Why is the Pinterest algorithm so bad?
I have few vices as far as social media goes; I limit myself to YouTube and Pinterest and those keep me sufficiently online. I go back to these sites again and again not because they are always exceedingly entertaining, but because I am able to see many of my interests compiled before my eyes for my investigation, especially on Pinterest. When I visit it, a colorful collage of Images is set before me. Whether I engage with these interests in the physical world or not is irrellevant; I am able to experience the dope rush associated with them vicariously through these images.
But today, I was browsing as normal and I refreshed the page to find myself looking at like some uncanny rendering of my tastes on paper. A chunk of black and white TikTok screenshots of trad goth folk, like six consecutive ads for car organizers on aliexpress, and multiple veins of Jenna Ortega stock photos. These things make sense to show me if you are an amnesiac robot. Indeed, my tastes include goth fashion, I was looking at car accessories, and Jenna Ortega is like cool I guess, but I haven't saved such overt trad-gothiness in a bit, I have not been overly interested in such elaborate car organization systems, and I saved a couple pins of Jenna Ortega's character from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice because I liked her costume weeks ago.
The Pinterest algorithm is known to me as addicting at best, temperamental and frustrating at worst, which is to say that sometimes it works rather beautifully, serving me my delicious images on a silver platter; things I want to see and have been looking at. But then, sometimes it turns on a dime and shows me beachy mainstream influencers I've never seen or heard of, softcore porn, and large clusters of similar images in waves that are inspired by one thing you saved ages ago. Even when the algorithm is working normally, search results are annoyingly hyper-curated (ex. if I've been looking at Tudor fashion and suddenly switch to something adjacent but distinct it will bleed into the search results terribly). Others have complained of looking at one thing one time and then getting only that recommended to them for a while, but I don't experience that too badly most of the time.
Another quite bothersome thing is the constant updates to the app. Sometimes bugs are fixed but the nigh constant unnecessary changes to the UI just introduces new ones and makes the user experience worse. Never have I once noticed an update and been like "Ah, what a nice change!" it was fine like 4 updates ago when we could swipe down on pins to go back to the previous page and scroll through super long images instead of just viewing them incomprehensibly as incredibly skinny rectangles scaled to fit entirely on a phone screen.
The ONE nice thing is it does seem that they have added a "AI modified" tag (seemingly desktop only) to some images, but this confuses me further because I have only just noticed it today and when I looked it up to find out more, I found a Reddit post from 4 months ago noting it. An artist commented that some of their original lineart had been tagged as "AI modified", and another commenter described how those using AI on the dl could easily circumvent this sad attempt by Pinterest to seem on top of things. My point here is a) Pinterest is bad as rolling out updates(?) and b) Pinterest is bad at moderating the AI content slowly overtaking the platform (but who isn't ig?).
Edit: images to exemplify my points
Jenna Ortega is extremely cool I'm sure but I saved 3 pins of her in the specific Beetlejuice II costume ages and ages ago
2. Who is she ?? ft. more Jenna Ortega and a comic I am not familiar with
3. I would get more images but it's back to normal now. WHY does the algorithm just periodically get horrible like a forest creature at a blood moon ??
stormborns
dailybridgerton
areudirty
titsay
andulkaphoto
annaxmalina
