pinterest alternative
so in the morning of a random thursday a few months ago, i tried to open pinterest. at that point, it had been a while since i've last used the website, which is why it took me by great surprise that my account has been deleted. as of a few days ago, i found out that my account is back. this is after numerous appeals which seemed to have gone nowhere.
not to sound dramatic, but this whole ordeal was very stressful, and i've decided to stop keeping all my eggs (references and pictures and memories and all that) in one basket (pinterest).
the mass banning of accounts isn't the only reason why you should too, ditch pinterest. consider the rampant advertisement and AI-generated content that your recommended page is absolutely flooded with. consider how easily this can all happen again. collecting images on pinterest is no longer sustainable.
here's what i've done to migrate myself off of the platform:
download images from my account
i used WFDownloader, which is a bulk media downloader, to capture and download images from my boards. this also sorts out and downloads any new pins from your boards from your last download, if you would like to keep using pinterest and just want to have a backup.
this is completely free to download and use
here's a detailed tutorial from the creator
move to a different platform
i've checked out both cosmos and refern and ended up really loving refern. it's a website built/designed by an artist named jaks (@ jaks024 on twitter).
if refern interests you, i urge you to do your own research and try it out, but here are some of my pros and cons after using it
pros:
you can use a browser extension to capture the images on your pinterest board and directly transfer them to your refern page as a batch
the website itself is simple and doesn't take very long to get used to
it allows nsfw content, which is convenient if you are an artist who collects images that contain some nudity for reference
no ads, and no AI content
a built-in function that lets you make mood boards and reference boards, similar to PureRef
a "study" mode so you can practice drawing references within a certain time
a tagging system, and you're able to edit the metadata on your image
edit images directly in refern (brightness, saturation, contrast, flipping and rotating)
cons:
because of how new the platform is, the image discovery and suggestion isn't as strong as some other platforms
when you transfer images from your pinterest board, it doesn't transfer the metadata along with it. the link for the source of the image will be your pinterest board
refern's free version gives you a limited number of folders and enough storage for about 2,500 images. upgrading to pro is a one-time $29 payment, which i paid for since i see myself using this site for the foreseeable future.
tldr: pinterest has been going downhill, start backing up your images and/or try out other sites -- i recommend refern
