*I use a lot of Pinterest, and its algorithm is the most interesting thing about it. Feels like a telescope, almost.
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“Users don’t want to be pigeonholed,” says Candice Morgan, the company’s head of inclusion and diversity. She commissioned a study earlier this year to understand how Pinterest could better serve users from backgrounds that the platform underrepresents. “They don’t want us to guess what they’re going to like based on their demography,” she adds.
And yet, Pinterest does guess what they’re going to like based on their demography, at least in their first moments after sign-up. If it didn’t, some portion of users would decide Pinterest isn’t for them.
Then there are troubles that have plagued higher-profile social networks: viral misinformation, radicalization, offensive images and memes, spam, and shady sites trying to game the algorithm for profit, all of which Pinterest deals with to one degree or another. Here the company has taken a different approach than rival platforms: embrace bias, limit virality, and become something of an anti-social network.
So far, it’s working....
