I was on Pinterest a little while ago, and found my feed absolutely FULL of Picked For You pins – things Pinterest’s algorithm thinks you might want to see based on things you’ve already seen, which it then presents to you as part of your feed the way your cat presents you with fresh dead things. It’s all about the love, right? Don’t answer that.

Anyway, after using my mouse like a shoe to x-swat more than a dozen of these little Pin-sects…I was annoyed. Okay, more than annoyed, because I had to spend time killing unasked-for pins instead of looking at things the people I follow had pinned, and the ‘why don’t you want to see this?’ residue they left behind did not have an option that fit. So I turned to Google to see if there was Pin-secticide available to control these pests, but all I found was more people complaining about their Pinterest feeds being infested and how no solution they’d tried had worked. And these complaints went back several years. It was very sad, and more than a little frustrating.

I think we all understand why they now have Promoted pins (paid advertisement pins) – a business has to make money somehow, I get it and that’s fine, even though a few of their current advertisers are more like spamvertisers than anything else. But the Picked For You thing is not making them money, if anything it’s alienating some of the more dedicated segments of their core audience, and I think it really does need to have an opt-out. Some people may like it, but even more people seem to hate it with the burning passion of a thousand alien suns.  And since Pinterest is about to roll out product pins you can actually buy things from…maybe it’s really not good for business to alienate potential customers by infesting their personally-curated feeds with pests they have to keep swatting.

Of course, that’s just my opinion…but I’m pretty sure I’m not wrong.

picked for you pinterest snark