Pinterest (PINS) – Get Report will not show ads next to election-related content including keywords like the names of candidates, “polling place” and “vote,” the company said on Thursday.
The move, exactly two months before the Nov. 3 election, strengthens the San Francisco photo-sharing website’s two-year-old policy that banned political ads on its platform.
“We will not monetize elections-related content. That means we won’t show ads when you search for common election-related search terms, …” the company said in a blog post.
“We believe that’s a better and more inspiring experience for everyone.
“As we near November, we’ll limit recommendations about election-related content (like election memes or slogans) in places like the home feed and notifications.”
The platform will instead redirect users to a third-party website, vote.org, where they can register to vote, check registration status, get an absentee ballot, and more.
The company said it had also expanded its existing community guidelines to curb the spread of misinformation by making it easier to report such material.
Pinterest is also offering all employees eight hours of paid time off, the equivalent of a full workday, to vote or to serve as a poll worker.
Pinterest has 416 million active users, according to Yahoo Finance.
On Thursday, Facebook (FB) – Get Report also said that it would not accept new political ads in the week before the election; would remove posts that claim people will get coronavirus if they vote, and attached “authoritative information” about the coronavirus to posts that might use covid-19 to discourage voting.
Twitter (TWTR) – Get Report said last year that it would stop all political ads on its service.
Pinterest shares closed down 7.4% at $35.93. Facebook was down 3.8% at $291.12 and Twitter gave up 4.7% to $41.63.