I can't really comment on the user side of Pinterest, but on the financial side. * It's a walled garden, closed source, forced signup, the UX is bad (dominatin

I can't really comment on the user side of Pinterest, but on the financial side. * It's a walled garden, closed source, forced signup, the UX is bad (dominating Google Image Search taking you to pictures you can't click), lots of dark patterns. As a result, users can't leave. This leads to more money. * It heavily suggests signing up with Facebook or Google, who help Pinterest make a lot of money through tracking. * It has all the features for the mob-mentality, abuse and so on (Like system, sharing, popularity based rankings). This keeps users on the site, which makes Pinterest more money. Pinterest is just following common, tried and true strategies. Good for them. -- end -- It doesn't look like there is a viable way to fix this. Honestly the best solution I can think of would be to have a well-funded benevolent organization that fights for user privacy and makes products good/easy enough to be popular. Unfortunately, no such organization exists.