> simply doing it at scale

That's the most abusive part. As a Pinterest user I want to see what other real users are pinning. I don't want to see what 4,000 bots are pinning.

Everyone talks about authenticity in social media (that somebody wants to see "real" content from "real" people) which really makes sense because it is the most human thing. But what if the bots pass a Turing test and deliver relevant content with said links? Does it not become spam anymore? That's the weird part. All of the spam I get in my email I don't want because it is completely irrelevant. Same goes for ads on nearly every site. That's why it's spam: I don't want it, it's being forced on me, and is completely irrelevant to my productivity. But if some bot dug up something cool, isn't that just what gets defined these days as "targeted advertising"?

The utilitarian argument here invalidates this premise of the pins needing to be human, which is what is interesting. If you are getting utility out of it and you didn't know it was a bot, you are actually still better off.

The ancient email phrasing is "Spam is about consent, not content."

Having said that, you do make a very good point.

If a bot could find things I like, and put it in a sensible pinboard, then I'd probably follow it.

I don't care about Pinboard skimlinking any affiliate links, even ones I'm using. (another post in this thread explained how bots would avoid that limitation with redirects.)

I do mind, a little bit, if a bot owner is making hundreds of dollars a day by manipulating flaws in Pinterest, because arms-racing could make Pinterest much less useful.

It's not going to be cool though is it? AI is nowhere near being able to know what cool is.

A Turing test for spam?

I had a real love affair with Pinterest for one semester. Spammers or not, it is simply too crowded now. Last week, I found Piccsy. I'll be using it now in place of Pinterest until spammers arrive.

What ruined the product for you? In what way is it too crowded?

(I am not affiliated with Pinterest. Just curious from a product perspective.)

That is it. I loved it, I still like it, but with scale comes inevitable problems. Another reason is that I like something niche. At 13M users, it's mainstream and not for me.

Don't you need an invite for that?

If you have any handy, can you send one my way?

You do. I do not have an account yet, but I am already visiting the site a few times daily for refreshment. I plan on emailing info@piccsy and see if i can convince them to give me a few invites. Will def. share then.

EDIT: Email daniel at piccsy dot com. He's the founder.

Try Wookmark. I see it kind of like this: Pinterest:YouTube::Wookmark:Vimeo. It's super clean and easy to use, and it has a paid version where you can save private images and start private groups. http://www.wookmark.com/

He certainly has no qualms about calling it spam.

the obvious answer is he is obfuscating other, more valuable links that legitimate users are suggesting.

I'm a Pinterest newbie, but do you have to be the owner of a board to pin to it? At least the boards I am following now it seems I cannot pin to them.

When you create a board you can decide whether only you or you and contributers can pin stuff on that board.

The contributors have to be manually added to the board though.