COW Here: Mooing About Pinterest

I didn't jump on the Pinterest bandwagon as quickly as many people did, but when I finally did, it turned out to be a near record-setting broad jump. The statistics at the top of the page show that I have 83 boards and no fewer than 4.5k pins!

It's a great place to store recipes until I get a chance to try them, to dream about future quilts, hang on to words of wisdom, and all kinds of other things. Over time, I organized and reorganized, breaking down "recipes" into several subdivisions and more recently "desserts" into smaller categories. My Pinterest base is, perhaps, the most tidy and organized piece of my life. A couple of months ago I learned how to move the boards around and now mine are filed with sewing and quilting boards first, cooking boards second, followed by all the others. I tell you, it's a  marvel.

So, what's the Moo? It's "Picked For You." I totally understand that there have to be paid advertisement pins show up. I get that. This thing has to be funded somehow. I see the paid ads and nod acknowledgment. Unwelcome they are, but not the issue. "Picked for You" populates my home page with all kinds of stuff that somebot things I want to see. I have a crowd of other people's boards that I follow; I'm genuinely interested in what they're saving and sometimes I save those things to. People I've chosen to follow and boards I've chosen to follow.

Lately I've noticed that my feed is providing more and more "Picked for You" pins. It's like for every ten pins there will be three paid ads, three that I'm truly following and four that the bot wants me to see. I wish I understood why Pinterest insists on this feature. More than that, I wish I could turn it off. I've complained to Pinterest, but to no avail. Cannot be turned off. Cannot be decreased. But oh how aggravating to get these picked-for-me pins of shrimp scampi and crab souffles. Can Pinterest be trying to kill me? If it knows me so well, why is it pretending I don't have a serious shellfish allergy?

Moo!

Comments

Sue said…
I moo with you! What annoys me the most is that the "picked for you" items are often things I have already pinned. I must have seen the same recipe for Lemon Chicken every day for months. Equally annoying are the pins which lead nowhere or to a site one must subscribe to. However, this does not stop me from checking and pinning...an addiction I believe.
Nann said…
Pinterest sent a suggestion for my "my quilts" board -- all pins of quilts made by other people!
Annemiek said…
I so agree!!! The " picked for you" pins come on my board 20 at the time and they are either things I already pinned, or things I don t find interesting AT ALL. The other week I got pins with tattoos, recipes and wardrobes- you-can -built-yourself. Hate tattoos, don t like to cook and am not into diy furniture.......so ...why Pinterest???
OT Quilter said…
I'm with you. It seems that on Pinterest, as on Facebook and any other social media website, algorithms are taking over our online experiences. Pinterest is certainly an ingenious way of organizing bookmarks because so many of us are better at responding to visual cues over verbal ones. How to fix this? I haven't a clue. What I find most annoying is that these sites insinuate themselves into our online and offline lives and ultimately become indispensable.
Barbara Anne said…
No frame of reference here as I suppose in all social media, I'm a Luddite. No FB, Pinterest, Google, or any such for me. That's my preference as I stay busy enough without having more things to take my time because they catch my interest. Yep, no doubt I missing a world of wonderfulness, but that's okay. :)

Moo as needed!

Hugs!
suz said…
I also got into Pinterest late. I've noticed now that most of the stuff they send me is stuff I've seen over and over. Aside from limiting myself to 15 minutes (I actually use a timer), for their recommended stuff...I look through a few of the first things that come up and if I see too much of what I'm not interested in, I ditch the whole thing - I give it 2 minutes tops. I figure it this way, it's fun, I have lots of ideas that I've actually referenced more than once and it's free. Ya gotta take the good with the bad. It certainly would be nice if they had an algorithm that was more in tune with what we actually pin though.
LoieJ said…
I don't use Pinterest, but I have a similar complaint about two other 'net things. One is that on Facebook, I see the same postings over and over, as though they are new. Yes, I can click on the button about not seeing that one any more, but I can't do that on my phone.

The other issue is seeing ads for items I've considered buying on a company site, but these ads show up randomly on other sites. Even ads for things I already purchased. I think this reflects cookies, so maybe I could learn to get rid of them. But yikes, some-robot-computer is keeping track of my interests.