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I won't disagree about the state of LinkedIn, but doesn't the content just come with the territory? In my experience, people who "network" for networking's sake the most are exactly the type of people who self-congratulate and humble brag, so you're bound to get exactly this type of content on a platform that's entirely networking-focused.


If linkedIn stuck to showing you posts from people you're connected to, it wouldn't be so bad.

But when half your feed is engagement bait or "inspirational" posts fed by algorithm under a "Suggested posts" banned, then it gets worse.


uBlock can hide content under a common heading. If this case isn't already in one of the social media annoyance lists that can be enabled in the options, you can try making a filter using has-text:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Procedural-cosmetic-f...

Doesn't need to be written by hand, right click -> 'Block element' then edit and use the preview button to test.


But LinkedIn wasn't like that 10 years ago. It was what it was meant to be. To me it feels like TikTok culture infesting all types of social media.

At this point LI is beyond saving but a serious competitor would have to be heavily moderated to stay clean which we all know won't happen.


Yes, LI 10-15 years ago was a decent site for professional networking, before it got too much like social media. Looking for work, get in touch with or keep in touch with people that you share professional interests with.

I guess it wouldn't be technically challenging to create a platform for this, the problem would be to bring the right users and as you say, moderate the content to avoid what it has become today.

Show your certificates? Amazing!

Selfie with some half-assed inspirational "leader" quote? No!


Linkedin when you actually ONLY could get introduced to a 2nd degree connection by a mutual contact introducing you both.

Before MS bought them, it was great. Now it's just a stupid Facebook clone with pathetic spam posts of people that are dying inside because they haven't found a job but oh my how much that have make them growth.

And now apparently it also has those vertical 10 second tiktoks like video "stories" or whatever they are called


I absolutely cannot understand this perspective. I open LinkedIn to add somebody to my network, contact somebody, or look for a job/hire somebody, and for those things it’s really good. I don’t make any LinkedIn content, I don’t consume any of it, I don't struggle to ignore it entirely, and I don’t miss out on anything by doing so. Where exactly does it need to improve?


> look for a job > it’s really good

It definitely is not. It probably has the most job listings for most markets, but the experience of looking for a job on LinkedIn is appalling. They recently killed the resume builder, which makes me think that job searching/hiring is a side feature of LinkedIn.


That probably says more about the market you’re in, or you as a candidate. Every time I’ve looked for a job on LinkedIn I’ve found one almost immediately, and the recruiters I know who most reliably have something for me I all met via LinkedIn.


Neither of your anecdotes is more than a single example, either one of you might be an unlucky exception or might represent 50% of users.


The only reason LinkedIn works as a job search site is because of the number of users they have. They do almost nothing to be a job search site. It's just another social network with a 'jobs' category for posts.


The number of users they have is _the_ reason they’re generally better than the competition. It’s a social networking site dedicated to finding jobs/employees for people. It has slightly better features then a lot of other job listing sites, but the main reason it’s better than the other ones (outside of certain niches), is that it has more job seekers and more job posters on it.

Other sites will typically just have less jobs posted, less users, and marginally worse features. If you can’t find a job on LinkedIn, going to a slightly worse version of the same thing probably won’t be the change you’re looking for.


By default linkedin will send you emails when "one of your contacts posted something" or "someone opened your profile"; or even "someone wrote to you, open the website so you can read what they wrote".

And basically if you don't open it for a few days it will send you some email to remind you it exists.

They decided to keep people on it a-la facebook, rather than stick to what's supposed to do


I had linkedIn email me to tell me "someone wrote to you".

I opened it up and the "Message" turned out to be an advert for linkedIn premium.


Same as you, but I cannot find a good configuration for the linkedin App to prevent it from sending me too many notifications. I get 5+ notifications per day related to "this message is trending...", "your contact posted this...", "you are invited to do that...." and buried between them, from time to time, contact invitations that are worth considering.


Using just the website works well for me.

Linkedin app is the last thing i am letting anywhere near my phone.


You can turn all that off. If managing that is too annoying, every time you get a notification you can select to turn that type of notification off.

I was also annoyed by this, but I’ve managed to get it to be pretty quite now.


I would appreciate if it didn't send notifications about me having unread notifications. And no, I can't turn this notification off separately.


I agree. Reading the fluff nonsense is totally optional.


> To me it feels like TikTok culture infesting all types of social media.

Social media is and always has been a mirror of the real world. Today's dominant real-world culture consists of virtue signaling, vague pseudo-philosophy, toxic positivity, and a hyper-focus on group identity. You can see this every time you read the news, but you can also hear it when you just talk to random people.

The trend towards that culture started a few years before social media became a thing. I can't even imagine having a conversation with a friend anymore the way I used to in the 1990s and early 2000s. Everything I see online, I recognize from real-world interactions. Those who think social media has "corrupted" society are barking up the wrong tree.


> I can't even imagine having a conversation with a friend anymore the way I used to in the 1990s and early 2000s.

I do wonder what you actually mean by this.

> Those who think social media has "corrupted" society are barking up the wrong tree.

There is clear, evidenced research around social media's negative effect on society.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00127-020-01906-9

https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/engl_176/2/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7364393/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051241269305

etc.


> I do wonder what you actually mean by this.

Spoke to an old friend on the phone recently, for the first time in 10 years or so. Within a few minutes of the conversation, he had used phrases like "As a father..." and "I cannot stand by while..."

It was as if he were speaking to an audience, rather than to me. I was glad when the call ended.


Maybe that's what the platform creators tell themselves for the sake of being able to sleep at night. From my view, social media systematically brings out bad habits that people have much less trouble suppressing in face-to-face conversation. That is true even if the platform is well-intentioned, but if it isn't and deliberately prioritizes click-bait and borderline spam content to keep the ad machine churning (i.e. every SM platform today), then the "it's just human nature" excuse becomes very very thin, IMO.


Come on.

They hide anything my actual friends do, and just show some rage inducing video for the sake of keeping me there. It doesn't happen by mistake.


> Today's dominant real-world culture consists of virtue signaling, vague pseudo-philosophy, toxic positivity, and a hyper-focus on group identity

Its some people who do this, and these people absolutely dominate the internet world, but not the real world.


>To me it feels like TikTok culture infesting all types of social media.

Yes! It's ridiculous even in real life people self-censoring words what are they expecting to happen if they say kill, suicide, penis, even apparently the word thick?

But yes TikTok-ification has crept into pretty much all social media and as I mentioned for some in real life speech.


It would need to know what you are working on and bring you into contact with people whoveork on similar things and could mentor you or add real value to your work or private project.


It is the result of most of the content on the site being posted by people who’d use LinkedIn while they weren’t, like, actively looking for a job.




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