I honestly understand the idea but removing the entire feed might be a bit much at least for a job seeker. I've certainly found about interesting companies, fellowships, jobs, etc randomly on the feed so I wouldn't want it gone entirely. Granted any sort of "it's tailored to who you follow" is kinda BS so basically don't think too much when using linkedin might be the best way to use it
I’ll never understand why LinkedIn is making these product choices. They have a legitimate moat, I and basically every other tech worker is exclusively on LinkedIn. They devalue their product by chasing engagement in service of ads, while allowing things like juicebox to scrape and steal their most valuable asset.
This is short term, make it to next quarter thinking. You couldn’t pay me to use their AI product, they should focus on making that actually work, get the slop out of the feed, and be professional and distinct from TikTok, Facebook, instagram etc.
I used to waste lots of time scrolling LinkedIn, I don’t really know why as it was never great but sometimes you learned something interesting.
Now I find it the opposite of addictive because of how bad it is. It’s just AI slop, both the copy and the pictures, there’s virtually no hope of anything engaging. Maybe it’s just me, it feels like AI has broken their algorithm, there’s nothing at all worth showing. Even the stupid business parables are all worse because they’re just Claudeslop.
Anyway what I find most interesting is I recently signed up for twitter for work (to like some posts in a campaign). I hadn’t looked at twitter in years, but found now it’s almost exactly the same as LinkedIn (the “for you”) part, it’s just inane AI engagement farming that is so uninteresting you don’t want to scroll for more.
Anyway, that’s dead internet theory, I think they’re both done (either that or the algorithms know me really well and just recognize my unadmitted love of AI slop about tips for getting cheap airfare or something)
I've been experimenting with posting on LinkedIn and realized what the deal is. Basically it's a lot less hostile than other social media for people with no pre-existing audience: on Twitter you can post and nobody cares, in HN you can submit and nobody cares, on Substack you can write a personal blog post and google doesn't care to show it in search results, on Youtube you make a video and nobody cares, etc. (And let's set aside even more difficult stuff like making a podcast and hoping anyone cares)
Meanwhile on LinkedIn if you post your thoughts on something, share an article, or mention a project they give you a good push to at least a few dozen people and you may see a like or two from a 3rd degree contact(!) within minutes. And then they aggressively SEO the feed too so now if someone Googles your name your LinkedIn posts will show up
My feed is filled with startup/VC/recruiter people liking vibe-orientated junk economics or junk science more than AI. Would love to see a browser like Orion or UBlock Origin just build this in as a feature.
I'd love to be able to filter the feed so it only shows me actual posts by my connections. I do not care about comments my connections made on strangers' posts, and I surely do not care about posts by strangers that my connections 'liked'.
2. Unfollow every connection (N.B., this doesn't mean remove connection, just that you won't see their posts).
If you do this, it wipes your feed clean and will literally display "Something went wrong" where your feed used to be.
This has made LinkedIn truly blissful for me, but this only seems to work on the LinkedIn web app on my PC. Doesn't work on the mobile web app for some reason...
Heh, maybe if that had been thought of earlier. Meanwhile what I didwas just delete my linkedin account. Not much good could come of it anymore anyway I don't think.
I recently got what I hope to be my last job ever, and I cannot wait to banish linkedin to the netherrealm forever. It's just so creepy, I don't want people to be able to find my face, where I work every day, and whole job and education history when they google my name.
I used to maintain a project called LikeBuster back when Facebook started polluting your news feed with people's likes in. It was a lesson in how brittle DOM-based filtering was. Makes me miss times when a few well-placed CSS selectors could drastically improve your web experience.
Per Cory Doctorow, this is exactly why every website is trying to push you to their app -- so that they have legal grounds to prosecute anyone who tries to find workarounds to the constant enshittification.
Something I discovered recently: if you stop following everyone you’re connected to, Linkedin’s feed breaks so you get this by default. I can still interact with everyone normally, send messages, etc, but I do not see any Linkedin content, ads, etc. Do not miss it.
That used to be the case, and I loved the empty feed. But, i noticed that it started showing me the default feed of all the AI slop people post which linkedin thinks is relevant to my field. The current way that worked for me was to select ‘Chinese - Simplified’ as the language and since I don’t understand it, I am not remotely curious to read the cringe. I now Only see if there is any messages i receive (which aren’t translated). Basically, in and out of the website in 15 seconds if no messages/connect request! Works like a charm for now.
40 comments
[ 13.7 ms ] story [ 128 ms ] threadReminds me of DF (Distraction Free) YouTube but for LinkedIn. Tools like these make these platforms usable for me. The feeds are too addictive
This is short term, make it to next quarter thinking. You couldn’t pay me to use their AI product, they should focus on making that actually work, get the slop out of the feed, and be professional and distinct from TikTok, Facebook, instagram etc.
Now I find it the opposite of addictive because of how bad it is. It’s just AI slop, both the copy and the pictures, there’s virtually no hope of anything engaging. Maybe it’s just me, it feels like AI has broken their algorithm, there’s nothing at all worth showing. Even the stupid business parables are all worse because they’re just Claudeslop.
Anyway what I find most interesting is I recently signed up for twitter for work (to like some posts in a campaign). I hadn’t looked at twitter in years, but found now it’s almost exactly the same as LinkedIn (the “for you”) part, it’s just inane AI engagement farming that is so uninteresting you don’t want to scroll for more.
Anyway, that’s dead internet theory, I think they’re both done (either that or the algorithms know me really well and just recognize my unadmitted love of AI slop about tips for getting cheap airfare or something)
Meanwhile on LinkedIn if you post your thoughts on something, share an article, or mention a project they give you a good push to at least a few dozen people and you may see a like or two from a 3rd degree contact(!) within minutes. And then they aggressively SEO the feed too so now if someone Googles your name your LinkedIn posts will show up
www.linkedin.com##[data-lazy-mount-id]
www.linkedin.com##div[data-lazy-mount-id][data-component-type="LazyColumn"]
LinkedIn makes this hard for some reason, and keeps updating how it works. The above is functional but also breaks some stuff.
e.g. you can easily reduce the intensity of feed-based UI by removing thumbnails, grayscaling, etc.
Anyone know if such a tool exists?
1. Change your "Preferred feed view" to "Most recent posts" here: https://www.linkedin.com/mypreferences/d/settings/preferred-...
2. Unfollow every connection (N.B., this doesn't mean remove connection, just that you won't see their posts).
If you do this, it wipes your feed clean and will literally display "Something went wrong" where your feed used to be.
This has made LinkedIn truly blissful for me, but this only seems to work on the LinkedIn web app on my PC. Doesn't work on the mobile web app for some reason...
Coworkers all use it. For what I don’t know. None of them were hired from there.
``` linkedin.com##main#workspace section:has(div[componentkey*="container-update-list_mainFeed-lazy"]) ```
Per Cory Doctorow, this is exactly why every website is trying to push you to their app -- so that they have legal grounds to prosecute anyone who tries to find workarounds to the constant enshittification.