I mean, LinkedIn themselves were pretty shady before the Microsoft acquisition - multiple privacy violations, email spam, even had a class action lawsuit against them. Microsoft never cared.
And anyone who set up a LinkedIn account knowing all this don't care either. I look at people who're still on LinkedIn the same way as people who're still on Facebook. They don't have my sympathies.
I really wish LinkedIn would collapse and close so that something useful could take its place. At the moment I feel like it's squatting the "business networking" square on the board, but I don't know what it would take to dislodge it. I wrote a little about this on my blog about a decade ago and I don't feel we are any closer to it being dislodged.
LinkedIn is one of the most annoying sites on the internet. Every time I mistakenly click a link, it automatically grabs my Google account and creates a new account and profile for me, which I then have to go in and delete. Yes, I finally figured out which arcane preferences settings across both LinkedIn and Google I had to tweak to stop this from happening, but I think it was only after ChatGPT was around to help me wade through the mess.
I find AI has destroyed it, even the posts by people should know better post fully ai written posts (Major renewable CEOs posting AI slop is very sad).
I block the feed and just use for messages and notifications. LinkedIn is a platform that I’ve had multiple job opportunities come through, shame to see it go into slop meltdown.
LinkedIn was really good idea at the beginnings but as always what is for free you are a product.
After reading few LI posts full of “I am grateful” and “I am honored” or “Thank to my excellent team…” bla bla - you have to think that people in your circle became LI-infected as that jargon is not normal.
Nevertheless. There is an opportunity to start over with a new global professional network. LI concept still makes sense.
Scammers I can deal with - it’s the humbled and honoured actual humans that made me finally ditch LinkedIn, for…. nothing, just peace of mind and less vomiting
I have been developing a collection of rather poor AI slop describing something technical, but nothing lately has been coming up on my feed!
As an aside, something that would get posted on LinkedIn from an external source of some salespeople or something I knew or have connections with having an article written up about them changing jobs. I fear I might have mentioned once I changed a job (not with the eye-sore of the standard images they provide though), but the long stories of how people spent X years, living the best time of their life, now needs to come to an end because they want to move to the next best time of their life, is tedious. I get it, you are enriched in your worklife. Don't rub it in.
But I am staying for the AI slop. It's just a stream of jokes, if they can come up in my feed again!
At the start, LinkedIn was great and you could really connect you to a vibrant community of former colleagues and weak relationships. I actually got fruitful introductions and evn job offers from those days.
Then, they wanted to become a social network. Because, you know, advertising... It started way before Microsoft.
We started to see "LION" (LinkedIn Open Network), it became a goal for some to have as many connections as possible. So, tons of connections, but no more answers to messages. No more introductions. Useless connections. LinkedIn encouraged that by allowing connection requests without knowing the email of the person. That's when spam started.
Then, messages became mostly irrelevant, simple commercial requests of people who did not give a sh*t who you were. I personally cut off all LinkedIn notifications from that day on. I guess a lot of people never read their messages anymore either, so it became impossible to get an introduction. What's a community worth when people cannot communicate with each other?
Then came the "let's be Facebook" idiotic strategy. People would post and repost other people's content, pure fantasies with no link to reality. 25-year-olds became management or strategy gurus. No more skills, only pretention. Add AI to that and you've got the most useless feed ever.
To add insult to injury, the mobile app has got the worst UX you can find, full of counter-patterns, buggy, slow, you name it.
And yet, they manage to charge $11000/year to headhunters. Or to sales reps. Or to advertisers.
I wouldn't mind getting rid of it, but all of my jobs have come through Linkedin recruiters so far.
It's also in part because any job advert I've seen is either intimidating (long list of skills required that I don't have), or they have a salary indication that's too low for me.
There seems to be a huge dropoff in job adverts after "senior developer with >5 years of experience". I have 15, but I'm not a manager or anything. But also the number of job openings for those are very limited, and I'm of the opinion that people should grow into a role like that instead of be hired into it.
My account just was stolen. I received a couple of push notifications on my smartphone which I didn't react, and then received an email notification that a new email address was added to my account. And then I lost access to the account. What a piece of crap LinkedIn is.
I am also amused at how people are still using it in its current context. Like some of the recruiters and companies want to have access to your linkedIn. They themselves use it as it is good for their own SEO, a nice emoji on their corporate website, push employees to be on the platform.
Well I think the site also tries to do a lot to leverage on the users presence there and it is working for them. Q3 FY2026: Revenue increased 12% year-over-year (9% in constant currency).
LinkedIn has job boards, sales navigator and a bunch of things(ads, learning etc). We as users are paying them and also giving them data and they are harvesting on this data. They already have their AI to generate posts for you and all you get is infinite scroll of garbage like Tiktok or instagram. It is bound to pollute when you are doing a lot and trying to make shit load of money through it.
