>“You talk on LinkedIn the same way you talk in the office,” said Dan Roth, LinkedIn’s editor in chief. “There are certain boundaries around what is acceptable.”
That is pretty much it. As for the rest of the article it just elaborates on that and I'm not sure I understand what the article is asking.
Maybe I missed it in the article but ... why should we be talking about LinkedIn relative to the other platforms? It is just a site with very a specific use case that isn't what the other sites do.
There's also some insinuation that LinkedIn is some super corporate friendly place. Maybe it is but you know what, AS A USER (not a corporation) I also DO NOT WANT LinkedIn to be Facebook. It might seem corporate friendly, but I'm willing to bet most users want things the way they are as far as not being Facebook as well.
Side note: I really hate questions in titles like this. It's like some attention begging non specific "oh woe is me" social media post. Just tell me what exactly the topic is.
There are a few people who are extremely active on LinkedIn, as if it were Facebook.
I get their posts and articles and notes, and am in some bizarre way slightly bothered by it. Why are you cluttering my interface into what should be a well-designed, single-purpose, focused interaction and experience? This is not where I come to read about your breakfast, exercise, or even life philosophy :-/
I also do not want to be "friends with my grandma or neighbour" on LinkedIn...
Yeah there certainly are those outliers who don't quite get it yet.
One I encountered was a recruiter who I actually liked so I went out of my way to message her and say "I'm just not sure everyone seeing that message feels the same way and on LinkedIn that might not be the best thing to post as far as being a recruiter."
She was all "I'm just being patriotic."
We had a pleasant exchange after that and I don't see her post that stuff anymore.
Normally I wouldn't do that but she struck me as young, naive, not a lot of life experience.... but also genuinely interested in what other people think and I thought it was worth a shot. I was fortunate.
> Normally I wouldn't do that but she struck me as young, naive, not a lot of life experience.... but also genuinely interested in what other people think and I thought it was worth a shot. I was fortunate.
Depending on the industry, her connections, and career goals, that might be a very rational decision. If your professional network or aspirations involve national-security or Federal contracting then posting some patriotic ooh-rah posts is just her virtue signalling her allegiances to those she works with.
The area around me has loads of Federal work, and you see those types of posts all the time from folks in that industry. Similarly, I have contacts in private sector at companies that are really big into social-justice causes. Those folks will post all kinds of work-unrelated content of that variety.
It's not about can or cannot in strict sense of the word. In principle, you can do whatever you want.
But sometimes (often), people do what they want without considering or being aware of social norms or consequences.
If you're aware of social norms and consequences, make whatever decision you want as an informed, consenting adult.
If you're blissfully unaware of social norms and/or consequences, it is tricky (because of its own social norms:P), but people may try to help you be aware of them.
Personally, I would neither want to discuss politics on LinkedIn or care for others to do so. It's not what LinkedIn as a platform is for, as far as I'm concerned. I don't go to my car dealership to get a beer, I don't interrupt the CIO's presentation to discuss the soccer results, and I don't care for politics on LinkedIn - they each have their own domain. But you may do as you choose :).
At work, it's a lot more fluid - in many environments discussing politics at work is "not a good idea" - why start a heated fight with a co-worker on opposite spectrum if you otherwise respect each other and work well? Or unknowingly jeopardize your chances of promotion because your boss vehemently disagrees with your political views? Or, possibly the worst, you yourself subconsciously not promote or develop your team member because you are now biased due to their differing political views? (it's huge hubris to claim "Oh no I wouldn't be impacted like that").
Other places, small startups of like-minded people, it'll naturally be a subject of conversation.
And in between, even at large corporate settings, you may develop friendship with people who are either like-minded, or open to productive interesting discussion.
But overall message is, know your audience, know the social norms, know the consequences. And then do as you please :)
I would strongly suggest you make your own assessment as far as how well that works out as far as people wanting to hear it or not / listening / the results.
Oh, you can - you just had better make sure you have the Right Opinions before you do. If you wonder what the Right Opinions are, browse through LinkedIn and see what's getting "upvoted".
Of course you can, as long as your comfortable with those things affecting your ability to find or keep a job. Proving that you were fired because you support political ideal of your choosing and not "poor performance" is going to be very difficult if the person firing you knows what they're doing.
Otherwise, you need to use discretion, especially now that many people are nationally and globally connected. If you're the type who discusses politics loudly in front of the office, you've already reaped the rewards/punishment for doing so, and LinkedIn will magnify both.
LinkedIn is a site built to help people socially-network in a way that optimizes for career advancement. Assuming market capitalism rather than cronyism, political discourse is anathema to career advancement. So, to the degree you’re using LinkedIn for what it’s for, you shouldn’t be discussing politics there.
Likewise, to the degree that your goal at your workplace is career advancement (and again, assuming meritocratic promotion over cronyism), you shouldn’t be having political discourse there, either.
