Pinterest bans weight loss ads in first for major social networks

And do you think that scummy and often fraudulent weight loss pill ads are going to solve that problem?

We are dealing with COVID by methods that have been tested for efficacy with significant scientific rigor. If the same rigor were applied to products shilled by weight loss ads, I don't think anyone would have an issue with them.

It's not, though. Nobody goes to jail if their weight loss pills don't work, or put people in the hospital, or are just placebo sugar capsules.

It seems to me that getting rid of one bad thing (scammy slimming ads) can be positive - without them needing to be 100% consistent all the time or policing every possible bad thing. Claims to the contrary seem like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

I think what vkou is sharing is the core of a very common dilemma.

You can allow "any legal ads" and you'll be derided as mercenary but at least you'll be entirely consistent.

Or you can try to set out _some_ kind of boundaries about ads on your platform and get enmeshed in endless debate over whether a) which boundaries should exist b) how far out they should be drawn c) what side of that boundary a given data point is on d) whether boundary enforcement is subject to some kind of internal conspiracy or moral corruption.

There's no winning move, because this is the Internet and you can't please everyone.

Of course every company already makes judgement calls about which ads to accept and which to reject. There is no fundamental difference between rejecting crypto scam ads that promise immense profits and diet scam ads that promise effortless weight loss. Nothing fundamentally changed here.

It's not arbitrary to make decisions between shades of grey. Businesses make judgement calls all the time, it's unavoidable. The decisions are only arbitrary in the sense that you can't identify the exact boundary between OK and not-OK, but that's true for all judgement calls so there is no reason to presume a sudden increase in corruption.

I would be absolutely shocked if there was a secret deal between Pinterest management and a special interest group to get scam ads on the platform.

It just doesn't make sense on a risk vs. reward basis.

Corruption? by "influencing Pinterest management in their arbitrary decisions", do you perhaps just mean a meeting between a business and a customer?

I used to use uMatrix before it was abandoned by its developer. I had to block literally dozens of pinterest<dot><some TLD> domains but still more kept showing up in search results. I think Pinterest have literally registered every single TLD out there.

Of course none of that answers the question as to why they're showing up in search results in the first place --even when completely irrelevant to what I'm searching for. In fact Pinterest is such a vacuous waste of space it practically makes Quora look useful.

I'm sure any other business would get blacklisted by the search engines for such search result spamming.

There will always be people happy to sell things that don't work.

Do you have evidence of the contrary?

A 5 s search leads to this page from the US gov: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/truth-behind-weight-lo...

Note that this page warns against weight loss ads — not weight loss, which they argue is a more complicated topic than an ad will convey.

Further: https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459

It's hardly conclusive, but here you go:

> Among patients whose PCPs discussed weight loss, 20.1% achieved ≥ 10% weight loss if they did not perceive judgment by their PCP as compared to 13.5% who perceived judgment.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00917...

Shaming leads to stress overeating and to unvillingness to go to public which lowers physical activity is what I remember reading.