I think many have mentioned that the alternatives are also not addressing the right problems of LI.
But I have been observing the alternatives that have been showing up and of course it does not do justice for a professional network. Its my 2 cents and I can say this with my own conscience as I have built a couple of social networks across the last decade and have had considerable success. Maybe it is time to roll up my sleeves and take a jab at it. :).
If anyone is interested to join just DM me and if we hit it, I am willing to angel invest and start a true professional network.
My company was dealing with constant fake websites and impersonation accounts targeting our users so eventually we hired this company ChainPatrol to help us with this.
One of the most surprising finds that they reported back to us was the amount of fake accounts on LinkedIn that were impersonating our staff. And we barely thought to look at LinkedIn, but there were scammers fake recruitment posts that we were glad to be rid of.
Look them up I think they have a reporting page if you come across more of these
26 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 43.5 ms ] threadAnd anyone who set up a LinkedIn account knowing all this don't care either. I look at people who're still on LinkedIn the same way as people who're still on Facebook. They don't have my sympathies.
NO.
"New skill available: Puzzle solving"
Begging me to compete with colleagues. Oh, what they have become...
I have unsubscribed from their emails now.
I block the feed and just use for messages and notifications. LinkedIn is a platform that I’ve had multiple job opportunities come through, shame to see it go into slop meltdown.
After reading few LI posts full of “I am grateful” and “I am honored” or “Thank to my excellent team…” bla bla - you have to think that people in your circle became LI-infected as that jargon is not normal.
Nevertheless. There is an opportunity to start over with a new global professional network. LI concept still makes sense.
As an aside, something that would get posted on LinkedIn from an external source of some salespeople or something I knew or have connections with having an article written up about them changing jobs. I fear I might have mentioned once I changed a job (not with the eye-sore of the standard images they provide though), but the long stories of how people spent X years, living the best time of their life, now needs to come to an end because they want to move to the next best time of their life, is tedious. I get it, you are enriched in your worklife. Don't rub it in.
But I am staying for the AI slop. It's just a stream of jokes, if they can come up in my feed again!
At the start, LinkedIn was great and you could really connect you to a vibrant community of former colleagues and weak relationships. I actually got fruitful introductions and evn job offers from those days.
Then, they wanted to become a social network. Because, you know, advertising... It started way before Microsoft.
We started to see "LION" (LinkedIn Open Network), it became a goal for some to have as many connections as possible. So, tons of connections, but no more answers to messages. No more introductions. Useless connections. LinkedIn encouraged that by allowing connection requests without knowing the email of the person. That's when spam started.
Then, messages became mostly irrelevant, simple commercial requests of people who did not give a sh*t who you were. I personally cut off all LinkedIn notifications from that day on. I guess a lot of people never read their messages anymore either, so it became impossible to get an introduction. What's a community worth when people cannot communicate with each other?
Then came the "let's be Facebook" idiotic strategy. People would post and repost other people's content, pure fantasies with no link to reality. 25-year-olds became management or strategy gurus. No more skills, only pretention. Add AI to that and you've got the most useless feed ever.
To add insult to injury, the mobile app has got the worst UX you can find, full of counter-patterns, buggy, slow, you name it.
And yet, they manage to charge $11000/year to headhunters. Or to sales reps. Or to advertisers.
We need a LinkedIn competitor.
It's also in part because any job advert I've seen is either intimidating (long list of skills required that I don't have), or they have a salary indication that's too low for me.
There seems to be a huge dropoff in job adverts after "senior developer with >5 years of experience". I have 15, but I'm not a manager or anything. But also the number of job openings for those are very limited, and I'm of the opinion that people should grow into a role like that instead of be hired into it.
AI content is everywhere on social media, especially LinkedIn
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48847940
LinkedIn has job boards, sales navigator and a bunch of things(ads, learning etc). We as users are paying them and also giving them data and they are harvesting on this data. They already have their AI to generate posts for you and all you get is infinite scroll of garbage like Tiktok or instagram. It is bound to pollute when you are doing a lot and trying to make shit load of money through it.
I think many have mentioned that the alternatives are also not addressing the right problems of LI.
But I have been observing the alternatives that have been showing up and of course it does not do justice for a professional network. Its my 2 cents and I can say this with my own conscience as I have built a couple of social networks across the last decade and have had considerable success. Maybe it is time to roll up my sleeves and take a jab at it. :). If anyone is interested to join just DM me and if we hit it, I am willing to angel invest and start a true professional network.
Look them up I think they have a reporting page if you come across more of these