I was banned from Pinterest for no reason!

I’ve heard of more and more unfortunate artists who have gotten their Instagram account hacked lately, but I didn’t know getting booted off Pinterest was a thing. Until a few months ago, when I went to save the work of an artist I admired and I got a pop up telling me that my account was suspended. I followed the links to find out what the problem was, and got this email in response:

Hi kelly witmer,

Your account has been permanently suspended for violating our Community Guidelines. You won't be able to access your Pins or messages, and your account will not be restored.For clarification on our decision please review our Community Guidelines.

Thanks,The Pinterest Team

WTF?

I read through those guidelines, and could find nothing that applied to me. I didn’t pin adult content, violence, “messages of hate”, illegal substances, misinformation, human trafficking or sale of body parts or protected wildlife. I didn’t spam, I never commented or sent messages. I just used the platform since it began for what I thought it was meant for - to save images of things that inspire me.

Years ago a fellow artist friend told me that I should be pinning my own work, to “get it out there”, so I would occasionally do that. And by occasionally, I mean every few months and not the same work. But as far as I know, lots of artists do this and it isn’t listed in the guidelines as BAD. Plus, I had also graduated to a business account, and over several years occasionally paid to promote my artwork on Pinterest.

So anyway, I sent a message to the Pinterest “team” asking what I did wrong, and got the same unhelpful automated email. Then I did what I always do - I googled it. I could some help in descriptions of the same thing happening to others, like this one from a Pinterest manager, describing instances where she “put in a help ticket every few days for several months until it was quietly reactivated one day without even a “sorry” or “welcome back.””

I followed her advice and wrote polite and pleading help tickets twice weekly for over a month. I even wrote for help in the advertising section, pointing out that I had paid for advertising and wanted to give them more of my money. Exact same auto email response, nothing else. I can’t even buy my way back.

Other blogs offered similar advice, like this one called Simple Pin Media - a company devoted to helping businesses use Pinterest for marketing. This blog has some helpful tips as well on what could have caused the suspension, but I don’t think I committed crimes of repetitive descriptions either. She also said that she took losing her account as a sign from the universe and moved her business in a different direction. I don’t want to change careers at this juncture, but I tried to use that positive attitude and just start a new account.

But I couldn’t even start a new account, because my email was “taken”! I had to create a new email, and couldn’t even use my name, since it was also “taken”.

So if you’re still reading this and want to follow my scrawny new account, I’m at kellymakingstuff. Except I’m scared to pin too much of the stuff I make. My pins are mostly unusual art or interesting interiors. I can’t seem to pin new things form other sites since the pin tab no longer works on Safari. Seems like Pinterest wants people to keep pinning the same old things over and over. That is, when they pause from clicking on ads.