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Pinterest shared something naughty this week—but chances are you won’t be repinning.
In a message posted on their own blog, the virtual bulletin board disclosed its first ever “transparency report,” which details the 12 government requests for 13 different users’ data that the site has received in the past six months.
Unlike other sites, which are asked for hundreds of thousands of user data, Pinterest’s policy is to inform every user for whom the government has requested data. Out of the 13 users’ data Pinterest released, it was able to inform 10 that the action was occurring. (They were prevented by law from advising the remaining three, for fear of jeopardizing a criminal investigation.) “We want people understand that if someone asks for their information, we’re going to let them know. Unless we’re prevented by law,” Barry Schnitt, Head of Communications and Public Policy at Pinterest tells The Daily Beast.
“We think it’s important you know about these requests,” writes Adam Barton, the pinning paradises’ self-described “legal guy” writes. Sprinkled with pie graphs, the Pinterest report offers basic details about how the requests were made (warrants and subpoenas), how many were from local government (all but one), and the amount of times Pinterest denied the requests (once). Out of the 12 requests, 11 originated from state or local meeting—four from California, two from Florida, two from Utah, and one from New York, Oregon, and Wisconsin.
Although once under the microscope of copyright law (an issue which Pinterest has since resolved, the report marks the website’s first public affair with law enforcement. “At some point no one was asking, no one had heard of Pinterest,” Barry Schnitt, Head of Communications and Public Policy at Pinterest tells The Daily Beast. “But gradually they did, and we wanted to make that process transparent as we could—and let law enforcement know what we have and what we don’t have.” Schnitt says the decision to begin tracking in July 2013 wasn’t a calculated choice (“we had to start somewhere”) and that the site had only received a handful of requests before then.
At first glance, the words Pinterest and crime seem at odds. With roughly 71 million users and an estimated 62 million unique visits per day, the site is generally seen as a safe haven of creative sharing. From award-winning photography to crocheted Matthew McCounagheys, life-sized gummy worms to baby Swiffers the weird and wonderful mind of Pinterest knows no bounds.
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