But do note that “political discourse” has a specific meaning here—something is only political discourse if there are multiple potential positions likely to crop up in any discussion amongst arbitrary people in the room. If everyone in the room agrees on all the issues to the point that they think they’re “obvious”, then no political discourse is happening even if a normally-political issue is being discussed, so there is no risk of career impact. For example, discussing attending pride rallies in the break-room of an SF-based company is entirely safe. Hanging a patriotic slogan on the wall of your cubicle in a government organization is entirely safe. Etc.
This effect never applies if you’re posting your thoughts on the public Internet, though. There’s always someone “in the room” who disagrees, when the room contains 7bn people.
You can, but there are consequences for most people.
Next time you see a comment thread on LinkedIn, look who is responding. In my experience it is overwhelmingly founders and not employees. People that work for others have their speech chilled. People that work with others get benefits from having opinions, and do not have the consequence of income disruption and industry blacklisting.
I don’t think activity is bad on LinkedIn, if it’s relevant. Some of the best articles I’ve read in 2019 haven’t been in places like Medium, Dev.to and all those other “blogs that are mostly just wordy twitter opinion posts” places. It’s been on LinkedIn. I’ve also seen some fairly interesting discussions on things like ageism in the workplace, hiring practices and some such and I’ve seen a lot of people find jobs, make sales or simply share code by reaching out. All that is great in my personal opinion.
If I see you posting one of those “a great leader...” or any meme/Facebook types post, you’re removed as a connection instantly however. Because I really don’t want my LinkedIn feed to turn into Facebook. That’s not activity though, it’s a matter of what content people share, and I value a lot of activity if it’s interesting.
Ageism in the workplace is definitely an appropriate topic on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is about work. To me, anything that is not work or business related is crossing the line.
I think these people fall into 1 of 2 groups, which explains the "why":
1. They're trying to be a "thought leader" on a particular topic (to get more/better job offers in the future).
2. To grow awareness of a brand.
In a lot of cases they're probably doing more harm than good, but in some cases it is a cheap and easy way to get a lot of attention (which is also why it bothers us, and that is how they're doing harm).
I use a lot of discretion when I post on LinkedIn, 100% on brand.
But I really do get a lot of support from having an opinion or posting a perspective on a nuanced topic.
It basically took me coming to terms with not expecting to work for anybody anymore. I am not worried about recruiters and hiring managers taking a dim view of opinions.
But other movers and shakers really do listen, its made it easier to get into rooms, get capital, get acquirers, get legal and the attention of people I want and also didn't know I wanted.
It is a positive feedback loop and I know plenty of employees with opinions are not speaking or liking publicly. Its very similar to following sexy instagram accounts but you don't like or comment anything because your significant other and their friends and potential other mates will take a dim view on what you say. An employer/employee relationship is the same way and describes LinkedIn behavior.
I agree, and I follow a few people who do it well and I get value out of following them. But, my comment about the people doing harm to themselves (or their brand) are the people who are bothersome and are posting what amounts to spam. It doesn't sound like you're in that camp.
When people I am connected to post facebook crap, like political posts, I remove them as a connection. I have no desire to facebook my linkedin. Look at the comment section of most of those posts, and people are no better on LinkedIn than they are on facebook, with very inappropriate language and behavior.
I don't understand this, since wasn't the theory that people act so horrible online partially due to anonymity? Yet some of the worst online behavior I see is on Facebook, where not only is the user's real name and picture attached to the post but family members and friends can see it.
Anonymity plays a part even if youre not anonymous on FB. A lot of (most?) people treat their online worlds as different from the "real world" for some reason, and even though they are not anonymous, they believe that what happens online cannot affect their real day to day life.
In addition, besides anonymity, people are far worse online because there is no real person they are interacting with. They are interacting with a caricature of a person they've built up in their heads based on a highly limited set of information.
Finally, you lose all sorts of body language, tone, and other cues, that prevent you from actually interacting with someone, and instead has you interacting with your vision of them, which is highly influenced by your emotional state and preconceived notion of what you think they're saying.
"They are interacting with a caricature of a person they've built up in their heads based on a highly limited set of information."
I don't think it's reasonable to put the blame on the users. Facebook in particular, creates that caricature in order to increase "engagement".
You will not see a representative sample, much less all, of your friends posts if you use it normally. If two people make one in 20 posts that are outraged, anguished, political, Facebook will probably show them only those of each other, which creates a feedback loop.
People talk about possible future "paperclip maximizer" AIs overwhelming society, but Facebook is essentially doing that right now, only it's "engagement" instead of "paperclips".
I've been quite surprised to see in the comments here how many people apparently look at the feed in LinkedIn at all. I sometimes post articles on the topic I'm researching, or company-related promotion ('hey, we were on TV' or 'we're hiring') but I've always assumed that most of my contacts who are technical avoid entering the LinkedIn ecosystem unless they are specifically job-hunting, and even then, wouldn't look at the feed section, due to the amount of dross from people trying to "boost their brand."
Groups are different- though it boggles my mind that LinkedIn missed the opportunity to beat Slack on creating useful professional communities with such a head start...
