Pinterest used to be my happy place.
I loved spending time just scrolling through and pinning pretty pictures to my heart’s content. Anything that caught my eye went on one of my many pin boards without much rhyme or reason, just pure unadulterated PRETTY. It was relaxing and inspiring and fun and I took great pride in my curated Pinterest feed.
Pictures like this one, of amazing rooms that I would never own but loved to dream and drool over…
Or this potting bench of my dreams that I’ve repinned about a ka-jillion times because I love it so much…
Then something changed and Pinterest introduced a new “Smart Feed” in which their little bots tried to determine what I might want to see in my feed.
And it’s never really been the same since. Nowadays I might as well be looking at the front page of the National Enquirer. It’s rough.
I have drifted farther and farther away from Pinterest lately, sometimes even actively avoiding it because I mourned the loss of my pretty feed so much.
But finally I decided to be pro-active.
This year, I have made a commitment to try to MPGA- Make Pinterest Great Again. I’ve been working on this for a few weeks and so far I am definitely noticing a difference in the quality of pins that are coming across my feed. It’s not back to the way it was in the olden days, but it’s getting there.
Some of you guys have had some great ideas in the comments, so I’m going to share them here for others to read:
Tips from Kim and Joy:
To stop Pinterest from picking pins for you with their “Smart Feed, do this:
- Hover over your profile picture in the top right corner
- Click Settings –> Scroll down to “Home Feed”
- Turn off the”Picked for you” pins button
If you want your Pinterest boards alphabetized, use the Chrome extension “Pinterest Sort” to alphabetize boards
You can unfollow a specific board and not the person’s entire profile. If you like the crafts but not the health stuff just unfollow the health board.
I thought these were great tips!
I made this quick video to show y’all my strategy to clean things up. You can watch it right here:
What do you think? Do you still use and love Pinterest? Do you have any suggestions on how to make it great again? Holler at me if you do!
Wanna see all my pretty pins?? Follow me on Pinterest. I promise to do my best to keep it pretty!
Oh I’ve started to fade away from Pinterest as well. I enjoyed to see which of my friends pinned each pin…and now they only list where the original pin came from. It’s made me batty!!!!
What is really ironic is I could hardly read your blog or post for all of the ads that proliferated your page. It is out of control, and making the WWW almost unusable. Sad. And Pinterest… dead in my eye. It’s all commercial where it used to be so much fun.
I was just thinking the same, ironic. How much does a personal blogsite cost these days to have to resort to adverts? I’d rather not have one if I couldn’t do it without ads.
I am going to try it too! I am SO sick of all these ads that have NOTHING to do with the things that I pin! Thanks for the great idea!
Shelley
I had to start avoiding it because the Pinterest Perfection was kicking in. I tried to go back and those sponsored pins were driving me crazy, and belive me, it was a short drive!
I feel the same way! I want to completely start all over with my Pinterest page because of the junk showing that I’m not interested in. Thanks for this great idea!
Thank you for letting all of us know that we can get rid of these unwanted post. I thought it was just me that I had lost interest, but you are right I looked at my feed and I could see why I didn’t want to look at it.
I am going to definitely try this.
I agree with you. Now when I get on Pinterest, I feel like I’m on a long virtual stretch of highway with the old fashion billboards in a town that has seen its better days.
Figuring out how to turn off the “Show ‘Picked for you’ pins in your home feed” button was a game-changer for me. (In Settings) Now I just see pins from the pinners I follow, and no more “Suggested for you” pins. The other “feature” that annoyed the heck out of me was when they randomly reorganized my boards, after I painstakingly put them in alphabetical order. Now I use the Chrome extension “Pinterest Sort” to alphabetize my boards and I’m happy again!
Oh! I’m running to turn this one off! Thank you!
Yes I still use pinterest, yes I still love it.
Yes! Yes!!! I agree with you! I don’t like pinterest anymore because of its bots. Also it’s hard to see who is pinning your things and to follow them because it’s all a little small area and so small you almost need a magnify glass to read it. So I will definitely do what you recommend.
Thanks for doing this!!!
You can also just unfollow a specific board and not the person. If you like the crafts but not the health stuff just unfollow the health board. You still get to see the crafts but not the stuff you don’t want to see. I definitely need to clean up my Pinterest feed.
I agree. Pinterest is not how it used to be . Thanks for the video.
