Pinterest has publicly apologised for a wave of moderation issues that have been swept across social networks over the past few weeks, leading to the ban on accounts users say are unfair and the withdrawal of PINs. In a post published on social media on Tuesday, the company was responsible for the issue and said that “internal errors” caused some users to have been mistakenly deactivated accounts.
The company did not share any detailed details about the cause of the error, but it is wondering whether many people are banned by excessive reliance on AI-powered moderation.
This issue has led to anxiety and anger among the Pinterest user community. People complained that the company ignored concerns and said they were not transparent about the issues and how they were being addressed.
For weeks, Pinterest users have been reporting massive bans in the comments section of Pinterest’s social media posts, Pinterest Subreddit, and elsewhere. For example, Reddit users regularly complained about deactivation and withdrawal because their actions and posts did not violate Pinterest’s policies. With Megathread pinned on Reddit, users lamented the sudden loss of pins and boards for no reason, while others responded more with anger and frustration.
One group of users even threatened legal action against a large ban. Some people have filed complaints targeting Pinterest CEO Bill Ready and other executives on LinkedIn.
Meanwhile, Pinterest did not officially comment on the issue until May 1st. X posted, “We’ve heard your concerns about recent account deactivation.” However, the company also said it regularly monitors its platform for content that violates community guidelines. In other words, he refused to admit that the problem was authentic.
Instead, Pinterest requested that users send DMs if they believed their account was accidentally deactivated while the ban was very few.
Things have changed with a new Pinterest statement, but many people complained, “it’s too little, too late.”
On May 13th, Pinterest was posted to X, and in Instagram comments, some users’ accounts were accidentally deactivated.
The statement read:
We are committed to making Pinterest the safest and most positive place on the internet. This means we set up a high bar for content safety and strive to meet it continuously. We recently took action on violations of our content policy, but internal errors led to over-enforcement, and some accounts were accidentally deactivated. I apologize for the dissatisfaction that this caused. We are reviving many affected accounts and making improvements to respond faster when future mistakes occur. Thank you for your patience as we work to get this right for all users.
Pinterest users responded to their angry statements and listed many complaints. Some users have sued the ban via email and said they didn’t get help. Others believed that Pinterest’s AI misidentified their posts. Many users said it was supposed to lead to a ban and never given a clear reason for deactivating the account.
TechCrunch contacted Pinterest for further comment and explanation.