Pinterest removes (then reactivates) #GunFAIL boards
Pinterest’s #GunFAIL boards (temporarily) went up in smoke.
A Virginia man was shocked Tuesday when the popular photo sharing website suspended his account without explanation.
David Waldman, a contributing editor for Daily Kos, used his account to keep a running tally of all the children who died via accidental gun violence in 2013, 2014 and 2015.
Just before 5 p.m. ET, three hours later after the boards were removed, Pinterest reactivated them.
“I actually thought it was going to either happen immediately or not at all,” Waldman said to Yahoo News. “I didn’t expect them to take their time.”
His boards went back online just minutes after he tweeted that Yahoo News and others were working on stories about the suspension, he said.
Before his tweet, he had written a blog post about his situation and posted some of the #GunFAIL content onto Twitter to protest its removal.
I also used @Pinterest to show you how often people accidentally fired their guns into their neighbors' homes. They deleted that, too.
— David Waldman (@KagroX) May 19, 2015
Waldman, an advocate for gun safety, launched his #GunFAIL project shortly after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012.
In the wake of the tragedy, Waldman recalls, the National Rifle Association and other gun rights activists argued that letting teachers carry firearms in classrooms could help prevent further school shootings.
“There was no telling how many accidents you were going to have in between the time they would implement this policy and the time you would actually need to protect someone,” he said.
Waldman started searching the Internet for statistics on how many accidental gun deaths occurred in the United States each year; he would add the victims’ stories and pictures to put a face on this problem.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that roughly 60 people below the age of 15 were accidentally shot and killed yearly, but Waldman started to get the sense that this figure was much higher.
Waldman said he has never been an advocate for the government to either confiscate weapons or limit the types of weapons one can purchase – he just wants to raise awareness of the possible dangers.
“If you have them, these are the sorts of things that could happen if you’re not extremely careful and even if you are,” he said.
Pinterest's policies forbid material that is inappropriate, hateful, harmful, fraudulent or misleading.
A company spokesperson emailed a statement to Yahoo News when contacted for comment.
"Our automated system was triggered when it identified spam-like behavior," it reads. "The account was not suspended for content, and has since been reinstated. We apologize for the confusion and any inconvenience we caused."
