Dark side of site’s virtual pinboards

THE social media giant Pinterest, a public US company, describes itself as a ‘visual discovery engine for finding ideas’.

It has about 430million active users every month.

They create collages on virtual pinboards by ‘pinning’ posts, such as recipes, inspiration for home decor, and fashion ideas.

The San Franciso-based company made more than £250million in profit last year.

Like many social media platforms, the site has a darker side where users share depression quotes and suicidal thoughts.

Molly Russell had at first shared fun posts, but they became darker as she began pinning material showing graphic self-harm and quotes about suicide.

Pinterest relies on artificial intelligence and human moderators to hide or remove such content, the inquest heard.

But senior executive Jud Hoffman admitted that while it made it harder to find, it was still available.