Why I Deleted my Pinterest Account

In June of last year I wrote a post saying goodbye to Bloglovin'; today, I am saying goodbye to Pinterest. There used to be a link over there to the right in my blog gadgets showing my Pinterest account and pins, and as you can see, it's now gone, as is the hover pin-it on my post photos. I've deleted all my boards and my account.

I didn't miss Bloglovin' all that much. But, I admit, I'm going to miss Pinterest, or in truth, I'll miss what Pinterest used to be. I've had that account a long, long time and it was the only 'scrolling' type social media account I had, having long ago dropped other ad heavy, time consuming apps. It's just that the last few years, I seem to have almost as many ads appearing in my home feed as actual pins (it's hard to tell the difference). Plus, I'm swamped with TikTok videos I'd just as soon not see. I've tried finetuning the feed, I've tried hiding pins that are irrelevant to me and ads I don't like. It doesn't help; the barrage continues. 

I almost pulled the plug last year. I wrote Pinterest and complained and it seemed my feed was better for a while, but it's back to non-stop ads and I'm tired of it. I guess the kicker was when they recently made me give my birthdate to be able to sign in at all. The message said they needed it to 'tailor content to our users, especially younger ones.' I'm all for protecting youngsters and understand that you have to be thirteen to use Pinterest (although we all know there's no way to verify who's telling the truth about their age), but that 'tailor content' phrase is just another way of saying 'what ads to show you'.

I always liked Pinterest because I chose the content; it was my creative inspiration place. Now, some bot some where is following me to see what ads to show me, trying to get me to buy more stuff I don't want or need. I'm done.