‘Yes we can’ keep improving anything. I love Pinterest just the way it is. However, I to hate all the pop up advertisements that appears no matter what I am viewing
I thought you would find this interesting and helpful. I was blocking and trying to removing unwanted ads on my Pinterest page when I was directed to this site.
https://help.pinterest.com/en/articles/what-are-promoted-pins
Hi Beth! You just saved my Pinterest feed!!! I am jumping for joy right now. These ideas worked. I had been “hiding” irrelevant pins for several months, but still wished that I could still see the pins of those whom I followed more often. I went into settings, and clicked out of several of the things that were activated, including “Picked for You Pins.” What a difference. I am passing this post on to friends. Thank you for making my Pinterest great again!
I don’t like it much anymore either. I don’t see “pins” from those I follow anymore. Also, if we could just get Instagram to go back to a chronological order, that would be great!
I totally agree! I love Pinterest until recently and now there are some yucky things on there I just don’t want to see! Thanks for giving us some tips.
yes! Yucky is a good word for it. LOL I don’t wanna see grody old toenails in my feed!
Pinterest is eliminating the “Picked for you” control by showing a specific “Following” feed. But the regular feed is now overrun by terrible “suggested” pins that come nowhere near what I put on my boards. In addition, they have now removed the labels for the pins that come from the boards that are followed so that you can’t tell their unwanted junk from what is pinned by those you want.
It’s sad and I really don’t want to go back except to download what I have saved.
Pinterest has essentially foiled any control over what shows up recently. Your “tip” doesn’t work any longer. I check in with Pinterest and about half of the pins showing are ads (half!) and they have a distorted view of what I’m interested in – I pin mostly crafts, sewing and knitting, and pretty rooms and I get tons of cheap chinese fashion, recipes for bacon burgers (I’m a vegetarian), and pneumatic, half dressed women with too much makeup. Ugh.
I’ve been using Pinterest for 8 years. What was my favorite app is now so frustrating with all the ads blocking the pin links. I despise having to scroll thru ads to try and find the intended content. Your own post here has 6 ads! Ads interruped this comment twice! Want to make Pinterest great again? Find a way to stop the worthless ads!
I do want to make it great again. Sometimes though it seems like my entire feed is advertisements. It’s like watching billboards in Tokyo and wanting to hide in a quiet place. This has almost completely ruined the entire app.
I wrote to Pinterest (Cold Brew Labs) once about this and their response was dismissive, saying basically they needed ads to pay for the maintenance of the app. This is ridiculous considering the owners are listed as top billionaires under 40. Not to mention the fact that it started up just fine and didnt have all of these obnoxious advertisements for several years.
It would be sad to quit it altogether but I may just have to. I have never had Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram and “gasp!” I’m living just fine without them.
It seems nowadays everything is being taken over even more by ads or subscriptions (even for things that don’t really improve!). I’ve quit using 99% of social media because the ads and constant demands to subscribe to literally everything are making using the internet a terrible experience. I do my best to buy store brand/generic only whenever I can because I’m so sick of the advertising industry exploiting and totally ruining so many nice things. Pinterest is totally ruined, the ads filled up about 75% of my feed before I deleted the app. Bye social media, you’ve been totally hijacked.
I wouldn’t mind paying for an ad-free Pinterest actually. I used it all the time for inspiration and gathered quite a few followers. Now I don’t pin that much anymore, because all I see are ads and pins that Pinterest thinks I like (I don’t!!!).
So if I could pay for an ad-free version of Pinterest, I’d gladly do so.
neither would I..the ads are everywhere,and are getting really annoying. Especially the ones you can’t find but end up playing music in the background..
THANKYOU. I was ready to shut it DOWN! I hope the changes work!
LOL. It doesn’t
Why am I getting manscaping ads? Engagement Rings? This pin was “inspired by recent activity” is an out-and-out lie! Pinterest use to be a pleasure, like a good magazine. Now I only use it like a reference book, when I want to look up something specific. Instead of enjoying Pinterest, it’s become irritating with all the ads. 🙁
pmfao..good luck y’all..I turned off “auto play ads” and “suggested pons” but music from a hidden ad still plays. This idea is stupid,hardly new, and has been tried over and over again by users.
I still TRY! to use Pinterest but I HATE! it now! … I get SOOO! FRUSTRATED! with ALL the ADS! … I end up just GIVING UP! The ADS! are RIDICULOUS! I CANNOT EVEN SEE! READ! PIN! anything because of the AD OVERLOAD !!! 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬 …
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