Pinterest is drowning in a sea of AI slop and auto-moderation

(404media.co)

48 points | by trinsic2 9 hours ago ago

34 comments

  • estimator7292 an hour ago ago

    I'm a Kagi user so i genuinely forgot that Pinterest still exists.

    Thank you, Kagi.

    • clydethefrog 27 minutes ago ago

      Pinterest has the honour to lead the leaderboard from #1 tot #7 in the blocked domain list.

      https://kagi.com/stats?stat=insights

      • sethops1 16 minutes ago ago

        That's actually kind of impressive.

    • ohyoutravel 41 minutes ago ago

      I can’t remember if Kagi auto blocks it or if I blocked it completely on my first search, but I haven’t seen Pinterest trash in search results on literal years. <3 Kagi.

  • rchaud 37 minutes ago ago

    I had a Pinterest account back when there were genuinely great resource for niche things like Japanese graphic design.

    Since then, I've moved to simply having a local image/video database UI app like Eagle[0] and checking Are.na[1] for interesting collections.

    [0] https://eagle.cool/ [1] https://www.are.na/explore

  • feverzsj 12 minutes ago ago

    If you use google image search recently, it's mostly Pinterest and Facebook.

    • kleiba 7 minutes ago ago

      ...or stock images.

  • CrzyLngPwd an hour ago ago

    I have to be honest and say that I have no sympathy for Pinterest and other services destroying themselves in the clamour to jam AI and feed algorithms into everything.

    That they ever thought anyone would enjoy the experience is beyond me, and it demonstrates their place in the grotty suburbs of the attention economy.

    • rchaud 43 minutes ago ago

      They're making money hand over fist with ads, I don't think they could care any less about the product than they currently do. The product at this point is a moldy sheath around the ad delivery system, as with any for-profit "social network".

  • micw 2 hours ago ago

    And the world is drowning in more pinterest google image search spam.

  • jameskilton 38 minutes ago ago

    Blizzard recently set up a World of Warcraft promotion with Pinterest where you could share your housing builds from in-game. Many people were insta-banned from Pinterest for "spam" after just posting one or two pictures.

    https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/pinterest-suspended-...

    Something is very broken over at Pinterest.

  • easywood 2 hours ago ago

    It's a shame, I used to browse Pinterest for woodworking ideas. A year ago, I noticed some of the results were AI generated. Now almost ALL results are AI generated, included the obviously scammy ads they put in everywhere. If someone knows a place where you can find fun woodworking projects, I'm all ears.

    • Steve16384 4 minutes ago ago

      There must be a subreddit?

    • rchaud 43 minutes ago ago

      Definitely not Etsy, because it's the same deal over there.

    • everyday7732 an hour ago ago

      Instructables is pretty good.

  • kaizenb 2 hours ago ago

    Pinterest sucks.

    You can create your private archive with Bookmarker. Share collections publicly if you want.

    https://bookmarker.cc/

  • tebbers 2 hours ago ago

    I also noticed recently they changed their design completely. Instead of browsing your board and the things you pinned in the past, what you're now shown are completely unrelated items that you might want to add to your board, and most of these are things you can buy from other shopping sites.

  • JumpCrisscross 7 hours ago ago

    “MAUs were 619 million, an increase of 12% compared to December 31, 2024” [1].

    [1] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1506293/0001...

    • properbrew 2 hours ago ago

      > We define an MAU as an authenticated Pinterest user who visits our website, opens our mobile application or interacts with Pinterest through one of our browser or site extensions, such as the Save button, at least once during the 30-day period ending on the date of measurement.

      Wonder if we're going to get a MAHU (Monthly Active Human Users) stat in the future.

  • nusl an hour ago ago

    Deserved. Pinterest has been enshittifying itself and the Internet at large for quite a long time.

  • maplethorpe 41 minutes ago ago

    I do wonder what the future of using these platforms is in the era of AI. Theoretically, I feel like asking Claude to filter the results to remove "slop" would work quite well. Maybe that could be built into some kind of extension?

  • cap11235 2 hours ago ago

    Pinterest is the OG slop, long before LLMs ever existed

    • aitchnyu an hour ago ago

      15 years back I got an affiliate marketing ebook, and it had lessons on getting hundreds of blogspot subdomains and using a desktop tool to publish the same crap about, say, tropical fish to all of them. There was/is also a captcha solving service which got a nice landing page about employing people.

  • interstice 5 hours ago ago

    Not to mention so many ads it’s no longer usable.

    • AdamN 3 hours ago ago

      Pinterest is so bad it's one of those sites I just skip over on search results. But it's been that way for years - nothing new.

      • consp 3 hours ago ago

        I always assumed it to be a honeypot for ebay purchasers due to the "copy popular ebay search results and then lure them to a link" methodology of "users".

        Pretty much the same with all AI slop sites (e.g. the first 10 search results) only usually they only care about serving adds instead of serving malware or scams.

  • petesergeant 2 hours ago ago

    We need camera hardware to be able to sign photos

    • m4rtink an hour ago ago

      Seems like something that would be miss-used against people in horrible ways.

    • carlosjobim an hour ago ago

      Then I can take a photo of an AI generated image.

  • tropicalfruit an hour ago ago

    futures going to AI platforms built by AI coders with AI users and moderated by AI

    it seems in history trajectories always continue although they take new forms

    like maybe AI users will be renamed to something more palatable, agentic consumers.

    not sure where the people will be. probably not somewhere good.

  • toomuchtodo 9 hours ago ago

    Any ATProto based replacements available?

    • badgersnake 3 hours ago ago

      How would that solve the slop problem?

      • jasonvorhe 3 hours ago ago

        And why ATProto when it would result in just another broken centralized service?

        • mcherm 2 hours ago ago

          Because ATProto is specifically designed to allow being NON-centralized. Unlike Pinterest. Yes, ATProto is new and most of the traffic is through a single site at the moment, but it is specifically designed to allow for that to change.