Pinterest’s work in public health shows the good a smaller social network can do

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Amelia Krales

By 2018, it was clear that Pinterest suffered from a problem many of its peers had long dealt with. Because most people are vaccinated and do not spend their free time making pro-vaccine content for social networks, a search for “vaccines” on Pinterest returned anti-vaccination results 75 percent of the time. The consequences of vaccine-related misinformation taking over Pinterest and other, larger social networks is not theoretical: measles has had a scary resurgence around the world,and the World Health Organization now lists vaccine hesitancy as a top-10 threat to global health.

While the other big platforms dithered, Pinterest took decisive action: it stopped returning results for vaccine searches. “It’s better not to serve those...

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source https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/8/29/20837660/pinterest-vaccine-information-search-results-public-health

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