Pinterest is drowning in a sea of AI slop and auto-moderation
61 points
10 hours ago
| 20 comments
| 404media.co
| HN
alexpotato
6 minutes ago
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I ran an account on Instagram that "curated" posts from other people (basically reposted images but before the current reposting functionality).

The AI generated images are so prevalent that I resorted to reposting images only if there were from 2022 or earlier (sure, filters existed then too).

The whole experience reminds me of the story about "pre-radiation steel" [0] and how future generations won't be able to trust any image after 2024. Then again, we have large amounts of literature and stories from ancient history or medieval times that are impossible to verify as true so maybe this isn't a new problem.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

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bergheim
31 seconds ago
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I do the same in youtube etc if I want to just listen to some music. before:2020 usually works somewhat.

Didn't know about that operator before all this.

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DudeOpotomus
5 minutes ago
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PINS has 5200 employees! What The actual F are 5200 people doing?

This company exemplifies the "dead internet". No way they grow, let alone hit their targets.

Going short.

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estimator7292
1 hour ago
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I'm a Kagi user so i genuinely forgot that Pinterest still exists.

Thank you, Kagi.

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

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

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sethops1
53 minutes ago
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That's actually kind of impressive.
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hereme888
26 minutes ago
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My favorite news feed overall: news.kagi.com
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ohyoutravel
1 hour ago
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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.
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CrzyLngPwd
1 hour ago
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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.

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rchaud
1 hour ago
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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".
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WA
26 minutes ago
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So true. I used Pinterest for art references and inspiration and they have 3 issues that are entirely self-owned:

1. Ads, ads and more ads. I had their app and it had to go, because every third pin was an ad.

2. Ads that seem to be pins: there are ads that are a mini collage. One image, 2-3 thumbs below. All "images" with the same rounded border like the regular pins. So you click them and because the upper image is visually detached from the rest of the ad, you don’t realize that you just clicked an ad when it is too late. A very nasty dark pattern.

3. No timestamps. It’s sometimes hard to tell if something is AI-generated. I don’t want AI-generated when it comes to art. Pinterest could choose to display pin timestamps when they were pinned for the first time, but they don’t.

So, they dug their own hole and I have zero sympathy for them, too.

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feverzsj
48 minutes ago
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If you use google image search recently, it's mostly Pinterest and Facebook.
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kleiba
43 minutes ago
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...or stock images.
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micw
3 hours ago
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And the world is drowning in more pinterest google image search spam.
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rchaud
1 hour ago
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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

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jameskilton
1 hour ago
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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.

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mv4
34 minutes ago
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It's not just Pinterest though. IG, Reddit, even LinkedIn.
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kaizenb
3 hours ago
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Pinterest sucks.

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

https://bookmarker.cc/

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easywood
2 hours ago
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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.
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rchaud
1 hour ago
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Definitely not Etsy, because it's the same deal over there.
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Steve16384
40 minutes ago
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There must be a subreddit?
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everyday7732
1 hour ago
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Instructables is pretty good.
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tebbers
2 hours ago
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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.
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JumpCrisscross
7 hours ago
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“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...

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properbrew
2 hours ago
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> 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.

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nusl
1 hour ago
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Deserved. Pinterest has been enshittifying itself and the Internet at large for quite a long time.
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interstice
5 hours ago
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Not to mention so many ads it’s no longer usable.
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AdamN
3 hours ago
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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.
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consp
3 hours ago
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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.

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cap11235
2 hours ago
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Pinterest is the OG slop, long before LLMs ever existed
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aitchnyu
2 hours ago
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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.
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maplethorpe
1 hour ago
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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?
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petesergeant
2 hours ago
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We need camera hardware to be able to sign photos
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m4rtink
1 hour ago
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Seems like something that would be miss-used against people in horrible ways.
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Octoth0rpe
38 seconds ago
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I think it might be enough to be able to verify that a photo was taken by a particular manufacturer's camera, not necessarily a specific camera/owner.
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carlosjobim
1 hour ago
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Then I can take a photo of an AI generated image.
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tropicalfruit
1 hour ago
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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.

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toomuchtodo
9 hours ago
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Any ATProto based replacements available?
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badgersnake
3 hours ago
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How would that solve the slop problem?
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jasonvorhe
3 hours ago
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And why ATProto when it would result in just another broken centralized service?
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mcherm
3 hours ago
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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.
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