Pinterest is generally known as a place where a mostly female user base gathers to share images and videos of shiny happy things such as cute animals, pretty clothing, and tasty recipes. But in any community that consists of millions of people, some bad apples are going to turn up.
So today, Pinterest announced new features to let people block other users and report bad activity on the site. Users can now flag specific pins, or report entire user profiles. In a company blog post published today, Pinterest software engineer Dannie Chu writes:
“People use Pinterest to discover new ideas and be inspired by a community who share similar interests. We’ve recently added the ability to block and report a user to help keep our community positive and respectful.”
Along with the ability to block and report users, Pinterest has also added more granular email settings that will let people dictate how often they receive notifications about things like repinning and commenting activity. All these features will roll out over the next week, Pinterest says.
Like many major social networks, Pinterest has forbidden things such as nudity and “hateful content” from day one — but that hasn’t stopped people from pinning racy images and the like. Today’s update should help Pinterest rein in that type of activity more quickly.