I ran an account on Instagram that "curated" posts from other people (basically reposted images but before the current reposting functionality).
The AI generated images are so prevalent that I resorted to reposting images only if there were from 2022 or earlier (sure, filters existed then too).
The whole experience reminds me of the story about "pre-radiation steel" [0] and how future generations won't be able to trust any image after 2024. Then again, we have large amounts of literature and stories from ancient history or medieval times that are impossible to verify as true so maybe this isn't a new problem.
That list is so hilarious and so vindicating. It feels great to know so many other people hate alternativeto.net. I wish we had a prominent place to name and shame sites like these.
The ability to (1) block all Pinterest domains in image search and (2) click an image hyperlink and get straight to the file - these two features alone are worth my annual subscription fee to Kagi.
I can’t remember if Kagi auto blocks it or if I blocked it completely on my first search, but I haven’t seen Pinterest trash in search results on literal years. <3 Kagi.
I have to be honest and say that I have no sympathy for Pinterest and other services destroying themselves in the clamour to jam AI and feed algorithms into everything.
That they ever thought anyone would enjoy the experience is beyond me, and it demonstrates their place in the grotty suburbs of the attention economy.
So true. I used Pinterest for art references and inspiration and they have 3 issues that are entirely self-owned:
1. Ads, ads and more ads. I had their app and it had to go, because every third pin was an ad.
2. Ads that seem to be pins: there are ads that are a mini collage. One image, 2-3 thumbs below. All "images" with the same rounded border like the regular pins. So you click them and because the upper image is visually detached from the rest of the ad, you don’t realize that you just clicked an ad when it is too late. A very nasty dark pattern.
3. No timestamps. It’s sometimes hard to tell if something is AI-generated. I don’t want AI-generated when it comes to art. Pinterest could choose to display pin timestamps when they were pinned for the first time, but they don’t.
So, they dug their own hole and I have zero sympathy for them, too.
They're making money hand over fist with ads, I don't think they could care any less about the product than they currently do. The product at this point is a moldy sheath around the ad delivery system, as with any for-profit "social network".
And google forum search, which is pretty great overall, is often full of facebook comments. I don't mind the reddit results, since they still usually (somehow) contain the best answers to my queries. It would be great if it could be further filtered for actual forums.
I've entirely replaced Pinterest with tumblr for that kind of stuff. It comes with the added bonus of having a community of other queer weirdos like myself
Blizzard recently set up a World of Warcraft promotion with Pinterest where you could share your housing builds from in-game. Many people were insta-banned from Pinterest for "spam" after just posting one or two pictures.
It's a shame, I used to browse Pinterest for woodworking ideas. A year ago, I noticed some of the results were AI generated. Now almost ALL results are AI generated, included the obviously scammy ads they put in everywhere. If someone knows a place where you can find fun woodworking projects, I'm all ears.
> We define an MAU as an authenticated Pinterest user who visits our website, opens our mobile application or interacts with Pinterest through one of our browser or site extensions, such as the Save button, at least once during the 30-day period ending on the date of measurement.
Wonder if we're going to get a MAHU (Monthly Active Human Users) stat in the future.
I also noticed recently they changed their design completely. Instead of browsing your board and the things you pinned in the past, what you're now shown are completely unrelated items that you might want to add to your board, and most of these are things you can buy from other shopping sites.
I always assumed it to be a honeypot for ebay purchasers due to the "copy popular ebay search results and then lure them to a link" methodology of "users".
Pretty much the same with all AI slop sites (e.g. the first 10 search results) only usually they only care about serving adds instead of serving malware or scams.
15 years back I got an affiliate marketing ebook, and it had lessons on getting hundreds of blogspot subdomains and using a desktop tool to publish the same crap about, say, tropical fish to all of them. There was/is also a captcha solving service which got a nice landing page about employing people.
I do wonder what the future of using these platforms is in the era of AI. Theoretically, I feel like asking Claude to filter the results to remove "slop" would work quite well. Maybe that could be built into some kind of extension?
The bulk of the traffic will stay quarantined on the major sites like these because most people are passive and undiscerning. The new generation of smaller, higher quality sites doesn't have to worry about the Eternal September coming over and attracting the scammers, slop merchants, etc.
Because ATProto is specifically designed to allow being NON-centralized. Unlike Pinterest. Yes, ATProto is new and most of the traffic is through a single site at the moment, but it is specifically designed to allow for that to change.
The AI generated images are so prevalent that I resorted to reposting images only if there were from 2022 or earlier (sure, filters existed then too).
The whole experience reminds me of the story about "pre-radiation steel" [0] and how future generations won't be able to trust any image after 2024. Then again, we have large amounts of literature and stories from ancient history or medieval times that are impossible to verify as true so maybe this isn't a new problem.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
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