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Pinterest: How a once inspiring social media app was ruined by ads

Suzana Dalul, writing at Android Authority:

When it first came out, Pinterest stood out from other social media platforms because it was a place to find inspiration. You could create and curate your own boards without interacting with others, or you could follow friends and exchange ideas. Better yet, you could only follow specific boards.

For example, if you had a friend with excellent taste in home decor but who pinned way too many cakes for your liking, you could unfollow their desserts board. This resulted in a home feed that was tailored to your interests, but one that still allowed you to discover new and interesting things. Many of these options are still available today, but thanks to algorithm changes and an ever-constant stream of ads, the home feed is unrecognizable.

I used Pinterest for a while back in the early days, but left because it was too much of a time-sink for me. After reading this, I don’t think I’ll be returning. To be honest, by the time I closed my account, a lot of content I was seeing was copy-pasted from Tumblr or other platforms without attribution, so in many ways the rot was already setting in as far as I was concerned.