Gif animations cannot be directly uploaded to Pinterest anymore
At the moment it is not possible to directly upload animated gifs to Pinterest
In a very prompt reply to an email asking why any gifs that I uploaded no longer animate, I received this information
"Animated Gifs have been deprecated on the whole platform.
We're always trying out new things behind the scenes at Pinterest. What you're experiencing is expected behaviour. While we can't go back to the old format, we truly appreciate your feedback on this experience and will use it when making changes in the future."
I originally joined Pinterest via a prompt from a free website builder and after loading a few of my animated gifs have accumulated nearly 3000 followers without looking for them so gifs are still popular. Probably because you have websites that specialize in animations like Tenor and Giphy Pinterest did not want to challenge them. I should also imagine that very few gif artists would want to pay for advertising on their platform.
Because Pinterest uses a lot of videos it has sparked an interest in creating videos using many of the animations featured here, I have posted a couple there but also created a YouTube channel to experiment on.
Since writing this I have discovered that it is possible to post animated gifs by sharing via Giphy but if you want to post your own creations you will need to open a Giphy account. You cannot add your own description either.