Last week, Pinterest announced in a blog post that they are updating their Terms of Service, Acceptable Use Policy, and Privacy Policy. These changes will go to effect on April 6, 2012.
The first major change to the Pinterest Terms of Service is that Pinterest can no longer sell your content. This change follows recent controversy surrounding copyright and legality issues of uploading images to pinboards without giving the source. In the blog post, CEO Ben Silbermann discusses the reasoning behind this update:
Our original Terms stated that by posting content to Pinterest you grant Pinterest the right for us to sell your content. Selling content was never our intention and we removed this from our updated Terms.
To reinforce this, Pinterest is releasing simplified tools to report copyright and trademark infringement.
The second new term changes what users are allowed to pin. These new restrictions cover content that is deemed hateful, violent, or offensive. In addition, Pinterest is no longer allowing pins that “explicitly encourage self-harm or self-abuse,” including pro-ana and extreme thinspo (short for “thin-spriational”) content. This update is similar to Tumblr’s policy changes last month. Tumblr worked with the National Eating Disorders Association to not only restrict pro-eating disorder content, but also to provide users looking for this kind of content with a PSA page where they can get resources and seek support. Although many users of Pinterest were previously unaware of the thriving thinspo community, it gained a lot of media coverage from sites such as Jezebel and Huffington Post.
Finally, Pinterest also announced that they are changing their terms to allow for such features as Pinterest API and Private Pinboards.
To read over the new Terms of Service policies for yourself, check out their Terms and Privacy page.