I have noticed that LinkedIn added a lot of addiction-forming "hooks" in the last year (maybe a little longer?), similar to other social networks. The most prominent among these that "liking" will repost to your connections' timeline.
I don't have a problem with this necessarily; after you have worked a while and have several hundred connections+ it is a great way to keep up with what people are doing, so long as they are posting something substantial (new job, press release, etc) and not reposts of empty quotes about innovation from Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Vishnepolsky, etc.
I usually unfollow rather than disconnect. Disconnecting means I don't want to have anything to do with this person professionally, and you never know when a connection to someone might be useful.
There does seem to be large swathes of users who are Doing LinkedIn Wrong. I constantly get invitations there from friends I already have on Facebook and Twitter, as well as IRL friends, college pals, etc. But no hard feelings—I only accept invitations from people who are in my business network or whose work relates to mine in some tangential way.
LinkedIn is supposed to be the social network for business. Despite my disappointment with them on a number of levels and my low level of usage as a result, their proposition as a company isn't hard to grasp and I don't understand why it's so difficult for others to get it.
I agree. LinkedIn is actually a good example about how stricter boundaries in one area can lead to a relaxing or loosening boundaries in another.
I've received linkedin connection requests from people I have only met for a couple hours in a meeting. I've sent a few here and there as well. These requests in a business context are standard fare, but friending someone on a social media network (like Facebook) after a brief meeting could be considered odd, and perhaps in some circumstances even inappropriate.
>“You talk on LinkedIn the same way you talk in the office,” said Dan Roth, LinkedIn’s editor in chief. “There are certain boundaries around what is acceptable.”
On that note, I've heard of creepy people treating LinkedIn like it's a dating site. So it's just like an office in the bad ways too.
How is it bad for people to find dates in the office? Plenty of people meet their significant others at work. It's a bit bizarre to treat courtship as "bad".
I think it was more along the lines of "shotgunning messages to any women in the area who will accept your connection." If you were hitting on all the women in your office I'd expect HR to want a chat.
It's not bad to find dates in the office. It's bad to message people on LinkedIn with the specific intention of meeting with them for non-professional reasons. There are other, non-professional networks for that.
> Maybe I missed it in the article but ... why should we be talking about LinkedIn relative to the other platforms?
I think the title of the article, "Why Aren't We Talking About LinkedIn?" isn't suggesting we should be talking about LinkedIn and are not, but asking us to think about what's special about LinkedIn that makes it exempt from the chatter that plagues other social media sites.
It is a bad title, and does read like clickbait. I think the author/editor is being too clever.
It does seem like a rather redundant article. I actually enjoy linkedin, although it does have some quality control issues these days, its still one of my favorite tools for having jobs presented to me, rather than searching for them myself. I think part of what makes all of this work is that linkedin monetizes user data just like the other major social media sites, but is much more in the business of selling that data directly to companies, mostly recruiting firms I imagine, rather than to advertisers who are just trying to peddle commercial goods to consumers.
If you use linkedin in a manner where your goals and linkedin's goals align, it works great. I use it to get leads on making money, and linkedin uses my desire to make money, to make their own money. Its not perfect, but its win/win for now.
A more charitable reading of the title is that it is a straightforward question that the article answers (as opposed to a hand-wringing exhortation as we naturally assume media questions to be)
> Maybe I missed it in the article but ... why should we be talking about LinkedIn relative to the other platforms? It is just a site with very a specific use case that isn't what the other sites do.
LinkedIn is interesting because it has a notion of identity and social norms based on rewards that enforce reasonable behavior. The content does not pose a threat to democracy (for example) and it's actually very helpful for professionals. I depend on it and use it every day. At least some of this is not the use case but the structure of the social interaction and how behavior is tied to real-life consequences.
It's worth looking at why LinkedIn is this way and other platforms are not.
Nope, LinkedIn is in fact the best social website you have this day. I post same content on FB, Twitter and LinkedIn all the time. To my surprise, I get most most engagement on LinkedIn! Not only that but LinkedIn engagement is typically higher value because its not some random dudes and long lost friends liking and moving on but your colleagues and collaborators who you see everyday.
In my view, Twitter as a social media is only useful to those who have won the lottery of a viral tweet and have racked up few thousands followers. Without that you might as well be talking into a empty bucket. As I often say, Twitter is best described as broadcast media for 1% while the rest 99% talks into the black hole.
Facebook is becoming less and less effective social media because it literally ignores majority of posts from friends and instead shows posts from random pages you liked or groups you became member of. On any day, you can click on your individual friends and see astonishing amount of their posts you missed while FB served you all the other clickbaity junk.
This leaves LinkedIn. You see posts from your actual connections and your connections see your posts. Engagements and impact is very real.
When you regulate one thing there a natural incentive to want to expand it and apply it to everything that looks similar, even preemptively or when the original motives for the oversight aren’t there.
The fact they mentioned the number of content editors/mods high up in the article rather than some specific privacy issues or bad incidents says everything about the why.
