A Canned Response to My Viral Tweet

This is a bit different from my usual blog post, insofar as I don’t have much of a point except that I’m tired of repeating myself.

The other day, I was frustrated about Pinterest clogging up the Google Image Search results and tweeted a really simple and well-known life-hack to counteract their search engine manipulation.

Unfortunately, Twitter’s UX is a dumpster fire, so a lot of people tried to share the same advice, not realizing that I was already aware of it (despite my repeat acknowledgement in replies):

I started doing this until I realized that it only kills the .com version of the site, not the .jp, or the .ca, or the .de, or the .at versions.

Pinterest is infuriating.

— Sacchi, Taoist of the Tales of loss & fire & faith (@SacchiHikaru) July 20, 2020

Unfortunately, pinterest has many localized domains, THEY will show up instead (.com.au, .de, .ch, etc, ad nauseam).

— Renato Ramonda (@renatoram) July 21, 2020

I use it for some regular searches (e.g. crafts) that only return pinterest results too. Unfortunately, once I exclude pinterest[dot]com, it gives me .co.uk, .ch, .fr etc, so it gets tedious very quickly. pinterest is a parasite.

— Ölbaum (@oscherler) July 21, 2020

-pintrest is a God send when I'm looking for references https://t.co/yaYlTWLVVI

— Brauner *Not S&P approved* Tenderbrew (@BraunerTTV) July 20, 2020

I'd recommend using (appending)

-site:pinterest[dot]*

(where [dot] is replaced with a period)

as pinterest has many other (top level) domains, not just .com, and using an asterisk (a wild card) will exclude all of them from your results.

(found your tweet via @johnreppion)

— Gabor Csigas (@gaborcsigas) July 21, 2020

Because Pinterest has many TLDs, that won't work.

You have to use -site:pinterest.*

— avamander (@Avamander) July 20, 2020

https://twitter.com/cnrm_/status/1285564594623324161

.* is better because they have different versions for each country. The other issue is that you will then just get results from the other websites that act exactly like Pinterest

— Cobalt but Blue (@CeruleanKobold) July 22, 2020

https://twitter.com/vhgalvao/status/1285884281978605568

Yikes. Twitter really needs an edit button–or, failing that, a way to “pin” a reply so everyone who sees your tweet also sees that as the guaranteed follow-up.

There was another response that repeated a lot, and that’s what I’d like to focus on more: People were requesting or recommending a browser extension to dork your searches automatically.

Alguien hace un plugin de Firefox con esto? xD https://t.co/2mjNNNDoPn

— David Meléndez (@TaiksonTexas) July 21, 2020

https://twitter.com/zymbaluk/status/1285328804487954432

https://twitter.com/shpwreckedbones/status/1285484497534881792

You can also use an extension like this https://t.co/dMg5Gu5L6y to remove the results without setting the filter yourself!

— Weilbyte (@weilbyte) July 21, 2020

Someone linked me to a browser extension called "unpinterested" that automatically appends the exclusion. Default is for image search but you can set it for all searches, and turn it off with a slider if you're actually looking for pins.

— Annalee (@LeeFlower) July 20, 2020

While I totally get the desire to use a browser extension to make Pinterest disappear from your search results once and for all, I’m very hesitant to recommend most browser extensions (exceptions: HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger, uBlock Origin), for one simple reason with historical precedent:

Extension developers tend to sell their accounts to malware authors.

I spent half my previous blog post about search engine dorking talking about how incentives shape most people’s and companies’ decisions.

Encouraging more people to install an unprofitable browser extension will only serve to amplify the blast radius if this attack vector gets repeated. Worse: Anyone who recommends the extension will also be personally responsible for the resulting malware infections. (And these days, you can expect more crypto-miners and keyloggers than adware.)

So, for everyone who keeps responding in nearly-identical ways to that tweet:

1. Yes, I’m aware of the wildcard TLD filter (appending -site:pinterest.* instead of -site:pinterest.com).
2. No, I don’t recommend Unpinterested, because I do not know and trust the author of the extension to never sell out and put you at risk.

Thank you for your time this page (hopefully) saves us both.