5 ms·

Speaking of walled gardens. There is probably no service in this world that I hate more, as a non-user, than Pinterest.

nolok 7y ago
Pinterest manages to do something horribly stupid and kind of abusive that I usually associates with adult sites ads: show you a preview of something that gets your interest, if you click to get access to it put you through a maze of forms and links all promising the result you asked for at the end, and then when you get to it they don't deliver and instead show other stuff you might like but really you don't because you did all that for this specific thing. I don't get it. You have it. You know the user wants it. You know the user wants it very much, enough to go through all that crap. Yet you are going out of your way to not give him access, making him so frustrated that any hope of "but he will crawl around more and do more stuff" is quickly replaced by "he closes the tab in anger at having lost 5 minutes" ... I'm sure there are metrics showing that it works, or maybe that it doesn't lose enough people to be worth changing, but it is so unnecessary.
- moccachino 7y ago
  They have actually had one positive influence on my life. After having dealt with exactly what you described a few times, I learned that I don't need anything that's on Pinterest. If a search results returns a pinterest link, I ignore it. If I can't find it anywhere except that link, it's as good as a dead link so I move on. This can be extended to much of the internet. So much peace now.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    It is one of my main uses of Pi-Hole: “never, ever let anything from that domain into my network ever again.” If I accidentally click a link, it doesn’t go anywhere. I use it for quite a few domains that show up in a lot of places, but have proven to be an annoyance. I’m believe Pinterest was one of the first to be added for that reason. The ad blocking Pi-Hole provides is a nice bonus, too.
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      It would be cool if this could be extended to automatically clearing those junk sites off Google's results, maybe by querying for a few extra pages, deleting the garbage, and then re-assembling them into fewer pages. Google spam filters would be great, I could also put in a rule to eliminate any page title that starts with a number ("Ten great ways to...").
      - lethologica 7y ago
        Google used to have a way to block sites from search results. Do they still have that option?
        blacksmith_tb 7y ago
        They did offer the Personal Blocklist extension[1] for Chrome, long ago. But it's been sunsetted, there are some alternatives. 1: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-chrome-extension-block-sites-from.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-chrome-extension...
        byuu 7y ago
        I wrote a userscript to do this if you're interested: https://code.byuu.org/google https://code.byuu.org/google It blocks search and image results by pattern, and also removes the URL tracker wrapping wherever possible.
  - yibg 7y ago
    I’m the exact same. Over time I’ve been trained to ignore every link from google search results that points to Pinterest.
    - dorgo 7y ago
      Why not use an addon? My addon removes all search results for facebook, pinterest
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    Sounds like my experience too. Any link on pinterest image, ie from google search is met with login/register form. Well pardon my english but screw that approach, pinterest doesn't exist for me.
  - droithomme 7y ago
    Same here, I have their domains blocked in my hosts so if I accidentally click I don't see anything.
  - dbatten 7y ago
    I constantly tack "-pinterest" on to the end of Google searches...
- dessant 7y ago