There’s a strong interest in how SV is self regulating speech online.
Yeah, I'm not sure what the article is getting it. It's a work-specific forum for mostly white collar workers, so there's a certain degree of self-moderation when it comes to what people post and how they present themselves.
I absolutely am on LinkedIn. My only accounts online are HN and LinkedIn. While I agree that it has excessive recruiter spam, I politely respond to every single one of them, telling them where my career is, and what I would need to move. It only takes a minute to do so, and builds a network. Admittedly, most cannot meet my needs, but I have connections to almost every company in my area, so if I ever do need to move, it is not difficult to get rolling. I have found every single job I've held since 2007 from LinkedIn (Admittedly, that is only 3.)
But I don't talk on LinkedIn. I don't 'like' anything, I don't engage with any posts. I'd wager that 90% of what I see on the feeds is just marketing blurbs from my connections' employers. It isn't meaningful to me, so I mostly ignore it.
For me, LinkedIn is a great place to hold my resume, maintain connections to recruiters and former co-workers... and that is it.
Same. I actually wrote the Ask A Manager site to see if I was being rude by just blocking people I don't know - if that had the potential to cost me down the road. Her response was that they expect that, so I feel free to use LinkedIn less as a social media site and more a living rolodex.
- I get so much connection SPAM from LinkedIn that I consider LinkedIn one of the biggest cesspools on the internet. (Mostly recruiters who I've never worked with trying to connect, but sometimes people trying to connect as a way to promote their business.)
If they (LinkedIn) better policed connection SPAM, I'd use it. Maybe I'm in the minority; but constantly getting connection requests from people who I don't know is a major turnoff to me.
That being said, IMO, the observation that LinkedIn has a good tone to its conversations makes it an attractive alternative to platforms like Facebook where the tone turns toxic.
> I get so much connection SPAM from LinkedIn that I consider LinkedIn one of the biggest cesspools on the internet. (Mostly recruiters who I've never worked with trying to connect, but sometimes people trying to connect as a way to promote their business.)
In my case it's mostly the latter that drives me nuts and happens very frequently.
LinkedIn's official Community Guidelines[1] have this to say under the section "2. Be Professional" -> "Honesty and Authenticity":
> Do not invite people you do not know to join your network
You used to be able to report people for abusing that policy by saying "I don't know this person" after you declined the invite. However, LinkedIn are phasing that functionality out[2].
If LinkedIn wasn't overflowing with incessant spam, then it could actually be a valuable service for professionals. However, it's mostly a waste of time because there's zero quality control.
> You used to be able to report people for abusing that policy by saying "I don't know this person" after you declined the invite. However, LinkedIn are phasing that functionality out
Because Microsoft realizes that the only people who actively use LinkedIn are recruiters and foreign outsourcing salespeople (posing as hot girls) trying to weasel into the networks of people they don't know. Monetizing what used to be unacceptable behavior on the network is the only way for them to make it profitable.
> - I get so much connection SPAM from LinkedIn that I consider LinkedIn one of the biggest cesspools on the internet. (Mostly recruiters who I've never worked with trying to connect, but sometimes people trying to connect as a way to promote their business.)
I deleted LinkedIn for these reasons two. I was on the platform for years and not once ever got a job out it. Why bother?
If you want my resume, I'll send it to you. If you want to see my work, go to my website.
I'm interested in opportunities... I have zero interest in most of the recruiter contacts I get that are just "spam everyone with a single keyword that matches this job / waste their time".
I love when they tell me they're impressed by my experience it tech that I've never used. I know that they just write a generic message and shotgun blast it to as many people as possible, but it's still so annoying to read.
I had a linkedin recruiter tell me about part time job positions at Target, via text message. What part of my resume says I'm looking for part time retail work and wanting it texted to me??
"I see you were a janitor for three months and you also worked part time as a hand on a construction site during high school. Well based on your experience I thought you would be a great fit for an opportunity I have right now for a contract Maintenance Professional at $NAME Regional Vocational School. If you think you like variety in the work you do, have a great work ethic, and are not afraid of a challenge please contact me at $EMAIL!"
I worked in the datacenter networking industry for 20 years and changed careers. Some of that time could be called "tech support". Then I decided I wanted to do something new so I went into web development.
So what do I get for spam?:
- Overnight desktop support roles ... some that talk about windows 98 (what the hell...).
- Tons of Java inquiries... I don't know Java but JavaScript is on my resume.
- Tons of semi related web dev roles but looking for Sr. people with 10 years experience and I've got all of 1 year experience.
All total wastes of my time. And that's near 100% of my unsolicited contacts.
I haven't worked in Java since college and my first job out of college was tech support in 2001. To this day, I still get recruiter SPAM for Java dev and L2 tech support roles. Nevermind that I've been a SQL Server Dev and DBA for the past 16 years!
Simple solve is to remove those keywords from your profile, and only keep keywords for jobs you want. Even changing Java Developer title to something generic as Software Engineer.
Many Recruiters/Sourcers spam everyone that come up in their keyword search and don't read the profile.
