Pinterest

Men on Pinterest are creating sex-themed image boards of little girls. The platform makes it easy. Pinterest's algorithm is inadvertently curating images of ...

Some of those creating seemingly sexually suggestive boards filled with images of children are doing so using what appear to be their real names and photos in their Pinterest profiles. While Pinterest reports sexually exploitative content to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in the U.S. Espinosa said the platform “updated our self-harm policy to be even stricter” after Russell’s death. [prioritize children’s online safety](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/07/biden-state-of-union-to-target-social-media-and-kids-mental-health.html) over company profits, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to voice bipartisan support for legislation mandating the same. While conducting research for this article, NBC News visited the Pinterest profiles of several young girls and then scrolled through 100 consecutive videos offered on the “Watch” tab. “Pinterest, for God’s sake,” sighed Hany Farid, a computer sciences professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has researched social media algorithms’ promotion of harmful content. The potential impact of these algorithms isn’t new: In 2017, a 14-year-old British girl, Molly Russell, took her own life after viewing a series of depression- and self-harm-related images on Pinterest. Billions of ideas are searched and saved every year on Pinterest and we recognize that this job will never be done.” Over a one-month period, NBC News created a Pinterest account and reviewed hundreds of girls’ Pinterest accounts as well as their followers’ pages, many of whom appeared to be men. “I thought Pinterest was a place to be creative and inspired.” Upon doing an initial search for images of kids, he said, his homepage “almost immediately” filled with images of children often dressed in similarly revealing attire, several of which had received sexually suggestive comments. The company is inadvertently curating this content for adults who seek it out and potentially exposing the girls to pedophiles, an NBC News investigation found.