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Pinterest Bans Misinformation About Voting and the Census (washingtonpost.com) 122

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Pinterest is ramping up its efforts to crack down on political misinformation ahead of the 2020 election -- a sign that the platform best known for lighthearted fare such as recipes, wedding planning and beauty tips is not immune from the challenges facing other major social media sites. The company tells The Technology 202 that it will now remove any content that misleads people about where, when or how to vote. It is also promising to crack down on any hoaxes that could turn off people from participating in the census, as experts warn the count could be a key target for bad actors seeking to meddle with the U.S. democratic process. Pinterest's new "civic participation" policy will apply to content from users' posts and ads on the service.

"This is an Internet problem," said Aerica Shimizu Banks, Pinterest's lead for federal policy and social impact. The only way to address misinformation broadly, Banks adds, is for tech companies and government officials to work together. Pinterest, like other tech companies, will report any count-related hoaxes to the U.S. Census Bureau so that the agency can debunk them and ensure they're not spreading on other social networks.
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Pinterest Bans Misinformation About Voting and the Census More

Pinterest Bans Misinformation About Voting and the Census

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  • Where's Censorship? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The New Guy 2.0 ( 3497907 ) on Thursday January 30, 2020 @12:07PM (#59671002)

    Neither Fox News on the right nor MSNBC on the left would tolerate such message neither in content nor advertising. The problem with user-supplied content and automatic ads is that these system need censors to keep the messages on point. This is as old as spam, but now it has moved to the web browsers. Seems like Pinterest needs to hire some more people in order to protect their site.

  • "This is an Internet problem," said Aerica Shimizu Banks, Pinterest's lead for federal policy and social impact.

    No, this is not an internet problem. This is a government problem and a societal problem. The issue with the census is that govt is forcibly collecting information about citizens it doesn't need for any reasonable purpose. Just the act of collecting that information creates a vulnerability; having that kind of information about citizens in a central location (no matter how secure) makes it a target for bad actors. The way to solve that problem is to not collect the information in the first place.

    Misinfo

    • Re:The Internet isn't the problem (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Thursday January 30, 2020 @12:52PM (#59671172)

      Just the act of collecting that information creates a vulnerability; having that kind of information about citizens in a central location (no matter how secure) makes it a target for bad actors. The way to solve that problem is to not collect the information in the first place.

      Taking a census is Constitutionally mandated, and for good reason. At the most fundamental level, the census is required in order to determine Congressional representation, which in the case of the House, is determined by population. Beyond that, any government needs to know such critical information - the general makeup of it's citizenry. And collecting basic demographic information beyond a simple head-count has been challenged in the court and always found to be completely constitutional.

      I took a quick peek at the questionnaire for the 2020 census, and the questions consist of: home status & occupation, name, sex, race/nationality/origin, and relationships between household members. You apparently consider the collection of such information some sort of privacy violation, but I don't think most people do.

      • You apparently consider the collection of such information some sort of privacy violation, but I don't think most people do.

        No, I don't. That information (the "short form") is perfectly understandable, and as you say, constitutionally mandated for good reason. However, it's not the information I had to provide as of the last census. I was one of the lucky people who received a "long form," and it contains quite a lot more than that. I was unclear in my original post; the collecting of information likely to be targeted by identity thieves, etc is what I have an issue with - and it's at least one reason census data would be target

        • I agree that this information needs to be protected. I took a quick peek at the "long form" information (apparently, one in six households gets this), and it's definitely a bit more sensitive than what's on the short form. Perhaps nothing catastrophic if leaked for some people, but certainly information that should remain private. There's information about disabilities, work history, housing costs, and so on. I still think this is information the government needs in order to make informed policy decisio

      • And collecting basic demographic information beyond a simple head-count has been challenged in the court and always found to be completely constitutional.

        That's what a nanny state's job is to do, be damned with what you think.

        You apparently consider the collection of such information some sort of privacy violation, but I don't think most people do.

        That's exactly what a shill would say. Census information in the wrong hands is dangerous. Not only that, but prolific invasions of privacy beyond government control is in full effect today. It is only a matter of time before people are tricked into believing they are filling out census information, or that the person who says they are a census worker collecting information for the government (because you'd be warned not to hand over

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      It is an internet problem, actually.