Yeah, I never say that I've had anything to do with SharePoint or ColdFusion online because then I either get people who want to sell me something indescribable or want me to clean up a mess that's older than some of you.
You're talking about a step waaay further along in the process. I'm not currently looking for a job, and my linkedin profile says as much. Despite this, I still get so many recruiters asking to add themselves to my network that I ended up blocking those notifications from linkedin entirely, which probably has resulted in me missing non-spam requests from people I actually would want to connect with. I'm not going to waste my time responding to spam.
Don’t they make money off of the spam? Recruiters pay for premium access and they can send you a message. Then a few days later LinkedIn will remind me AGAIN that “Sanjay from Recruiting Associates in Bangalore wants to connect, WHY HAVENT YOU MESSAGED HIM”. Then if you accept they’ll let you know about a low pay 6-month contract in a programming language you don’t know halfway across the country.
I became so annoyed with LinkedIn I added every filter I could think of to block all email that even mentions LinkedIn. I don't care if I miss opportunities. I like the freedom from distraction
.
You can configure your email preferences and you can even delete your account. Setting up filtering rules on the word "LinkedIn" in the body of any email doesn't seem like the best strategy to me.
You really can’t configure your email preferences. I have unchecked spam boxes on LinkedIn’s configuration page no fewer than 5 times in the last 5 years, but they keep inventing new categories and default-enabling them. They know exactly what they’re doing, and it isn’t nice.
You can tune your privacy settings and make it a lot more usable. Also, never ever instal the app on any of your phones.
That’s what I did and it’s working fine for me.
Also, it’s nice to have sone kind of social network without the drama of other social networks.
Last but not the least, sometimes some old ex-colleagues manage to sneak an old onside joke in a comment or in a review, and that makes me smile and brings good memories back to my mind. I sincerely appreciate this last thing as I do not have a Facebook profile.
One way to reduce connection spam is to change the primary CTA on your profile from Connect to Follow. That way it takes a few more clicks to send you a connection request.
Linkedin is a platform that seemingly no one except recruiters and "entrepreneurs" actually use as a social network. Linkedin is a great resource when used as a kind of living resume, but it falls pretty flat as a social network because it doesn't really fill any niche that other social media platforms don't.
That said, there is definitely a slimy underbelly of Linkedin that's filled with narcissists and braggadocios who spin self-aggrandizing tall tales. They're mostly harmless, but I could imagine it devolving into something more toxic if it's left unchecked, the way that many other social media platforms have.
There's a great twitter account @StateOfLinkedin that catalogs the most ridiculous of the blow-hards that's pretty entertaining
There's a lot of professional humblebragging on LinkedIn, which can have similar depression-inducing effect like FB and Instagram. I think it's much worse effect than recruiters.
I disagree. I use it as a way to stay in touch with ex-colleagues who have moved on to new organizations and I wasn't close enough to have their personal contact details but they will go for coffee with me so helpful networking.
It's useful as an auto-updating Rolodex. I know there have been a number of those over the years and LinkedIn purports to be a lot more. But I don't really use the "more" part much. I don't even have a particularly fleshed out resume on it, in part, because any opportunity I'd likely have any real interest in would come from personal contacts.
No one is talking about LinkedIn because nobody yet looked on the integration of LinkedIn with the Office suite and the privacy implications.
No one is talking about LinkedIn because it's boring. So boring that most people won't open it except when they need to. The conversations are also boring. The most banal as well as the nearly outrageous posts receive the same polite stream of likes and bland congrats comments. No one ever will say anything of merit.
No one is talking about LinkedIn because it isn't really a social network, it is mainly a tool for finding jobs/employees and for business marketing.
Over the last 10 years I've got all my jobs thanks to LinkedIn, 2 times through random recruiters, 1 time on my own by looking at jobs. I also receive a lot of appealing offers from people working directly for companies that are hiring (usually startups with 20-100 employees).
I honestly don't understand all the hate on HN. Maybe LinkedIn became useless in the Silicon Valley (I saw a girl from SF the other day on Twitter, a "tech influencer", saying Twitter was the new LinkedIn), or in the US in general (?), but it's still really useful in the rest of the world to find a new job.
I don't use it at all for reading posts and comments tho.
I remember a few years ago we used to talk a lot about LinkedIn, mostly negative things. How scummy they were, how they tried to trick you into entering your gmail password to spam your contacts. LinkedIn definitely wasn't "controversy free".
I don't know about other people, but I'm an IT professional and mostly gave up on LinkedIn. I get the occasional contact from recruiters, but I almost never actively check the website. I classify most of LinkedIn's notifications as spam/noise.
I hate linkedIn and will leave it the minute it is no longer required for my professional work. It wouldn't surprise me if others feel the same.
1. My linkedIn connections include hundreds or possibly even thousands of people I have definitely never opted in to linking with. I don't know where they came from but I remove them at a rate of at least 10 or 20 per day and never seem to run out.
