Pinterest head of Canada Kristie Painting on climate misinformation, social media positivity, and Pinterest’s most unexpected user demographic

Pinterest head of Canada Kristie Painting on climate misinformation, social media positivity, and Pinterest’s most unexpected user demographic

It isn’t a good time to be at the helm of one of the world’s biggest social media platforms. You might be axing tens of thousands of jobs (Facebook), subjecting your newly bought platform to death by a thousand cuts (Twitter), or facing scrutiny for your ties to China (TikTok).

Unless you’re Pinterest — a social media platform beloved by gardeners, fashionistas and foodies that has seemingly avoided much of social media’s recent spat of bad press. From a business perspective, Pinterest is doing rather well. Its fourth-quarter financials last year showed a climbing monthly user base of 450 millionrising four per cent year-over-year.

Canada country manager Kristie Painting suggests Pinterest’s success among users, especially Gen-Z, is due to its rigorous attempts to curate a more “positive” environment compared to its peer platforms.

“We do try to make this a different place,” she says. “That differentiation is important to our audience. It’s important to our advertisers. And it’s something that we really want to cultivate.”

That said, Pinterest is also reckoning with many of the same challenges as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and other social media giants.

It is experimenting with live video formats — specifically, Pinterest TV, a live video feature that debuted to Canadian users last November. While it weathered last year’s tech stock crash better than most other platforms (seeing double-digit stock growth, unlike Facebook and Snap), its early February financials aren’t optimistic about the coming year. And unfortunately, like its competitors, Pinterest is also trying to curb the disturbing sexualization of minors on its platform.

Kristie Painting spoke to the Star in mid-April:

You’re a self-described Pinner. Did you get into the platform before you joined Pinterest, or after?

Oh, well before. I’ve been on Pinterest since 2017. I thought it was the most incredible place, I love spending time here — when are they going to open a Canada office, and how can I work for them? I thought that for many, many years, and then I had the opportunity to apply for this role. I basically insisted that they hire me because I loved Pinterest so much.

If I opened your Pinterest board right now, what would I see?

You would see furniture, for sure. I like to remake furniture. I really believe that you shouldn’t throw things out. A lot of things have inherent value, and so I welcome the opportunity to give something a new life that might otherwise be landfill.

My husband gets quite cross with me because I will drive around the neighbourhood and pick up chests and things on garbage day, and then make them beautiful again, in their own way. So I’m working on a dining room table right now.

Social media users are really starting to see social media as addictive, and sometimes even dangerous. How does Pinterest try to appeal to users who might not want to join another social media platform, or even want a digital detox?

One of the things I have always appreciated about Pinterest is that, yes, it is social media, but really, it’s more “personal media.” It isn’t a place where you go for validation. It’s not a place where you try to broadcast what you’re doing. It’s a place for you to go and find inspiration. It’s about creating and doing, and you don’t necessarily share that with anyone else. It can be a very personal journey.

That’s one of the things, I think, that separates Pinterest from some of the toxicity that we’re hearing about in other places. In addition, Pinterest is deeply committed to creating a positive corner of the internet. It’s about creating a sort of oasis in which Pinners can feel relaxed, good, and inspired. It’s also great for advertisers, because when people feel relaxed and inspired and positive, they’re more likely to feel positive about the brands that they see.

How do you monetize a platform like Pinterest when the point isn’t to make users engage too closely with one another?

What we know is that when people scroll on Pinterest, they scroll with much more intention. They scroll more slowly on Pinterest than they do on other platforms, because they’re not mindlessly devouring content. We did a study recently with UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, where they tested university students who were about to sit their exams. So they were all stressed out.

They asked students to use Pinterest for just 10 minutes a day, and they measured their mood from a survey response, as well as some physiological conditions. What they learned was that people who were using the Pinterest platform were sleeping better. They had a better sense of social connectedness. They felt less burnt out. It’s great to feel that the intention choices that we’re making — the proactive policies that we’re pursuing — are actually having an effect on real people in the real world.

Is that a weakness when it comes to pitching advertisers?

Most advertisers are looking for an opportunity to connect with their audience, and that isn’t necessarily about volume. It’s not necessarily about speed. It’s about the depth and value of the connection. And being in a positive environment has a real halo effect to it. Advertisers value that. They also value the brand alignment.

For example, many advertisers are very focused on sustainability right now. We recently announced a climate misinformation policy — that it’s just not permitted on the platform — and we’ve always been a leader in these areas. So there’s a lot of value in the way our Pinners are interacting with the platform, and a lot of value for the way they show up there.

When you say Pinterest is trying to build a “positive environment” — what exactly does that mean?

On the one hand, the nature of Pinterest is designed to be inspiring, just from the get-go — but we’re laying on protective policies to keep it that way. We launched an anti-vaccine misinformation ban in 2017, years before the pandemic. Most recently, we’ve also banned climate misinformation.

Along the way, we’ve banned weight loss ads — and back to your earlier point, there’s a lot of money in weight loss ads, but we’re not interested in playing in that space. We don’t think it’s good for our user base, and so we’re not going to permit it. There’s a hair pattern tool and a skin tone search feature we have that’s designed to really lean into diversity and inclusion. So we have a steady drumbeat of policies to keep Pinterest positive.

It actually goes even a little bit further. We have something called compassionate search. If we see search terms that are concerning in any way, we offer pins that say: “How are you feeling? Do you want to do some mindful meditation? Is there somebody that you need to talk to? Here are some resources for that.”

NBC News reported last month that pedophiles have used Pinterest to curate images of children on the platform. One of the concerns was that Pinterest’s algorithm automatically aggregates pictures of children to anyone seeking them out. Has Pinterest changed its algorithm? What are you trying to do to ensure this doesn’t continue to happen?

We take this extremely seriously. We have a zero-tolerance policy toward anything that sexualizes minors. It’s a difficult situation. The work is never going to be done, ever, on the internet. We have been developing new features that make it easier for communities to flag accounts that may be questionable, and we have deactivated many accounts. We’ve probably been overly aggressive.

We have also put in a number of guardrails around accounts used by anyone younger than 16. There are no messaging features. You only have to accept connections from people that you know. Your parents can actually put in a password on the settings. The algorithm is intended to be a tool for good, and we’re really committed to making sure that it keeps everybody safe.

A lot of social media platforms are experimenting with live video right now. How are you trying to make Pinterest TV unique to your platform?

One of the things that is core to Pinterest is that we’re very much a full-file platform. People come early, they come undecided, they go through an inspiration process, and then they narrow down what they want to do before they do anything — so there’s a very high shopability index. It’s a very commerce-friendly platform because people are on this journey, whether they’re planning dinner tonight, or a birthday party, or a wedding.

There’s almost always a purchase that comes at some point in it, so Pinterest TV is wonderful for that, because it gives the opportunity to create live experiences with products where people can see how they’re being used. They can feel it come alive.

What’s the most surprising demographic you have on Pinterest, one people might not expect to see on the platform?

It’s men. I say that, and people wonder what they’re doing on Pinterest, but there are actually a lot of men. It’s our second-fastest growing demographic after Gen-Z. There’s lots of DIY content, lots of renovation content, lots of tattoo content. As I say to some of our advertisers, nobody ever built a deck and didn’t have a beer when they were done.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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