For all its addict-inducing behavior and unprecedented early success, Pinterest has had its problems. Between the copyright questions and disturbing thinspo community, a comparatively less serious, but more prevelent threat has emerged: spam.
Recently a Pinterest spammer named Steve revealed he is making real money off of the site – and lo and behold, he isn’t the only one.
Bots for sale!
After reading Steve’s account, I was inclined to go looking for spam on Pinterest. As it turns out, that’s incredibly difficult. If you’ve ever visited the site, you know that it’s a giant virtual bulletin board full of giant virtual pins. It’s all images, and much of the content focuses on a wide assortment of things – things you happen to be able to buy online. This makes it very difficult to spot something that was put there artificially.
So my hunt stopped there and I made my way to Google. All it took was one simple phrase – Pinterest bots for sale — to turn up exactly what I was looking for. BlackHatWorld is an SEO forum where you can discuss and offer tips and tactics for boosting your site’s traffic. You can also buy a Pinterest spam bot collection there.
A user by the handle gimme4free advertises the product, which he said he began working on early this year. “In January I thought to give them a try by making up a couple of bots,” he writes. “After the success rates that I was seeing I decided to create a whole package of bots which I have been using non-stop since the day [sic] with just a couple of account bans which were caused by excessive spamming & [sic] also they even lasted a few days before being shut down!”
“I have now decided to release this selection of bots to a low number of individuals. A lot of users of these programs could end up filtering Pinterest with too much spam or putting an early death to these bots. I want to continue profiting on Pinterest just as much as I want the buyers of these bots to profit well from them.”
The $249 package gets you:
A Pinterest Amazon Affiliate Product Submitter: Scrapes items from Amazon and re-submits them as pins to Pinterest along with your affiliate link in the description and the linked image. Automatically creates a relevant board as well.- A Pinterest Scheduler: Automatically creates unlimited scheduled pins to post to your accounts and creates your boards as well.
- A Pinterest Follower Bot: Automatically finds and follows Pinterest users by keyword.
- A Pinterest Popular Pin Re-Submitter: Finds the site’s most popular pins via keyword and resubmits them with your own links and descriptions.
- A Pinterest Invite Code Generator: Uses your account(s) to create invite codes for you to send out.
That’s only a portion of what this thing will do, but you get the idea. Basically, it allows you to create mass Pinterest accounts and start running the site ragged with products you’re pushing. Automating all this means you can keep the potential percentage cut from bought items rolling all day long. This is just one of the various Pinterest spam products on the site.
I contacted the seller under a fake name to ask some questions about buying the package. You can see the brief exchange below (click to enlarge).
While Pinterest should obviously care about this type of thing, Amazon might also want to consider taking a look at the scheme. According to Amazon’s product advertising API license agreement:
“You will not[…]compile or use Product Advertising Content for the purpose of direct marketing, spamming, unsolicited contacting of sellers or customers, or other advertising activities.”
Basically, Amazon wants to make sure that you aren’t spamming consumers with things that are listed on its site. The site probably doesn’t want to get false information about where its traffic is coming from – as “Chris” told me his software could do:
“This way you can even fake the referring URL to Amazon so Amazon think [sic] they are coming from your own site, you can send visitors to a shopping cart site or anywhere you like using extremely simple & [sic] easy to use scripts that we have created.”
WWTD (What Would Twitter Do?)
Pinterest isn’t the first to feel the wrath of spammers. Twitter in particular has a reputation for attracting the like. They are easy to spot, and their links dominate the site. A few years ago, programmer Charles Hooper decided to create a Twitter bot to promote books on Twitter. “Four months later and I had generated over $7,000 in sales for Amazon with over $400 commission for myself,” he wrote on his blog.
Twitter isn’t clean of spam accounts to say the least, but we’ve all gotten older and wiser and now there are tools at our disposal. You can use an application like TidyTweet, TwitSweeper, StopTweet, TwitCleaner, or TwitBlock to take care of this type of thing. Twitter has also made attacking spam a priority.
So what can Pinterest do about any of this? Well for starters, it’s probably going to need to crack down on spammers, and that really just means increasing its ranks and encouraging users to report this activity. It could also mean it needs to work with third party developers who can create clean-up applications for users to install.
The moral ambiguity of Pinterest
Despite the fact that this all feels very shady, you can’t get around the fact that it’s really just a gray area. The reason it was initially difficult for me to find spam on Pinterest is because Pinterest is spam – really beautifully designed, user-friendly, user-created spam. It’s just that we’ve never seen it done this way before; it takes the user experience into account and instead of shoving the stuff down your throat in a very disruptive, obvious way, it’s just laying it all out there and letting users peruse at will.
Is an artificially pinned end table any less desirable than a naturally pinned one? Check out the images below — all spam from this faux account.
It’s not as if pinning any of the above content is going to hurt anyone — but it’s a slippery slope. Right now, the spam in question blends in, but the only thing to keep spammers from flooding the site with out of place ads is heavy policing on Pinterest’s part. And the startup isn’t exactly known for its quick reaction time.
