Is LinkedIn broken beyond repair?

Is LinkedIn broken, asks Grace Yeoh in her CNA piece, pointing to the rampant engagement boosting, AI slop, and the death of genuine interactions.

I didn't plan to write this today, but two separate friends texted me the link to Grace's story within hours this morning.

A former Top Voice writes

In case you didn't know. Grace is the only LinkedIn Top Voice I know who asked for her Blue Top Voice badge to be removed. Read about it here.

So, she's no novice.

As Grace observed, today's LinkedIn is rift with:

• Hyperbolic language and humble bragging.
• Widespread use of automated bots, AI.
• Generic or plagiarised content.

Manufactured social clout

Crucially, the rush for social clout and LinkedIn's focus on content has resulted in a surreal state of affairs as large numbers took to gaming the platform.

• AI tools to generate responses to posts*.
• 'Likes' from automated software that runs 24/7.
• Preprogrammed comments by engagement pods.

*I once observed a bot leaving AI-written comments, exactly 1 comment per minute for 15 minutes straight - I gave up monitoring after that.

And it works! I mean, just think of how the posts you saw today that made you wonder how they even accumulated more than a handful of likes.

It affects the rest of us

This gaming of the platform isn't without repercussions. As inane, low-quality posts flood LinkedIn, it submerges quality posts in an avalanche of dross.

The result: boring or head-scratching content with loads of likes show up all the time, while original and high-quality ones disappear entirely from feeds.

As Juliana Chan, PhD shared in the article, LinkedIn could:

• Reduce or stop automated bots.
• Downrank users who are guilty.

But I thought Adrian Tan gave the most pragmatic answer when he said: "If somehow doing it this way helps LinkedIn make more money, there's no reason for them to reverse."

For me, the current state of affairs made me decide to halve the amount of time I spend on each post. I'm still around but think it's better to spend more time on other initiatives such as www.clearlytech.co.

I highly encourage you to read Grace's very balanced and thorough piece on CNA here.