[DrSiemer]

Imagine the following scenario: you need an image for an internal presentation, so you don't care about copyright. You find an image in the Google search results that looks promising. You open it, but end up on the dreaded Pinterest site.

You'll know for sure that there is no chance on above average quality or size. Hovering over the image will overlay a "join us" message. If you click to image you get a "join us" modal. When you right click, you get a custom menu, that does have a "Save image" option. But clicking that will just get you the same "join us" again. You'll need to inspector hack the image out, which can quickly become annoying if you need more than one.

Beneath it will be a whole bunch of also promising looking images, but scrolling down a bit will quickly get you, you guessed it, a "join us" modal. Clicking on any image there will get you to another page just like it, but this one often opening with the "join us" modal already open.

If you use Ctrl-click, to save your position in the overview that you inspector hacked the scroll block modal out of, tough luck: that behavior is modified as well. It will just open the new page like a regular click. Go back and you're at the top again.

The site feels like a collection of dark patterns hijacking your image search results.

[jb1991]

The irony is that the Pinterest users who are putting this nonsense on their profiles are usually uploading copyrighted images to begin with.

[robbedpeter]

Exactly this! If pinterest had a moral leg to stand on I might have some sympathy, but they have no implicit rights to the media they're spamming search results with.

Imagine if Instagram or Facebook tried the seo garbage pinterest is doing to completely take over image search results... they'd get shut down hard, and there would be screaming matches between c class movers and shakers.

I honestly think there's gotta be a kickback or individual level corruption involved, no other site would be allowed to break Google's image search functionality and reputation. It's not like they can't simply downrank and spread out the results. The pinterest situation is fishy af, and it's been years. Google image search used to be useful. Now it's annoying.

[ItsBob]

You're right, it's been a while since I went there. I forgot about all that shit.

I'm sold.

Death to Pinterest