In a world of AI slop and addictive algorithms, Gen Zs feel like they’re living in an endless scroll. Shopping feels mindless, they’re increasingly skeptical, feel they’re constantly being sold to, and everyone is wearing the same thing.
When he joined Pinterest in 2022, CEO Bill Ready saw an opportunity in this algorithm fatigue. He spearheaded bold changes to move Pinterest away from the addictive AI algorithms seen on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, and enforce stricter controls for teens. In doing so, the platform has won young consumers, returned to operating profit and is in its ninth consecutive quarter of user growth. But as Ready is finding, it’s not always easy to swim against the tide.
Ready is a serial entrepreneur and seasoned tech executive. He served as CEO of mobile payments platform Braintree in 2011, before it acquired then-beta startup Venmo in 2012. Ready remained CEO of both companies once Braintree was acquired by Paypal, before holding several roles at the latter, ultimately as COO from 2016 to 2019, and decamping to Google as president of commerce.
When he joined Pinterest in June 2022, it wasn’t a bright picture. Ready was tasked with turning around an ailing social media platform, with a $93 million net operating loss, a dwindling Gen X and baby boomer user base, and very little avenue for growth with younger generations. “When I arrived, Pinterest, like everybody else, was trying to clone TikTok,” he says. Pinterest had added a video feed to its platform, around the same time Instagram was investing in Reels and YouTube had just launched Shorts, as everyone rushed to capitalize on the short-form video boom.
Ready saw the futility in competing to be “the fourth or fifth TikTok”, and decided to revolt against addictive short-form video algorithms. “All these other social media spaces have what I call ‘engagement via enragement’. The AI there is maximizing your view time by showing you triggering content, like a politician who gets you fired up or a creator whose life makes you feel inadequate, to keep you looking,” he says.
So, he re-engineered the Pinterest AI-powered algorithm away from addictive content to what he calls “AI for positivity”. This means Pinterest prioritizes images and boards that users consciously opt in to see again and save, as opposed to content that’s simply raking in views. Suddenly, Ready says, inflammatory, negative content fell down the algorithmic rankings, while wellness, self-help and uplifting content became the most popular Pinterest posts.
Of course, removing yourself from the addictive algorithms that are driving astronomical user growth and ad revenues on other social platforms, does come with risk. Without this baked-in virality, Ready is grappling with driving revenue and shoppability on Pinterest. And it’s a value shift that will take time for brands to get on board with, when they’ve become used to astronomical view numbers.
Pinterest revenues grew 17% to $1.05 billion in the third quarter of fiscal 2025, but the brand missed its sales expectations, in part due to “pockets of moderation in ad spend” in the US and Canada, according to CFO Julia Brau Donnelly in Pinterest’s Q3 earnings call. (In contrast, TikTok owner Bytedance and Instagram owner Meta each reported strong advertising sales this year.)
Ready is in it for the long game. “We still have a lot more work to do. These other models still dominate, but these things can change over time,” he says. “Long ago you had most major auto manufacturers saying that seat belts were against their business models. That sounds absolutely insane today, right?”
Imposing privacy controls and winning Gen Z
In another bold move, in 2023, Pinterest turned off its social features (like public boards and sharing) for under 16s, and made privacy the default setting for those 18 and below. There’s even a message that appears on the app during school hours to remind under 16s that they should focus on their studies and browse later on.
The decision caused uproar among investors, who thought it would turn off Gen Z audiences. That year, Pinterest’s stock price plunged 26% from April 14 to May 5. But on the contrary, the tighter controls clicked with Gen Z users. Since 2023, Gen Z has been Pinterest’s fastest-growing user cohort, now representing over half of its 600 million monthly active users, up 42% from 498 million. Plus, among Gen Z, the number of boards created monthly has increased 340% from five years ago, according to the platform.
Vogue Business research shows that, increasingly, young people want private, personalized spaces where they can find inspiration and curate their own, individual taste. One 21-year-old interviewed in 2025’s Vogue Business x Archrival report said she likes Pinterest because it feels “quieter” and “slower” than other platforms, as she isn’t constantly being sold to or bombarded with other people’s tastes.
