The other day, I read an article on Gizmodo called “Not Safe For YouTube: How Google Draws the Line Between Porn and Art (NSFW)“. As the title suggests, the article addressed the fact that there is plenty of nudity on Youtube and it examined the way Youtube dealt with NSFW content.
Essentially, Youtube guidelines say that any video that’s “intented to be sexually provocative” will most likely be removed. Before it’s removed, the video featuring inappropriate content must be flagged by an offended user, then reviewed by Youtube employees in different countries. If the Youtube employees decide that the nudity’s artistic merit outweighs a sexually provocative motivation, then an age gate will be put in place. Only when the nudity crosses the artistic line does the video get removed.
This mature and sensible way of dealing with nudity on what is generally considered to be a SFW site made me want to revisit how nudity was being handled on another SFW site: Pinterest.
In September of 2012, we found a large number of users pinning pictures from Sex.com onto Pinterest boards. While investigating this, we were surprised to see such a huge amount of nudity and pornographic material on Pinterest boards. We were surprised because before coming across all the porn we had only seen recipes and shoes on Pinterest.
Some of you may remember that pinning pictures from Sex.com to Pinterest was banned by Pinterest. So we called them out. Should we have called them out? Probably not. After all, people’s Pinterest boards are sacred to them.
That’s besides the point. After we had come forward about the ban, Pinterest spokesman Barry Schnitt told NBC News that Pinterest “doesn’t allow nudity or pornography. Never has. In fact, I don’t know any social site that does. I’m not sure what the confusion is about here, but we’re proud of our position on the issue and of our efforts to keep the site clean. Seems most of the commenters here agree.”
Distancing themselves from adult content makes sense given Pinterest’s main demographic:
As you can see, approximately 80% of Pinterest users are women. And while it’s not necessarily true, the conventional wisdom is that women don’t like pornography. If Pinterest had condoned the adult pinners on their site, they could have alienated the people that have made Pinterest so powerful.
So eight months after discovering and subsequently exposing the adult side of Pinterest, what is the state of pornographic pins on Pinterest?
*This is where this post gets NSFW
Searching obvious pornographic terms will not yield results. For example, when I searched sex I found just a few sexually attractive women in bikinis but not much else:
Common sexually explicit terms like sex, porn, nude, boobs, ass, etc. didn’t feature any pornographic pins, but a banner was displayed above the pins that reminded users, “Pinterest does not allow nudity. Pinning or repinning photographs displaying breasts, buttocks or genitalia may result in the termination of your Pinterest account. For more information, see our Pin Etiquette and Acceptable Use Policy.“
I took Pinterest’s suggestion and checked their Pin Etiquette and Acceptable Use Policy.
As expected, the first clause of the Acceptable Use Policy strictly forbade any nudity or sexually explicit material:
However, when I searched “pornstar” I was surprised not to receive the prompt reminding me that nudity was wrong. Instead, I saw hundreds of pins featuring porn stars in various states of undress and sexually explicit poses:
There’s Alexis Texas, Sasha Grey, Lily Carter, Phoenix Marie, Dani Daniels, Angelina Castro, Kiara Mira, Brooke Banner, a bare buttocks, and Marie McCray with her hand down her panties.
The key to finding porn on Pinterest is specificity. For example, to find sexy pictures of nude model Malena Morgan, all I had to do was search Malena Morgan:
I’m not sure how familiar you are with Malena Morgan but she has a huge female fan base, so it’s no surprise to see her photos on a primarily female website like Pinterest. So I decided to look up a more conventional pornstar, one with a fake tan and fake boobs that only a man could love. I searched Madison Ivy and there she was, fully nude and in the midst of various sexually explicit acts:
Once again, the key to finding porn on Pinterest is specificity. They have flagged the most common search terms for sexually explicit material presumably to protect their image and make sure that non-adults aren’t exposed to this material.
But nonetheless, if you know what porn you’re looking for, it’s not hard to find on Pinterest. Say you have a foot fetish and you’d like to see foot fetish porn on Pinterest, all you would have to do is search Footjob and:
Once you find that magic search term, it’s just a matter of checking the adult pinner’s boards as well as the boards of who they’re following and you’re connected to a network of adult material on Pinterest.
Porn boards on Pinterest have anywhere from 30 to 2,000 followers.
If you ask me, I think Pinterest spokesman Barry Schnitt was being naive when he said he didn’t know of any social site that features nudity. Nudity is allowed on Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, and most recently Vine. Even though it’s not allowed, Facebook struggles to keep a lid on its nudity. And of course, in certain cases, even Youtube has been known to feature the occasional pair of breast or full frontal man.
No one can deny the draw that internet pornography has. There are seven porn sites in Alexa’s Top 100 Trafficked Sites. Since the porn boards on Pinterest have been operating unabated for the past eight months makes me think that the people using Pinterest for porn are perfectly content. They’re established a niche community hidden beneath recipes, clothes, and crafts. If Pinterest’s porn boards offended the mainstream pinners, they surely would have been reported and shut down by now.
My question now is why doesn’t Pinterest just allow their users who are 18 and over to pin adult content? Could they not set an age gate like Youtube?
Maybe it’s just me but I’m under the impression that being open and up front about all things relating to sex can only help us better understand this hyper-sexual world we live in. If Pinterest was more upfront about the sexually explicit material readily available on their site, it might help our culture become more sexually progressive.
And as Alan Moore pointed out in 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom, “Sexually progressive cultures gave us literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.”
Of course, I’m not saying that the fate of our culture hinges on Pinterest’s decision to allow their porn boards to operate at a more transparent level, but it would be a good start.
At the very least, you now know how to find porn on Pinterest in case Sex.com is blocked wherever you are.
Where Is Chico? 