Why I deleted my Pinterest account

The web would be nothing without social media. Given the explosion of online content in the past several years, platforms charged with the organization and display of this content are imperative in order to make sense of it all and allow users to find and share what matters most. I love trying new platforms, and am consistently motivated to pioneer some of these contemporary offerings, motivated by a search for improved quality and relevance.

When my dear friend Georgia got engaged last year, she took to Pinterest to organize and manage all of her wedding ideas. For my parents and others of you unfamiliar, Pinterest is a social media platform that operates sort of like a virtual corkboard. Users create "pinboards" organized by theme and then "pin" content onto them from the Internet. The interface is photo-based, meaning that the image associated with the content is displayed for other users (your own friends or strangers) to click on and "like" or "repin" to their own boards. It is very visually appealing and easy to use, and can draw you into a mind-bending chasm of wasted time. Unlike me, Georgia used it constructively to compile ideas for wedding hair, dresses, invitations, flowers, and decor, which has allowed her to slowly build a holistic theme for her upcoming ceremony.

It was she who turned me onto the idea in the first place, and I gladly made my own boards. My first red flag came when I had to use my Facebook or Twitter account to sign up, but when I found that I didn't have to publish my Pinterest activity on Facebook, I settled down and began pinning to my heart's content. I slowly began to notice that strangers were repinning my pins, and that more and more people were following my updates that I didn't approve, some of them strangers. While I'm not completely opposed to the idea, it was the systematic lack of my permission that made me the most uneasy. All of a sudden, my content was public to all Pinterest users who could view and share my pins to their hearts content, with my only notifications coming after the fact.

Now, you may be wondering what the big deal is. The internet is public, you say. Pinterest is about sharing, you say. Now, that is all well and good. And while I do not believe the Internet is a private place, I do feel that an online personality within the context of a social media site is something you should expect to be able to control, especially if the platform is a password-protected user community. You should at least be asked if you'd like your content to be available to all users, and you should be able to control who follows your content preemptively, not after the fact. Perhaps I'm getting old, but the whole thing was making me a little queasy. Perhaps I was too used to the older platforms that asked you if you wanted to add someone as a friend beforehand. But all of this was not quite enough to make me stop using Pinterest.

The final straw came last week when I googled myself, as I do from time to time, to see what comes up from my name for the world to see. I was not signed in to any of my accounts, as I wanted to simulate what a stranger or potential employer might see. I was aghast to see my Pinterest account on the first page, attached to my full name. When I clicked on it, all of my boards were public, and you could even follow me with one click. Not that I had anything to hide on the site, but the idea that a stranger could access the totality of the content I intended for friends hit me right in the gut. I then found that I could remove my account from search results, but since cached pages could still lead users to the same destination, I opted to delete my account entirely.

Georgia can do what she wants without judgment from me. After all, she is using hers in a much more productive way than I ever did. Also, she may have completely different views on internet privacy, rendering my argument completely irrelevant, as it could also be for many others. But I am finished, and without a single tinge of regret. I have learned something from all of this, which is that I plan to pay much closer attention to terms of service in the future, and be wary of platforms that link to existing accounts. Linked accounts are a great way to get tons of information about me from the start, information that I want to be more guarded about as I thoughtfully cultivate my online identity.

ALSO: The copyright buzz around Pinterest is pretty fascinating. Read this to learn more, including how it seems that users are solely responsible for the legal expenses incurred against them and against Pinterest in the event of copyright infringement, something the site seems to enable.

What are your thoughts?