Disagree. If you want to debate me, let’s hear your argument.
Also dismissing the nag screen as "not a problem for most people" completely omits the fact that it's still horribly annoying and continues to show constantly even when i've dismissed it a thousand times in my life. i'm not going to reward crappy behavior and clogging search results by registering for your site, and even if i did, i don't want to have to log in on a million devices and any time i use someone else's computer to avoid seeing it again
The images are scraped on behalf of user request along with relevant information from the originating webpage. The goal is that all pins on Pinterest are actionable (in nearly all cases, linking to the original webpage). The most often cause of missing links is for a website to go offline. In those cases, would you rather your Google image search return no results or for a cached image on Pinterest with a link to the original website which can be used for further digging.
> (probably violating the copyright holder’s rights in the process)
No, that’s not what is happening at all here.
Pinterest, like most sites hosting UGC is protected under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c) DMCA safe harbor laws.
The majority of pins on Pinterest are from the “pin-it button” a small snippet of JavaScript which content creators embed themselves on websites. Pinterest offers opt-out mechanisms but the majority of content creators see huge value in the additional traffic generated from Pinterest.
You're right it's only "possibly" infringement - there are cases where it wouldn't be (fair use) but the default is that generally speaking, it is, and I would be surprised if more than half the content on pinterest was there legally and with consent of the copyright owner.
You've given six years of your life laboriously manifesting something guided by robots (A/B testing, et al.) and uncompassionate bodies (lizard people, et al.)
What would you think the chances are that your actual resulting contraption is not specifically and solely an implement to ride the leverage of the monopolizing forces of the market? Or maybe an omnipresent vampire sloth, if that is more directly relatable?
Why do you think you were engaged in a net Good?
Incidentally, I ran away from high-tech in 2016, having understood what we're building (no matter the company) and who is pulling our levers (market trading robots). I did not need to hang around to see what it leads to, and couldn't bring myself to do it either. I was physically ill for years prior, and might have well medicated myself to literal termination; I got my wake-up call.
Do I need to be yours, or will you please shut yourself out for a week and reexamine your memories wrt/ conclusions and operating assumptions? You sound like a reasonable person thoroughly misled, I would not bother typing all of this out otherwise. Can you please try thinking for yourself, you can clearly do that well enough. Just shut it all out for a week and come talk to me then.
I'll listen.
This is a very easy one for me to answer: I saw the net good firsthand in our users’ faces. The most common response to telling someone where I worked was: “I love Pinterest!” and as a core user, I do too.
My favorite way to browse Pinterest is on an iPad late at night, bouncing around from idea to idea. Discovering interests I had no idea existed within me and inspiring me to be the best version of myself and try new things.
My Pinterest boards are the most honest, reflective, and personal things I’ve ever posted on the Internet. Every imperfect human part of me is on display.
https://www.pinterest.com/joshenders/
I’m really sorry to hear about your bad experience in tech. I can relate and empathize with how you’ve felt and I hope you’ve arrived at a better place.
If you do ever want to chat my email is my hn username at gmail.com.
When and if you decide to do a no-device, no-news, no-people retreat I'll love to hear what you and not your environment have to say though.
Call me up then +9 72 58 666 1024
I am real, and I will listen.
Do I have this wrong?
Pinterest is no different.
Hacker News does not try to get search engines to list Hacker News before those original sources.
- A search engine is good when it provides results that are useful and what you wanted.
- Seeing pinterest links in google search is not useful and not what people want (just read this thread)
- Therefore, by making pinterest results dominate google search, you have made google search worse.
- Google search is the main way people navigate the internet, so by making google search worse, you have made the internet worse.
Agree and I would add that the many relevant results you see today would not appear if it were not for Pinterest users adding context to images and the engineering work to surface these pages and exposing context in a way for Google to fairly rank.
> - Seeing pinterest links in google search is not useful and not what people want (just read this thread) > > Therefore, by making pinterest results dominate google search, you have made google search worse. > > Google search is the main way people navigate the internet, so by making google search worse, you have made the internet worse.
There’s a lot to unpack here so let’s just start with a simple question: I would ask, “worse” as measured by what?
Pinterest has staffed a team of dozens for almost 10 years to improve incoming traffic from search engines. Their effectiveness is measured by week over week increase in traffic and sustained use of the product from those users.
Literally 10s of millions of increased MAUs from this one channel alone. For these users, they are clearly finding value in the content that is being surfaced. Google also clearly sees value in surfacing these results over others. If you think Pinterest has somehow been pulling the sheepskin over Google’s eyes for over a decade, you’re mistaken.
I’ve worked for companies where I wasn’t the target demographic and I had to constantly remind myself that just because I wasn’t the target audience, that does not preclude a majority from realizing immense value.
I also have a Wikipedia account, a Stack Exchange account, a YouTube account, a HN account, and countless one-off forum accounts. This is just the reality of the modern web and per-user customization.
I see this kind of PR/marketing speech in all of your comments on this article. Do you do that inteantionally or have you actually gottent used to talk that way?