Serious question, what is Pinterest actually for?
Like a virtual corkboard or whatever?
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2025
59 points (94.0% liked)
Ask Lemmy
34755 readers
1017 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
As far as I can tell it's a tool for ruining the usefulness of Google Image Search. That's all I've ever seen it used for.
This is very reductive, it's also great for finding wallpapers
I use it mainly to find inspiration for home renovations. I have big plans lol
Really you can use Pinterest to find inspiration with any project that involves some creativity.
i used it for art reference, now i just search things up, which is significantly less convenient
reason i stopped using it is because over half of the images there nowadays are AI-generated, not useful.
Personally, I use it to find recipes and keep them all in one place.
My partner uses it for art/drawing inspiration and it seems good for that
My mom uses it for finding and saving recipes.
I sometimes use it for references for RPG character ideas and medieval craft projects
i use it for more shitposting material there's a lot of funny stuff on there
I've recently installed karakeep (previously hoarder) for collecting images and idea boards. I haven't had time to play around with it so much can't say what it's like, but it came up a lot in other discussions of Pinterest alternatives. Also, you need to o selfhost, but if you want something free and not funded by ads, that's pretty much a given.
Tbh, I also don't know if it's FOSS, but it is free to use and if you self host you can control its access.
Karakeep is open source.
PikaPods is a great way to self host software like this if you don’t already have a server to run it on. https://docs.karakeep.app/installation/pikapods/
https://alternativeto.net/software/pinterest/
Use the filter to narrow it to open source software. You can also select self-hosted, Linux/Windows/MacOS, or iOS/Android.
You kinda gotta decide on one thing to focus on. No one platform can fullfill all of those unless its a fediverse platform.
Also, if its open then companies can train their AIs on it.
If the software used to host it is open source, that doesnt mean its ethical or free of ads because if its run by a corporation with financial interests then they wont care about that.
If you want a long term art platform that is free, open source, censorship resistant and non commercial, then your only real bet is something thats fediverse/decentralized and run by random users.
Otherwise its always going to be enshittified. I havent heard of any other image focused fediverse platforms apart from pixelfed and thats just not what you want i think?
I'm thinking you're already on it.
But have you checked out bluesky?