There is a lot of fake information floating out there, and while we would like to think all of us are smart enough to tell the fake from the real, or at least do enough research to come to our own conclusions, that isn’t always the case. As they say, a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
This is why many tech companies are looking at ways to try and curb the spread of misinformation, and in the case of Pinterest, how they are going about that is by blocking searches for certain topics completely. This is according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Pinterest is now blocking searches related to vaccination.
This is to try and curb the spread of anti-vaccination ideology from spreading. The company had previously attempted to try and pull misleading content from its platform, but soon discovered that they were unable to remove all of it. Not to mention this would also be a whack-a-mole like situation, where when one piece of misinformation is removed, another just appears.
By blocking searches completely, it would make it harder for that information to be discovered. Now people will believe what they want to believe, and this misinformation can still be found by going to certain users directly or check suggestions for related boards, but at the very least they won’t suddenly appear for unsuspecting users.
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