Pinterest is known for hosting essentially what amounts to a virtual, scrolling, wedding wish book. But it’s also home to some rather sexy, somewhat stylised “tasteful” nude images. It’s equal opportunity as far as pins go. Except when it’s not.
Lain MacNeil — founder of the NSFW Pinterest-esque Sex.com — is up in arms over Pinterest’s refusal to allow user pins sourced from Sex.com.
TechCrunch reports MacNeil’s statement on the matter:
Without contacting us, Pinterest banned all activity from Sex.com. Pinterest users can no longer pin any content from Sex.com nor can they view the site from older pins. We’ve unjustly been marked as spam. Our attempts to contact Pinterest have been fruitless. We want to know why they banned their adult community from seeing an alternative. Is it as simple as Pinterest is afraid of losing the adult content community despite the fact they do not respect users who use their site for adult content? Or is it that Pinterest does not believe a female audience for Sex.com is inappropriate?
Mr MacNeil, who was excited by the prospect of receiving links through Pinterest and reaching some of its wide female audience, is understandably upset that content from his site is now being marked immediately as spam.
“In all official Pinterest Terms of Service they claim that pins are the responsibility of the user,” he told TechCrunch. “So on what grounds do they have the right to supersede the user’s ability to pin from Sex.com?”
His is a valid question, and one deserving of some sort of explanation. It certainly seems, at this point, like Pinterest could have something against the site purely for its similarity in design and agenda. [TechCrunch]