(Adds information on weight reduction advert spending)
July 1 (Reuters) – Pinterest Inc is banning all advertisements with weight reduction language and imagery, together with advertisements that idealize or denigrate sure physique varieties, it stated on Thursday.
The digital pinboard web site stated it could additionally not enable advertisements with testimonials about weight reduction or weight reduction merchandise, or advertisements referencing Body Mass Index (BMI) or related indexes.
“This stance makes Pinterest the one main platform to ban all weight reduction advertisements. It’s an enlargement of our advert insurance policies which have lengthy prohibited physique shaming and harmful weight reduction merchandise or claims,” the corporate stated in a weblog publish on Thursday.
Ads selling wholesome existence, habits or health providers and merchandise are nonetheless allowed on the platform if they don’t “deal with weight reduction.” The firm stated it had developed the coverage with steerage from the National Eating Disorders Association.
Pinterest’s head of coverage, Sarah Bromma, stated in an interview that the rule change prioritized Pinterest customers’ “emotional and psychological well being and wellbeing, particularly these immediately impacted by consuming problems or food plan tradition or physique shaming.”
Weight loss manufacturers’ spending on promoting throughout TV, digital and print codecs reached $372 million between January and June 2021, up 89% in comparison with the identical interval final yr, in response to promoting intelligence agency MediaRadar. It reported a 120% improve in year-over-year spend for weight reduction advertisements on Facebook.
Pinterest, which has lengthy grappled with combating pro-eating dysfunction content material on its web site and has since 2015 blocked such searches and directed customers to knowledgeable organizations, already has guidelines in opposition to advertisements selling weight reduction tablets or these containing before-and-after weight-loss imagery.
The firm additionally stated this week that its international head of inclusion and variety, Tyi McCray, was leaving the corporate after lower than a yr. The transfer was first reported by Protocol.
Pinterest, which went public in 2019, has confronted controversies round range and inequality within the final yr, together with when two former coverage crew staff alleged racial discrimination within the office. (Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Bill Berkrot)
