Before doomscrolling on TikTok, there was doomscrolling on Pinterest, and there was nothing quite like it. I used to spend hours finding all kinds of things to pin to my many boards, ranging from nail inspo to memes. If I was having a bad hair day, Pinterest had my back. When I needed ideas for what to wear out to dinner, events, or vacations, I knew exactly which app to open. It genuinely felt like the perfect app, but somewhere down the line it started to go wrong.
If I had to put my finger on when Pinterest’s gradual downfall started, I’d say it was around the time generative AI was integrated into the app. According to the “AI at Pinterest” section in their help center, Pinterest claims to have always used classical AI. However, generative AI is a recent addition, which they state is used to “make ads more engaging and improve campaign performance for advertisers.” This is interesting considering I know I’m not the first to say these “engaging” ads pushed all over the app have completely ruined the experience.
Today, it is nearly impossible to scroll through Pinterest without coming across multiple ads. It is such a problem that people are making tutorials on how to remove ads from search results. One hack I’ve learned is to click the three dots below any five ads that appear and then choose the “Hide” option. After refreshing your page, the ads should be gone, but this only works for a short amount of time. One other tip I’ve seen is to add a curse word to the end of your search.
To truly put into perspective how out of hand ads are getting on Pinterest, I decided to count how many appear within the first minute of scrolling after searching. I set a timer and looked up “reading aesthetic photos” in the Pinterest app on my phone. Within one minute, 44 ads appeared among the search results. I then repeated the same process, except on my computer. This time, 21 ads appeared during that minute of scrolling.
The difference can certainly be attributed to speed, as it took less time for me to scroll on my phone. However, I noticed that no matter how much I scrolled, there were undeniably more ads on my phone than on my computer.
For every four or five Pinterest posts that fit on the screen of my iPhone 15 Pro, at least one ad was placed somewhere amongst them. If I came across multiple images with no ads around them, the ads then doubled on the next scroll while the number of images decreased. At one point, I was even shown four ads in a row while scrolling on my phone. The same cannot be said for my computer, as all of the ads were spread out across the screen.
If this wasn’t bad enough, hundreds of accounts were banned last April because of mass reports and deactivations made by Pinterest. One TikTok user by the name of @aliyahmuse expressed her frustrations and disappointment on her page after her account of several years was removed for no apparent reason. Following her account’s removal, Aliyah explained that she made an appeal, but received no follow-up from Pinterest. This is when she went to social media, which led her to find out she was not the only one dealing with this problem.
In hopes of finally finding an answer as to why Pinterest accounts were wrongfully being removed, Aliyah turned to Reddit. All she found were rumors that Pinterest’s customer support and help systems had been replaced by AI, which resulted in this mass banning. Although this has not been proven true, it does sound on brand for AI. Not to mention, Pinterest does in fact use generative AI in their support tools.
I am lucky to have not been affected by this mass banning, but every once in a while I will get an email from Pinterest alerting me of a strike on my account because some pins I saved were removed for violating their community guidelines. Yes, not even for ones I posted, but saved. And the pictures in question? Outfit inspiration that showed a little skin and book quotes that discussed mental health. I’m sure Pinterest users are feeling so much safer now that these “harmful” pins are gone; meanwhile, AI slop is allowed to thrive on the app.
Thankfully, there is a way to remove GenAI content from your home feed on Pinterest. First, you need to go to your account settings and then locate the “refine your recommendations” button. Then, turn off all the toggles under the “AI content” section. Maybe it’s just me, but I find it crazy that these options were automatically turned on for users to begin with.
But really, the most shocking part is that amidst the thousands of complaints and frustrations with Pinterest’s use of AI and force-feeding ads to users, its CEO, Bill Ready, continuously defends the app’s usage and implementation of AI. At the Pinterest Presents annual marketing summit that happened in September, Ready stated: “People are looking for technology that feels useful, personal, and human. Where the technology serves the user, not the other way around. We bet on that years ago. And people are showing us every day that they’re yearning for something different, and that we’re on the right track.”
Surely I must be using a different app than Pinterest’s CEO because there’s not a single thing about AI—and especially how it’s being used in Pinterest—that feels remotely personal or human to me. I’m sure there are many people who agree with me, but sadly, it doesn’t seem like Ready is one of them.
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if in a couple of years Pinterest is completely deleted from my phone. Right now, I’m okay with using the tips to remove ads and AI from my home feed that the internet has shared, but I am worried for the day these tricks no longer work. Once that day comes, I may have to say goodbye to all the pictures and boards I have saved over the many years of having Pinterest downloaded.
It’s just incredibly unfortunate that the reason I liked it so much in the first place—users’ creativity and uniqueness—is slowly losing its spark. But I suppose I’m lucky I at least got to experience Pinterest when it was at its peak years ago.