Pinterest has taken this action in a quiet, non-disclosing way. How long this has been going on isn’t clear, but it has been at least a month as Lindsey Mark wrote a blog post that mentioned it on January 5th. In my case, I saw a tweet from from fellow Lawrence social media user Debbi Johanning that linked to an article Why I Don’t Mind Pinterest Hijacking My Links. That blog post was based on a post by Joel Garcia on an affiliate marketing blog which pointed out the practice, but also explained that if an affiliate link was in the original pin, Pinterest wouldn’t modify it.
Pinterest is quietly generating revenue by modifying user submitted pins. | LL Social
