NBC News’ investigation comes as lawmakers express growing concern about children’s safety on the internet. At least three of Victoria’s nearly 400 followers had also uploaded on their own public profile pages now-deleted footage of erect penises.
When Nathalia signed into Victoria’s Pinterest account in mid-February for the first time in a year, after being contacted by NBC News, her daughter’s inbox was brimming with messages including “cute ass” and “Mmmm.” The senders all looked to Nathalia like men, based on their usernames and profile pictures. The company said it is also adding more options for flagging individual profiles, which can at present only be reported for “Spam” and “Inappropriate cover image” the new options will include the ability “to specifically call-out when content may involve a minor.” Pinterest said it will introduce new age-verification measures at a later date. Pinterest removed pages whose links NBC News shared as part of its requests for comment from the company.Īfter NBC News asked about the sexually suggestive boards, Espinosa said Pinterest was planning to roll out a new feature next week enabling users to report boards, which is not currently possible. Spokesperson Crystal Espinosa said in a statement that Pinterest has “a strict zero-tolerance policy for any content that may exploit or endanger minors,” and noted that when sexually suggestive boards containing “otherwise innocuous or non-sexual images” are detected, the company immediately takes them down and bans the creators. 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. Sauer conducted an independent review of the site at the request of NBC News, using a similar methodology. “This is material that is innocently posted and is now being used to drive sexual interest in children,” said Stephen Sauer of the nonprofit Canadian Centre for Child Protection, which works to stop child exploitation.
The children are typically seen bending over, doing the splits, sticking their tongues out and dancing in their bedrooms while dressed in outfits like pajama shorts, bathing suits and leotards. (The majority of the girls’ profiles were algorithmically surfaced by Pinterest itself during the course of the reporting.) The review showed that the site’s recommendation engine serves up photos and videos of visibly underage girls, including toddlers, in large quantities to a user seeking out this type of imagery. 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.
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