  I've added Pinterest to my reverse image search extension [1] to avoid having to sign up when there is no alternative source for the image. It returns Pinterest search results [2], and you can access the image directly from the image icon. I plan to release the image extraction module in a separate extension, so you can just click on the page area with the image, and it opens the image in a new tab. This way you will not need to do a reverse image search to get to the image, or manually look for it in the page source. [1] https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image [2] https://i.imgur.com/L2wv2Wk.png https://i.imgur.com/L2wv2Wk.png
  - t34543 7y ago
    Brilliant, I didn’t know extensions like this existed.
  - kennyadam 7y ago
    Thank you for creating this, it's an excellent extension!
    - dessant 7y ago
      Thanks! Make sure to explore the extension's options, it can be configured to fit most use cases.
leppr 7y ago
Don't worry it sucks as a user as well. Curiosity pushed me to use Google SSO to circumvent their crap one time, and they allowed themselves to subsequently spam my inbox with a flurry of emails. I proceeded to click the "unsubscribe" link in one of them, but to my surprise the spam kept coming. Turns out they have more than a dozen mailing settings and you have to painfully disable each one of them individually. Of course the simpler option is to mark all emails from pinterest.com as spam in the email client. Especially as a site that specializes in hosting nearly exclusively non-original content, it's so ethically wrong for them to use such tactics. Pinterest, Quora, Instagram, I never understood why people keep using these clearly unethical websites. Stop using them and other better alternatives will pop out, it's not like you depend on them like you depend on grocery shops or clothing stores. Voting with your attention is easy and cheap.
- IGotThroughIt 7y ago
  > I proceeded to click the "unsubscribe" link in one of them, but to my surprise the spam kept coming. I despise it when this happens. The only solution is to create a gmail filter to catch the entire domain and archive it or mark it as spam. It's surprising how many companies willfully ignore the unsubscribe option.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
iamthepieman 7y ago
I ignore any search result that point to Pinterest as, apparently, other commenters do. It looks like Instagram is now going to get ignored as well.
VvR-Ox 7y ago
What about Twitter? I just created an account with an email but after few minutes of clicking around it locked me out. I can only use it again if I give them my phone number, too -.- As if this wasn't enough of their invasive procedures my profile officially says "Account is blocked because of suspicious behavior". This is some advanced trickery to fool users into giving them more data than they intended to do when creating a profile and it sucks. There are more examples: Have you tried browsing Facebook or Xing as a user? It's all a really crappy experience.
- r721 7y ago
  I think Twitter does that for some email services, definitely saw that behaviour with ProtonMail and Tutanota, Gmail was safe to use then (a couple of years ago, when I wanted to create a secondary account).
  - VvR-Ox 7y ago
    Ok as my domain is newly registered that could be a valid reason probably. It's a TLD and no service like ProtonMail. Gmail would be the next party I don't want to share information with - I know those are complicated preferences from a "normal" point of view but I don't like to spread my data too much.
- ben0x539 7y ago
  fwiw, this has happened to me a few times with fresh twitter accounts. In my experience, if you care enough and have the time, you will probably be able to get support to unblock your account without handing over your phone number. I'm not saying this to defend twitter, this is definitely some aggressive, disingenuous behavior.
  - VvR-Ox 7y ago
    I just wrote a message to support and I will keep you posted about any updates. Just to be sure I also ordered a free SIM card so I have a spam phone for these kinds of services. Thank you for the advice.
eps 7y ago
LinkedIn is comparably aggravating if you aren't a club member.
pirocks 7y ago
I have a browser extension which automatically removes any results from Pinterest in searches.

