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?