UPDATE, March 11, 2013: Still give them credit for sending an e-mail, but since then have read about lots of other non-TOS breaking pins being removed. So am still highly unimpressed. I get it. They have 2 main audiences: artsy types and extremely conservative types. They need to figure out a way to deal with both (perhaps, as I suggested in my e-mail, they could institute Safe Search and Moderated Pins? They didn't acknowledge that in their reply, instead asking me if I could help them think of a way to protect 13-year-olds from seeing art photography that might contain a hint if nudity. Ummmmmm, maybe read my e-mail again?). Still, that won't help the moms and midwifery boards, who appear to be having breastfeeding and birthing pins being removed now, in the name of both nudity and porn. Please, Pinterest, ART IS NOT PORN AND NEITHER IS BREASTFEEDING.
UPDATE, March 6, 2013: Well, it came a day too late, but I did just get an e-mail from a person at Pinterest offering to unblock the pins they removed. It seems they found this blog post after they read an e-mail I sent them yesterday afternoon. So, since I removed everything it's a bit late for me, but at least they read and listened to my concerns. And it was a nice e-mail, and they apologized for being confusing. So credit to them for that.
EDIT TO ADD: I have now read multiple accounts of this happening to other users as well, via blogs, Tumblr, even the Pinterest Facebook page... At least I know it's not just me, but what exactly is going on over there?!
So, in the past week Pinterest has removed 3 pins from my Pinterest boards, for breaking their nudity rules. Only problem? They say they define nudity as visible breasts, buttocks, or genitalia, and none of my photos that were removed showed any of those things. Well, I take that back; the third pin they removed was a *painting* and there were nude breasts; but supposedly they allow nudity in painting so...????? The first pin was a burlesque dancer, who was wearing pasties and panties (I assume by breasts they mean bare breasts, ie nipples) and the second was a profile of a ballerina--no breasts, buttocks, or genitalia were visible at all. They also removed one, again for "nudity," from my husband's boards; she is wearing a crop top and shorts...!!! Here is the e-mail I received:
Hi Elizabeth Judd Taylor, We removed a pin from your account because it contained nudity. It was originally pinned from the following address: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2GDQ03E1lu2F2JeX3r3P199Fe9mGzXMWPLLH_3cJWUhxMvtFvMpfX8YnE-V1OZKQRMYHG2mMSHZzT9PplXiemUGfXsdrwToiBQdh1MXV8sPY5sbenzJ7BGM9K34S2UlcxOZfTKONbwA4/s1600/tumblr_ltnsw2i7PT1qarsb0o1_500.jpg. We don't allow nudity—photos that show breasts, buttocks or genitalia—on Pinterest. This applies to pins on both public and secret boards. Please remove any other pins you've added that contain nudity. If you don't follow our policies, your account could be suspended. On behalf of the Pinterest community, we thank you for understanding. The Pinterest Team
All the pins in question can be seen here (the burlesque one I can maybe see, but she does have pasties and panties, and there are a lot of similar burlesque photos all over the place there). So--not sure what is going on over there, but they don't seem able to even follow their own rules, and they seem to just be removing anything they find at all offensive or...well, I don't know what. I'm going to go ahead and just deactivate my account as I have NO IDEA what they will take offense to next, or why. There is a huge amount of actual porn there, so if they are worried about offending people they might want to get rid of that instead of worrying about paintings, artful nudes and cheesecake shots!