      The more people see a thing, the more they are to trust it.
      The more people listen to a group., the more likely they are to trust it.

      The internet takes that vulnerability of the human brain and cranks it to 11.

  • If corporations choose a bunch of their lobbyists as candidates, that are all the same in their actual actions, and merely differ in what they promise you in their lies, and you "get to" choose between only those, because everyone else is Sanders'd,

    then it's not you who does the voting.

    The USA is a democracy. But its citizens are the corporations. And you and me, we are simply "human resources".

    So...
    [cut to commercial]
    Celeb1: Vote
    Celeb2: Vote
    Celeb3: Vote!
    lol

  • They had better include all media outlets (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rho ( 6063 ) on Thursday January 30, 2020 @12:18PM (#59671056) Journal

    Once you've encountered the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect [goodreads.com] a few dozen times, you start to assume that modern media is run by the lazy, the shiftless and the dishonest.

    • In what way is evaluating the trustworthiness of journalism a modern problem?

      I dislike Crichton's purported phenomenon because it presupposes that the reason an article or story is bad cannot simply be that the individual contributor or department was dishonest or inept without the entire organization being rotten. And it gives no credit that anyone might be treating all journalism as inherently suspect.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rho ( 6063 )

        Writing news isn't terribly difficult, so when news outlets repeatedly get basic facts wrong, there's either bias at work or massive ineptitude.

        But you're right that this isn't a modern problem. Mass media has always been a flim-flam operation. In the past, even a small city might support two or three newspapers, so if one flim-flam newspaper rubbed you the wrong way, you could just buy the other one. The modern problem is that mass media has consolidated under a handful of corporations, so the flim-flam lo

  • ... with Pintrest to continue reading this important Census information. Provide your real name, address and a convenient time for ICE officials to stop by.

  • Ban gerrymandering (Score:3)

    by dargaud ( 518470 ) <slashdot2@gdar g a u d . net> on Thursday January 30, 2020 @02:06PM (#59671460) Homepage

    the count could be a key target for bad actors seeking to meddle with the U.S. democratic process

    Yeah, right, what's the point of counting if the majority ends up being gerrymandered to insignificance ?!? That shit should be banned, its authors jailed. Just asked a mathematician for a a definition of a valid voting area and let the remaining politicians have at it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Shotgun ( 30919 )

      Would that be a democrat or republican mathematician?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dargaud ( 518470 )
        Good one, but a definition itself is not political. For instance: no holes, single area, no re-entrant areas... Once you have that (and maybe a few additions) it'll be very difficult to gerrymander one way or another.

  • Removal is insufficient (Score:5, Interesting)

    by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Thursday January 30, 2020 @02:27PM (#59671566)
    Removing posts with false information does nothing to alert people who have already viewed that information that it is false. I'm sure they have metrics that show who has viewed a post, they should push a notification to anyone who has viewed false information that it was false, and they should consider keeping the false information up but inserting a very visually obvious warning that it is incorrect information (as well as listing what the correct information is). That way, you'd also be educating people that there are people out there spreading false information and enlightening them as to the facts.

    • It is kind of funny that Pinterest claims to be against misinformation. The site itself is search result lying clickbait.

  • Pintrest is still around? Interesting

  • Pinterest is a cancer that pollutes image search results. When you click through to the site, the image you saw in the search results never appears.

    Of course, Google took away away the personal block list for search results because we wouldn't want to let a thing like good user experience keep them from ad revenue from clickbait sites.

  • Who goes to Pinterest for news? I thought it was a place to share recipes, images and quilting patterns.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Yes, and those are the places bad actors go after to spread disinformation.
      Right now there is a company that has thousand of youtube channels. Most with a few 100 viewers discussion innocuous topics.
      But has time goes on the slide to the right

      Fact:
      The more people see a thing, the more they trust it.
      What you gain trust, you can slide people in a specific direction and they wont' even notice.

      I am beginning think the internet is the "peter principle" for the brain. We've developed technology at our brains resp

    • Pinterest is built on copyright infringement, data harvesting, and shitting up image searches. They should fix that first, preferably with a helicopter ride followed by some kool-aid.

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