Pinterest Bans Pro-Anorexia Boards

by Hilary George-Parkin | 7:09 pm, March 25th, 2012

Hidden in plain sight amongst the endless pages of mouth-watering baked goods, DIY home decor projects, and adorable baby animals is Pinterest‘s more sinister underbelly: pro-anorexia and self-harm pages. The wildly popular microblogging site has run into some criticism of late for providing its users with a forum to post potentially triggering photos of jutting bones, sliced wrists, and slogans like “Nothing Tastes As Good As Skinny Feels” on their “pinboards” accompanied by hashtags like #thinspo and #perfect.

The company sent out an email to its users late Friday evening announcing a change in its Acceptable Use Policy, as well as other, less controversial tweaks to its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

The new acceptable use guidelines, which go into effect April 6th, include a ban on any content that:

“creates a risk of harm, loss, physical or mental injury, emotional distress, death, disability, disfigurement, or physical or mental illness to yourself, to any other person, or to any animal.”

This means that the so-called thinspiration boards that promote starvation, purging, and other disordered behaviors will no longer be permitted on the website.

Tumblr made headlines last month for instituting similar bans, although a quick perusal of the site indicates that the staff still has a ways to go in policing the nearly 50 million blogs.

The issue is a contentious one, and with good reason – on one hand it is in everyone’s best interest to protect young or otherwise impressionable users from material that might encourage them to self-harm, on the other, banning certain categories of content may pave the way for greater censorship down the line. We are definitely intrigued by the suggestion that is being bandied about that Pinterest and other similar sites integrate ads or skins that lead users with self harm or pro-anorexia pages to organizations dedicated to helping with these issues. This way members still have license to post as they see fit, but susceptible users are made aware of the risks of such behavior and are given the option to seek help.

Do we think many people would see a banner for the National Eating Disorders Organization and suddenly decide ‘Hey, maybe food really does taste better than skinny feels’? Unlikely.

But even if one person does, that’s a step in the right direction.

[Pinterest]

Pinterest Pro Eating Disorder Websites

Guest

How long before people start plonking their porn on this thing?
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120203002729AAKIhvK Overstock Coupon Code

I need some to show the effects among teens and young s. Preferably
message boards, but anything else is fine, too, so long as it’s
supporting bulimics and anorexics..
Starbuxxwriter

As someone who’s been battling anorexia, it’s nothing more than an obsession with death, at least for me it was. It is not beautiful and it is not glamorous. If you turn someone on to an eating disorder, you might as well take a gun to their head and pull the trigger… no pun intended. I fully support Tumblr and Pinterest’s movement to ban such photos. And FYI, you don’t have to think food tastes better than skinny to overcome this. You don’t even have to like food. You have to decide that LIFE tastes better than near-death. On a psychological level, it’s not about food at all.
Sorry if I sound overzealous… it’s just that a lot of people are suffering and dying from this. And it is agony like no human being should feel.
Concerned

How long before internet sites will ban skinny people in general?
creativextalent

im natuarally skinny and don’t have an eating disorder. what exactly are you trying to say?

its kind of sickly that in our society we have to lean so far on one side of a topic we can’t see any other sides or opinions. its socially unacceptable to tell a fat person they’re “too fat” or should “go on a diet” but its quite common to say to a skinny person “your too skinny” or “do you eat” or even better…talk about how all skinny women are warping “average women’s” self esteem and body image while a skinny person is right beside you. Not every skinny women is out to get you or keeps their weight with unhealthy practices. Such blatant ignorance is uncalled for and unnecessary is a discussion like this.
AlexL

This
article posted on the PR Couture blog site caught my eye in a split second.
There are so many problems with the promotion of eating disorders. More
importantly, people are beginning to believe that eating disorders are the norm
because they are constantly talked about and posted over all sorts of social
media outlets. I have a Pinterest account and could not believe what I was
reading. I visit the site frequently, but have never come in contact with any
“thinboards.” I definitely agree with the Pinterest company’s rules and
regulations regarding their decision to band all boards that promote harm to an
individuals body. However, I do think it will be very hard to police these
actions, considering the amount of social media users that have a Pinterest.
There are so many people who use this social media outlet, all of different
ages, and promoting “nothing taste as good as skinny feels” to the younger
generation will instill wrong thoughts of body images. Promoting these images
and ideas on a social media website like Pinterest is not only harmful to the
person looking at the boards, but it is bad PR for Pinterest. People who look
at these boards will begin to associate these images with Pinterest instead of
the person who pinned them. Like the article says, it’s a fine line to ban
these images because it is people’s own “interests.” However, it is Pinterest
company, and they do not want to be associated with anything that could cause
harm to a person. Over all, it is unhealthy to have habits such as anorexia,
and promoting pictures, quotes, or instructions on how to achieve this image
can be dangerous to any one.

Pinterest Bans Pro-Anorexia Boards

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