared to the likes of Twitter and Facebook. It’s unclear how big of a problem climate change misinformation was for Pinterest prior to this new policy. When asked about the amount of climate change misinformation that the platform has taken down and what it looked like, a Pinterest spokesperson told Slate, “Our goal is to be proactive. We don’t wait until harmful content reaches a certain threshold before taking action. We repeatedly heard from climate experts that climate misinformation, including climate change denying narratives, is causing real harm by impeding meaningful climate action.”
[…]