Much of Pinterest’s early success can be tied back to its focus on the user experience. It’s a very intuitive and immersive application, and that’s why people have really taken to it. But if that community and aura is threatened, Pinterest could be in trouble. If the spammers on BlackHatWorld are right, then this site is ripe for the picking. In the short term, it’s not malware that Pinterest has to worry about, but the user experience. If the site is overrun with fake accounts and fake pins, it eventually will become more noticeable and disruptive. “I had no idea that people did this,” avid user Renee Lane said when asked what she thought about spammers on the site. “I like to think there are people who don’t do bad things to ruin good things for others.”
There’s obviously the larger issue of viruses that could easily become a problem. Here’s one fake account that I ran across a potential problem with. On the BlackHatWorld forum, the user that runs the “Monica Gellar” Pinterest account says the software for sale has been an asset. When browsing the site, I clicked on an image of a dress with a bitly.com link, found it was trying to install a cookie, and got this:
Spammers are figuring out how to use Pinterest and they are doing it quickly. It’s enough to make you wary about what you click on, and that’s a big user sacrifice and a detriment to the site. It’s creating a bad image, if nothing else. Thankfully, Pinterest has responded, telling MarketingLand “As a growing service, Pinterest is not immune to challenges faced by sites across the web, including spam. However, it is a tremendous priority for us to quickly address them. Our engineers are actively working to manage issues as they arise and are revisiting the nature of public feeds on the site to make it harder for fake or harmful content to get into them.”
Pinterest got big overnight and so did its spam problem. But the site’s (and spam’s) viral nature means that fighting it could be a real challenge.
Tumblr has been having issues with this for some time, but it really hasn’t disrupted the experience or community at all. Most of the bots I’ve dealt with were the fake ones that start following me, can’t say I’ve seen anything that resembles spam posting/hearting/what have you.
Sure ads could be a problem, but then again the whole concept is one giant amalgamation of advertising provided by users.
The fact that Pinterest feels like a giant ad is one reason I haven’t gotten into it, but users might get turned off by the idea that the community isn’t as ‘real’ as they thought. There’s also the fact that it’s opening the door for people to unintentionally install malware.
Email I sent to to PINTEREST – IMPORTANT TO READ, PLEASE – THANK YOU
I love the idea which is the basis for the creation of Pinterest. Lover of the arts, history and beautiful pictures, Pinterest an opportunity, among others, to make known artists, aspects of history, creative arts, … and of course wonderful websites. I want to thank you for all that. I was also attracted to your site because of etiquette r
ules that are published and that promise of good behavior of users …
With over 25 years’ experience in the field of information management and technology, I know that the Web, offering great opportunities, also has its dark sides. But when I discovered Pinterest, I thought it was part of the beautiful side offered by the Web, I was wrong … as the Web, Pinterest also has its dark side … and I am very sad… I found much ugliness as beauty, if not more … Pornography, pedophilia, prostitution and escort agencies, violence, many accounts with no “board” but many “likes” on pornographic pins … You can even see the video of “Luka Rocco Magnotta” assassin who ate pieces of his victim and was much sought… How can you tolerate this? How do you think we can tolerate that?
How can you tolerate your good users are robbed of their email address and receive SPAM in their inbox because they innocently click on the name of the person, who appeared in your email and who followed their boards? Also, what care do you bring to users who are attacked by “fake Pinterest accounts” in their “followers” section? Many have almost 2 million followers and when you look closely, it’s SPAM! I have friends for whom you removed spams in their followers, but you have not destroyed them on Pinterest site, why? Also, do not think it that your “cookies” are protective, they are not and they can easily bypass to circumvent the limitations of comments, pinning, etc… You should see to that!
Oh, I know that by reading this you will say “we know”, but what do you do? Miss you so much respect for your good users, that you don’t want to give them the better tools to report violators to the etiquette rules that you seem to advocate? You want us to declare to you, pin by pin, the offenders images, but it is incredible what you ask, when most of these pictures are part of accounts that are fully offenders!!! You like to easily generate a lot of work! Moreover, most of the time, when the image is removed … you do not even notice that the entire contents of the account was offender! Often you only remove the offending images from search results, but they still exist on Pinterest …
What I say in this email, I checked with my ANTISPAM account (now closed), and I also found your weak action to address these problems. You treat at the piece, when it would be very easy to program massive searches according to criteria that have absolutely nothing complex … also, it suffices to study and understand the networking of fake accounts, which I understand some aspects. It is also important, primarily, to offer your users the right tools to better respond to these various and vicious attacks, to advise you and also to protect the good things they have put so many hours to collect.
Currently, you give the public appearance of “who cares” in relation to these problems, and you still find time to create small innovations (eg new categories) to soften your users that you seem think so stupid … But think again, you would be surprised to know the personalities of some of your users … Remember, these are happy clients who make your success … with everything happening in the dark side of Pinterest, the interest of your good users could just be a good flash in the pan.
Nevertheless, I wish you the best of luck in resolving these problems.
Sylvie