How to unruin Pinterest?

December 22, 2013 7:32 PM

My Pinterest feed has been ruined recently, it's mostly posts by strangers about topics I don't care about. How do I fix this?

I want it to be like it was previously, where I only saw pins that friends and family posted. I don't care what the solution is...a certain URL, a Firefox extension, greasemonkey thingy, a setting somewhere, etc. As is the site is unusable.

Thumbing down doesn't work, I just get more of the same.

posted by aerotive to Computers & Internet (21 answers total)

Are you sure you're logged in? I do not have this issue in the iPad app or in my browser.
posted by chiababe at 7:37 PM on December 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Yes I'm logged in.
posted by aerotive at 7:38 PM on December 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Are you in your home feed? In the upper left corner is a box of grey lines, next to the search box. Click it and choose Home Feed.
posted by crush-onastick at 7:41 PM on December 22, 2013

Can you unfollow the boards? On your home feed, click the name of the person who posted it, then click "unfollow board." After that, I would click on the user's name so you can see all their boards. From there you can see how many of their boards you're following and can then unfollow as many as you want.
posted by lilac girl at 7:45 PM on December 22, 2013

Are you sure your family and friends aren't just pinning and liking stuff you're not interested in? I have that problem from time to time. Instead of following people universally, try following only the boards on their profile that interest you. When you follow people universally, everytime they make a new, possibly uninteresting board, you follow it automatically. But if you just follow select boards that won't happen.
posted by katyggls at 7:48 PM on December 22, 2013

Under your settings (pinterest.com/settings) , there's "Personalization" for showing related pins based on your recent site activity. You can turn it to "Your activity on Pinterest" instead of "Your activity on Pinterest AND other sites you've visited recently".

Right now there's no in-Pinterest way to turn them off, but searching for "related pins" will probably help.
posted by littlemisslaika at 7:50 PM on December 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Yes in my home feed.

I don't follow any of the unknown people or boards that show up...it's all "related pins". This stuff now makes up 90%+ of my Pinterest homepage. The "related pins" are what I want to disable/want gone.

I'll try the personalization setting.
posted by aerotive at 7:52 PM on December 22, 2013

I have no answer, but I'm having the same problem. I think they must have changed something in the past couple of days.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:53 PM on December 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

Two possibilities:
1. Hijacked accounts. A few of my friends have had their accounts hijacked by spammers. Mostly before/after weight loss nonsense.
2. Pinterest pushing stuff to you. A while ago (weeks? a couple of months?) Pinterest started placing lots of pins in my feed related to topics that I might be interested in, far outpacing the rate of pinning from my contacts. There was an option on each pin, if you hovered in the corner, something like "not interested." I did that for nearly a hundred of them, and nearly gave up on Pinterest because it ruined the experience, then it stopped altogether. Yesterday it had a couple of suggested pins. Perhaps they are futzing with their algorithms to find the sweet spot.
posted by stowaway at 7:53 PM on December 22, 2013

I noticed this today as well. Pinterest has added something called a 'related pin' and they are pretty much garbage.
posted by srboisvert at 7:53 PM on December 22, 2013

If you click the little information icon next to the related pin at the bottom of each intrusion you will see text explaining it like "This Pin is from a board that has some of the same Pins as your DIY Projects board. "
posted by srboisvert at 7:55 PM on December 22, 2013

I've been hating Pinterest for a solid month because of this and am pretty sure there is no way to change it, but I'm looking at my feed on the mobile site right now and it looks like it's back to normal. So maybe try logging in on a phone?
posted by clavicle at 8:04 PM on December 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I've been getting this for awhile. It comes and goes, and it is absolutely the worst. I haven't figured out how to turn it off.
posted by mollymayhem at 8:21 PM on December 22, 2013

The related pins are awful. It's not a perfect solution, but if you use chrome, you can install Blinds and use "related pin" (and "promoted pin") in your blacklist to at least fade out the pinterest suggestions.
posted by specialagentwebb at 8:48 PM on December 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Ugh. I am really aggravated with the recent changes Pinterest has made. I used to use the Everything board all the time because I liked the total randomness of it, but it's gone now and I feel kind of lost. I'm not always looking for a particular "category" of thing when I sit down to pin.

That said, if you click in the little box next to the search box to see the categories, you'll see one called Following. That one will have just the pins of people you follow.

The Home feed has all those pins plus recommended pins as well. I don't mind the recommended pins, but I wish they would put them on a separate page like they did for awhile.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 9:20 PM on December 22, 2013 [3 favorites]

Here's the official blog post from Pinterest. "Freshing up your feed...".

Here's an "article" about related pins that parrots the blog post. Reads like a marketing puff piece plant but the comments are worth a read.

You're definitely not alone in disliking the new world order here.
posted by moxiequz at 12:17 AM on December 23, 2013

here's a user script that supposedly removes related pins. I have no personal experience with this script and so far there's only one 4 star review but maybe it'll work for you?
posted by moxiequz at 12:35 AM on December 23, 2013 [1 favorite]

I am late to the game for pretty much everything and I had just begun to enjoy using Pinterest when I decided I couldn't stand this function anymore and quit. If it ever ends I would love to go back. About a third of my 'Pinterest friends' have quit over it.
posted by InkaLomax at 3:55 AM on December 23, 2013

This happens to me and I sent a complaint to Pinterest and it actually stopped it. Mind you, I hardly go back anymore.
posted by synecdoche at 4:57 AM on December 23, 2013 [1 favorite]

I had the same experience as synecdoche: I complained to Pinterest via their feedback tool and the related pins disappeared after that (dunno why, but am NOT going to question). What a terrible "feature", Pinterest.
posted by urbanlenny at 5:49 AM on December 23, 2013

Response by poster: primalux: "Weird. I still have the "Everything" board, and I do not have a separate "Following" category. Sounds like they are really rolling out all sorts of shit to a bunch of different people at time."

I don't have a link either, so I typed in pinterest.com/following, and that _does_ work. Only stuff from people I follow.
posted by aerotive at 6:33 AM on December 23, 2013 [8 favorites]