2. LinkedIn suggests connections derived from underlying data that are really scary from a privacy point of view. Eg for a while it kept recommending I connect with a person who I have literally no digital connection with whatsoever, no connections in common etc and the only way they could connect us is that we used to live at the same physical address. So it knows my address history and his.
3. I wish I could just automatically unconnect with anyone who reshares motivational posts by Oleg Vishnepolsky. This guys posts drive me absolutely crazy but the trite nonsense keeps infecting my feed because someone will reshare his thoughts about what makes a good boss or whatever. Just no more Oleg Vishnepolsky.
4. I have definitely seen the fake profile catfish thing attempted on LinkedIn. Presumably other forms of scams that have infested other social media are also growing.
For 2, they've publicly posted about how they determine people you might know, it's just a triangle closing algorithm on second degree connections. It's pretty easy to find you and a co-worker with two jumps.
They also have additional data sources to add to their algorithms when people allow their contacts to be read, and you are in their contacts. Or, if people search for you, odds are they know you. Some of the connections can seem spooky, but it is all data-driven.
For #3 you can go to their profile and block them if they're really worth it. I think you only get like 100 blocks and then you just have to suffer through the motivational inspiration-porn quotes :)
IMO LinkedIn is one of the more compelling online social networks for two reasons:
1.) The platform’s incentives are well aligned with the user’s incentives. The platform makes money if recruiters can make money by offering jobs to users.
You could argue that recruiter spam is a problem but it would then be a problem for the product and the users. Facebook on the other hand has much less incentive to stop selling ads at the user’s detriment.
2.) It facilitates social interactions that are not necessarily possible IRL. You can reach out to people of interest even if you don’t know them personally. The formality means that we can start conversations with some degree of formality.
LinkedIn needs to work on pervasive phishing and identity theft. I recently found out about an account that copied my profile photo, name, and CV information and used that to connect to 500+ people at my company and elsewhere, using my reputation to pitch people on some blockchain diamond Ponzi scheme. The account has been shut down, but I have no idea if the connections have been warned that this was a fake account trying to scam them, who the account had connected to, and if anyone was victimized. Speaking with coworkers, these kinds of scams are common. It doesn't seem like there is even a basic automated check during user signup to see if the account is impersonating someone else who is already in the system.
I've long deleted my Facebook account. Tried LinkedIn recently, thinking it won't suck much time and will be a bit more privacy respecting than Facebook and the like--but boy was I wrong. I found LinkedIn more aggressively attention and details grabbing. I felt that it nags us to comment on others post and update our profiles recently. The e-mail notification frequency was so high that I thought to delete the account right away but then found out that we can turn it off selectively. I don't know the plight of Facebook now but it shows us even more reasons to glue to our profile/upgrade to the premium plan like "You've been searched X times this week". The more data and attention they get, more can they make from premium accounts. It's no better from Facebook and such from these two perspectives(attention and privacy).
I really don't want to create an account on LinkedIn, but recruiters seem to want it, and I'd like more leads to be picky about, as I wrap up my consulting business.
I tried the HN monthly jobs post... and some startup emailed me to say they'd scraped my info off HN, and created some kind of resume presence for me on their site. (Dear startup person, if I wanted to be on a creepy resume site, I'd be on the one that recruiters actually use.)
I deleted my linkedin account couple of years ago.
My main reason for that has been how it is used in doxxing people. After returning to employment after spending a decade being my own boss, I realized that if you have opinion on the internet and no matter how careful you are about expressing it, people are always going to be mad at you for it. And they will do everything in their power to make it uncomfortable for you to keep expressing your opinions. And telling your employer that you have some opinion that they dont agree with is a low hanging fruit.
Hope linkedin introduces better profile visibility controls, where my public profile has extremely or essentially no information. And visibility of private profile can be tuned to my own comfort levels.
I am a developer and I also maintain a blog. I share my new blog posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium. Based on my analytics I found love from Twitter and Facebook(shared by others) and Medium but hardly any good feedback/shares from LinkedIn. I kind of got surprised because I was thinking that there are more professionals on LinkedIn than FB or Twitter.
LinkedIn is the worst content experience of all available social networks, and that's the trade-off here. It's stricter social boundaries, but as the context has shifted to "social selling", it's more of a vapid marketeering platform than genuine thoughtful exchanges. But hey, at least it's less toxic?
Yes. I use it to research people and companies, keep in touch with former coworkers, and to have some good converstions with people, mostly in industry-specific groups.
I'm using LinkedIn to stay in touch with a few people network-wise and avoid littering them with too personal information (as on Facebook, Instagram, whatever.)
It would be pretty cool, but they do exactly the same mistake as Facebook. Their timeline does not provide useful information. If you follow a company (because /sometimes/ you want to see what's going on, their posts are as important as the ones from your network. If you see a post from one of your contacts, hit refresh and it is gone.
I recently did my first own post on LinkedIn. Despite discussion from my network, LinkedIn thought it's not important for my timeline.