“We’ve been willing to take a different path than all the other platforms that are at scale — and it works,” says Ready. “Young people feel like they’re having to perform all the time. They’re always being evaluated, they’re always being measured. So in that world, privacy is even more of a premium.”
The move to tighten Pinterest’s privacy and age controls comes as attention on the negative impacts of social media on younger people is growing. In early December, Australia banned under 16s from having social media accounts. A week later, President Emmanuel Macron pledged to ban under 15s in France from having access to social media “in the coming months” if progress isn’t made by the EU to improve safety and reduce screen time. In response to growing concerns and demands for self-curation, Meta is rolling out a feature that lets users curate what topics they see on Instagram Reels.
Ready met with the Macron administration last summer to share Pinterest’s progress. “Part of what regulators and governments have faced is a lot of people telling them, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s just not possible to remove these features,’” Ready explains. “We said, ‘Oh really, we just did it and it didn’t wreck our business. Consumers actually liked it.’”
A shopping assistant
Our research shows that Pinterest is now a key player in Gen Z’s fashion and beauty purchase journey. When Archrival surveyed Gen Zs in 2023, only 15% said they created a Pinterest board when considering a purchase, such as for a coffee table or a new pair of shoes. Today, 85% of Gen Zs say they’re likely to use Pinterest to find or discover products, with 38% visiting Pinterest at least once a day.
Ready understands the importance — and challenge — of balancing positive AI with boosting shopping and ad revenue with the platform. Fashion and beauty has been central to Pinterest’s success, and shopping tools are a key revenue driver for the platform looking ahead, he adds. But without relying on the product and brand virality engineered by platforms like TikTok, Pinterest has to lean heavily on its curation and the relevance of products being suggested to drive sales and attract brand partners.
To attract fashion users, Pinterest launched its collage functionality in late 2023, allowing users to pull together outfits from different pins and mood boards, which was a game-changer in both grabbing Gen Z’s attention and training Pinterest’s AI using human taste and curation. It also streamlined wishlisting and mood boarding, which was already a key user behavior of Gen Z. “That doesn’t happen on any other platform in the Western world where users curate like that,” Ready says. “So it’s that human curation paired with the AI that actually works.”
Pinterest operates on what Ready calls a taste graph, meaning it doesn’t trust AI to make style recommendations, but does use the tech to pull what other Pinterest users have curated and suggest a similar outfit to others, Ready explains. “The AI on its own would say things like, ‘Oh, you picked a handbag in this pattern. So here’s a dress and a pair of shoes in the same pattern.’ But how many people dress that way?”
Gen Zs are also increasingly engaging with AI chatbots to assist them in their shopping journeys.
Three‑quarters of Gen Zs say they’ve used a generative AI tool like ChatGPT, Gemini or Midjourney, with 58% using these tools at least weekly. Gen Zs are twice as likely to research products via AI‑powered assistants or chatbots (34% of Gen Zs vs 17% of millennials), according to Archrival data.
Pinterest launched its own AI chatbot, the Pinterest Assistant, in the US in late October. Being in London, I can’t yet try, but Ready explains how it’s differentiated from other AI models. “Most chatbots, if you ask them for shopping advice, they’ll respond with a PhD thesis. We want our assistant to be more like the person you love shopping with, you know, the sister, the best friend, or the great rep at the boutique,” he says. “If you ask them, ‘Hey, I’m looking for the killer outfit for the holiday party,’ they will find something based on your taste that looks great on you.”
Ready is also keen to resist removing all the friction from the shopping experience. Two weeks ago, Shopify announced “agentic” storefronts, signaling a future where AI agents will complete the entire purchase journey for its users. “When [agentic providers] say ‘great news’, this AI agent will just go do all your shopping for you. [But] I look at that and say, you’re building shopping for people who hate shopping,” he explains. “We want to build shopping for people who love shopping, which means don’t automate it all the way. We want to give the friendly assist, but let [our users] be in the driver’s seat.”
As the market changes — and as consumer behavior evolves — Ready is ready to adapt. “We’ve hit a major scale. We have more than 600 million users,” he tells me. “We’re big enough to matter; we’re big enough that we can influence the industry, influence culture and taste and what’s appropriate in these places, but we’re small enough that the die is not yet cast, and I think that’s a really, really interesting place to be.”