Pinterest manages to do something horribly stupid and kind of abusive that I usually associates with adult sites ads: show you a preview of something that gets your interest, if you click to get access to it put you through a maze of forms and links all promising the result you asked for at the end, and then when you get to it they don't deliver and instead show other stuff you might like but really you don't because you did all that for this specific thing. I don't get it. You have it. You know the user wants it. You know the user wants it very much, enough to go through all that crap. Yet you are going out of your way to not give him access, making him so frustrated that any hope of "but he will crawl around more and do more stuff" is quickly replaced by "he closes the tab in anger at having lost 5 minutes" ... I'm sure there are metrics showing that it works, or maybe that it doesn't lose enough people to be worth changing, but it is so unnecessary.

moccachino 7y ago
They have actually had one positive influence on my life. After having dealt with exactly what you described a few times, I learned that I don't need anything that's on Pinterest. If a search results returns a pinterest link, I ignore it. If I can't find it anywhere except that link, it's as good as a dead link so I move on. This can be extended to much of the internet. So much peace now.
- mikestew 7y ago
  It is one of my main uses of Pi-Hole: “never, ever let anything from that domain into my network ever again.” If I accidentally click a link, it doesn’t go anywhere. I use it for quite a few domains that show up in a lot of places, but have proven to be an annoyance. I’m believe Pinterest was one of the first to be added for that reason. The ad blocking Pi-Hole provides is a nice bonus, too.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    It would be cool if this could be extended to automatically clearing those junk sites off Google's results, maybe by querying for a few extra pages, deleting the garbage, and then re-assembling them into fewer pages. Google spam filters would be great, I could also put in a rule to eliminate any page title that starts with a number ("Ten great ways to...").
    - lethologica 7y ago
      Google used to have a way to block sites from search results. Do they still have that option?
      - blacksmith_tb 7y ago
        They did offer the Personal Blocklist extension[1] for Chrome, long ago. But it's been sunsetted, there are some alternatives. 1: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-chrome-extension-block-sites-from.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-chrome-extension...
      - byuu 7y ago
        I wrote a userscript to do this if you're interested: https://code.byuu.org/google https://code.byuu.org/google It blocks search and image results by pattern, and also removes the URL tracker wrapping wherever possible.
- yibg 7y ago
  I’m the exact same. Over time I’ve been trained to ignore every link from google search results that points to Pinterest.
  - dorgo 7y ago
    Why not use an addon? My addon removes all search results for facebook, pinterest
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  Sounds like my experience too. Any link on pinterest image, ie from google search is met with login/register form. Well pardon my english but screw that approach, pinterest doesn't exist for me.
- droithomme 7y ago
  Same here, I have their domains blocked in my hosts so if I accidentally click I don't see anything.
- dbatten 7y ago
  I constantly tack "-pinterest" on to the end of Google searches...
dessant 7y ago
I've added Pinterest to my reverse image search extension [1] to avoid having to sign up when there is no alternative source for the image. It returns Pinterest search results [2], and you can access the image directly from the image icon. I plan to release the image extraction module in a separate extension, so you can just click on the page area with the image, and it opens the image in a new tab. This way you will not need to do a reverse image search to get to the image, or manually look for it in the page source. [1] https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image [2] https://i.imgur.com/L2wv2Wk.png https://i.imgur.com/L2wv2Wk.png
- t34543 7y ago
  Brilliant, I didn’t know extensions like this existed.
- kennyadam 7y ago
  Thank you for creating this, it's an excellent extension!
  - dessant 7y ago
    Thanks! Make sure to explore the extension's options, it can be configured to fit most use cases.

leppr 7y ago

Don't worry it sucks as a user as well. Curiosity pushed me to use Google SSO to circumvent their crap one time, and they allowed themselves to subsequently spam my inbox with a flurry of emails. I proceeded to click the "unsubscribe" link in one of them, but to my surprise the spam kept coming. Turns out they have more than a dozen mailing settings and you have to painfully disable each one of them individually. Of course the simpler option is to mark all emails from pinterest.com as spam in the email client. Especially as a site that specializes in hosting nearly exclusively non-original content, it's so ethically wrong for them to use such tactics. Pinterest, Quora, Instagram, I never understood why people keep using these clearly unethical websites. Stop using them and other better alternatives will pop out, it's not like you depend on them like you depend on grocery shops or clothing stores. Voting with your attention is easy and cheap.

IGotThroughIt 7y ago
> I proceeded to click the "unsubscribe" link in one of them, but to my surprise the spam kept coming. I despise it when this happens. The only solution is to create a gmail filter to catch the entire domain and archive it or mark it as spam. It's surprising how many companies willfully ignore the unsubscribe option.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

iamthepieman 7y ago

I ignore any search result that point to Pinterest as, apparently, other commenters do. It looks like Instagram is now going to get ignored as well.

VvR-Ox 7y ago

What about Twitter? I just created an account with an email but after few minutes of clicking around it locked me out. I can only use it again if I give them my phone number, too -.- As if this wasn't enough of their invasive procedures my profile officially says "Account is blocked because of suspicious behavior". This is some advanced trickery to fool users into giving them more data than they intended to do when creating a profile and it sucks. There are more examples: Have you tried browsing Facebook or Xing as a user? It's all a really crappy experience.

r721 7y ago
I think Twitter does that for some email services, definitely saw that behaviour with ProtonMail and Tutanota, Gmail was safe to use then (a couple of years ago, when I wanted to create a secondary account).
- VvR-Ox 7y ago
  Ok as my domain is newly registered that could be a valid reason probably. It's a TLD and no service like ProtonMail. Gmail would be the next party I don't want to share information with - I know those are complicated preferences from a "normal" point of view but I don't like to spread my data too much.
ben0x539 7y ago
fwiw, this has happened to me a few times with fresh twitter accounts. In my experience, if you care enough and have the time, you will probably be able to get support to unblock your account without handing over your phone number. I'm not saying this to defend twitter, this is definitely some aggressive, disingenuous behavior.
- VvR-Ox 7y ago
  I just wrote a message to support and I will keep you posted about any updates. Just to be sure I also ordered a free SIM card so I have a spam phone for these kinds of services. Thank you for the advice.

eps 7y ago

LinkedIn is comparably aggravating if you aren't a club member.

pirocks 7y ago

I have a browser extension which automatically removes any results from Pinterest in searches.