This is an ad for linkedin and thus a marketing effort on behalf of microsoft. It's not meant to be a serious platform for people to use - it's meant to be a product. I've been on linkedin for a few years and it's only been a waste of time despite plenty of interactions.
It's nice it's not being used to undermine democracy. But honestly I'm surprised so few have been put off by the astoundingly aggressive dark patterns the site uses, as I was bombarded with them when going through the sign up flow years ago.
I certainly would not provide personal information to any site behaving that way let alone my professional information and contacts. Just the policy of using my name to spam advertisements to everyone in my life, including serious people, is beyond the pale. I'm surprised that alone does not put more people off.
And when these issues are brought up, the only rejoinder I have ever heard is that hidden somewhere is a link to a vast terms of service document. This of course only confirms the companies comfort with the behavior. And when posted by linkedin users, only serves to tell me the attitude of potential coworkers and employers using the site.
I am honestly astounded that it is so widely used: are there so many people that assume this level of dishonesty is innate to the work environment? Do people feel they must use it regardless in order to survive professionally? Because it's hard to imagine people join enthusiastically or what benefit could compensate for a level of behavior no one would tolerate elsewhere.
This is actually more interesting of a question than it seems on the surface. I think it's weird when people post on linkedin, and am trying to figure out why.
On most social networks, I think there's a surface reason why people are "supposed" to post that makes it not weird. I'm just chatting with friends. I'm engaging with my community. But the emotional reason people post is to influence people to think like they do ("I want people to see me as a thought leader"/"This person is wrong") or to make people see how great you are ("Look at this cute cafe I went to in Paris"). It's a hunt for validation.
On linkedin, people post for the same reasons, but it's not hidden behind a supposed surface reason. You post on linkedin to make yourself look like a better person to pay for stuff. It's like how on a resume you really ought to brag, but you shouldn't with friends.
I closed my LI account last year as I don't derive any benefit from it and was irked by the constant Social Network -like prods it gave me.
32 days later - 2 days after they say they'll permanently delete your details - I found myself having to sign up for it again as someone in Asia had decided to promote themselves as a director in my business. The only way I could get him booted off was by joining up again so I could prove who I was (no such proof required for my apparent boss..).
The odd thing was, it still had quite a lot of my details kept on file, despite having suggested they'd all be deleted.
Now I just ignore its regular emails, including the 10 desperate pleas I've had this year asking if I know someone I once interviewed with about 18 years ago and who evidently still has my email in their address book.
For someone who's terrible at remembering people, LinkedIn is a great extended addressbook for "I vaguely remember your name, have we actually met, only emailed, or did I just indirectly hear about you" ?
LinkedIn is the most utilitarian of the social networks because it’s purpose is to be so. However, LinkedIn has squandered some of its advantages if you ask me, believe it or not I find LinkedIn to be the most promotional of the social networks I frequent, and among the most curated.
It still has great value, I’ve been able to lean on my shallow LI network for job opportunities and interviews, and it’s a great research tool when scoping out new careers. But I’ll never go on LI to “waste time”, all in all, maybe that’s the best part of it.
LinkedIn is like a polite Facebook. I feel like LinkedIn is serious enough to keep bored people away. It is like comparing the bar around the corner to the corporate cafeteria.
The LinkedIn advertising product is "interesting" to me based off of my perception of LinkedIn. If the ads are displayed on LinkedIn, I feel likely that the target audiences are:
1. Recruiters
2. People looking to be recruited
3. Sales trying to find out more about a company
So, why would B2B advertising work? If there is a 4th, which is a buyer looking to buy something. But for many industries (tech in particular rarely has job description buyers) this seems to be a strange way to market.
Ok,without diving too deep into this,it seems people commenting on this much like the public at large are assuming what you "talk" on the platform or what information you provide is all or most of what they're collecting and correllating.
I disagree with that assumption, what information you provide explicitly will be used in conjuction with infromation you don't explicitly provide. This builds a somewhat precise trail of information to which you have little privy to. Not only that,people who don't use the platform are also targeted as a result of you referncing them on the platform. ML inference aside,a lot is and could be done with what fingerprinting and implicit data collection being done
I believe linkedin scores worse than even facebook for the amount of data they mine and collect. Linkedin,unlike facebook is in a position to shape and impact people's careers and livelihoods so this should not be treated as a minor problem.
This is also why downloading the data google,facebook and the like collect from you means little. I would like to see what correlations and derivations they've presumed based on that dataset!
The information that LinkedIn has about me isn't something I care to keep private, i.e. my accomplishments. I don't share any personal information on LinkedIn, and LinkedIn doesn't really ask for any, other than maybe email and phone, but they are hardly important to the overall functionality. I got my most recent job through LinkedIn.
Maybe the lesson is that social media works well when focused on particular topics?
I've just noticed when I join specific subreddits that are more oriented around a specific hobby, the conversations never get political and tend to be mostly civil. This would be things like a specific video game, woodworking, Kotlin, etc. But if I go some place more "regional" where things can get political, like a city, boom - it goes off the rails really quickly, and requires a ton of moderation.
It just seems like LinkedIn is naturally oriented to talking about specific topics that don't get political. Thus, there's probably a fraction of the potential abuse.
I'm not sure there's anything specifically about LinkedIn that's particularly great. I find it mostly trash. It's just not political trash, so isn't such an easy place to manipulate people.
I assure you that there are plenty of people posing the same click-bait, politically inflammatory comments on LinkedIn that you would expect on Facebook.
I constantly request connection with other engineers and entrepreneurs in my city who get automatically suggested to me by LinkedIn. I pick those who have at least a few years of work experience. Every now and then some posts of these new connections appear on my feed and I learn a few things what moves those people. Occasionally I even personally meet fellow engineers and founders which were kind enough to reply to me. These meetings over lunch or dinner were really inspiring and I learned a lot from them.
Controversial opinion: LinkedIn is a useful tool for networking, market research, and recruitment. If you don’t need it for those right now, I recommend maintaining it anyway and actively expanding your network. It’ll pay off down the line if/when you need to do the above.
I do not have a LinkedIn profile because I've run into issue with doxxing in the past. Limiting the availability of my personal information online has always seemed like a safer bet. However, after reading through a lot of comments, there does seem to be a good amount of support for LinkedIn.
Aside from the social spam and fake recruiter pestering, can anyone speak to the value of it? There are several comments referring to multiple jobs they've received because of it. Though I have a good job now, it seems more and more that you need an online presence to land programming jobs. I'm trying to gauge whether delving into that is worth the risk of making the information available again.
It can also pose a security risk. People are pretty quick to list the tech products they work with (including security products). It's a useful source for info gathering during a penetration test.
Not just in the security field, I've heard of multiple games leaked through LinkedIn as well, this [0] was the most recent one I can remember but isn't a unique example. There is certainly the opportunity to inadvertently leak sensitive information, and there are people who know this and watch the platform.
LinkedIn is really bad at having a decent discussion.
There is a limit to the comment length. It’s really hard to keep track of discussion.
I find my feed relevant but the mobile experience and predictability of the timeline needs some work, imo. I’d love to have some discovery options but my timeline should be predictable.
I would say that LinkedIn have had their share of controversies ranging from when they scraped their users contact lists on popular email vendors (gmail, hotmail etc), their beginnings with straight out spam marketing, the security breaches, the terrible business practices etc.
LinkedIn accounts aren't quite as disposable as other social media accounts. NextDoor is similar in that regard, and while it is definitely a bit more rowdy than LinkedIn it does seem more measured and self-controlled than Twitter/Facebook/etc.
LinkedIn is a place where I can have my professional profile. That is pretty much it for me. I have tried to engage otherwise on there but it is filled with spam, recruiters and other egocentric entrepreneurs and marketing people who are trying way too hard.
I have deleted my LinkedIn because of constant spam, pointless contact requests, fake notifications and shady activities like that. Some people have probably taken advantage of the networking there but I found it mostly annoying so I got rid of it.
I can't even talk (post) on LinkedIn using an Android phone on their website. Many of my keystrokes don't even register and they keep pushing that native app like a street corner drug dealer. This has been the case for years. It leaves me to believe the website has been purposely handicapped so that the native app becomes more attractive.
I like linkedIn tbh. It's a good way to talk to recruiters, and if you don't want to you can just ignore them. The feed is a cesspool of corporate propaganda and self aggrandizement, but so what? Just ignore it.
I guess I don't think that linkedIn is as much of a problem as other social networks because it's just not addictive in the same way as Facebook et al. is.
You can, but HN hides it (presumably to prevent abuse). Go to the individual item ID (click the time of the comment) and there's a "flag" hyperlink:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20654314
Collectively people seem have terrible memories. LinkedIn is mega creepy. It was pulling moves like asking for email passwords and then downloading entire contact lists[1] long before Facebook got in trouble for the same thing. Others here have noted LinkedIn’s UI “dark patterns” which are also some of the worst in the social space.
There was a comment or link I read on here several years ago that I think best defines LinkedIn - paraphrasing:
A trading card game played by white males where the aim is to amass as many connections as possible
Honestly, to the people I don’t know who add me with no note, or the people who add with a generic ‘I am looking to expand my professional network’, or even more generic, ‘I see we have connections in common’ - why!?
That is pretty much it. As for the rest of the article it just elaborates on that and I'm not sure I understand what the article is asking.
Maybe I missed it in the article but ... why should we be talking about LinkedIn relative to the other platforms? It is just a site with very a specific use case that isn't what the other sites do.
There's also some insinuation that LinkedIn is some super corporate friendly place. Maybe it is but you know what, AS A USER (not a corporation) I also DO NOT WANT LinkedIn to be Facebook. It might seem corporate friendly, but I'm willing to bet most users want things the way they are as far as not being Facebook as well.
Side note: I really hate questions in titles like this. It's like some attention begging non specific "oh woe is me" social media post. Just tell me what exactly the topic is.