The Shady Side of LinkedIn

Several problems have emerged on the platform

Photo by Jason Strull on Unsplash

LinkedIn has always been a bit of an odd duck. For years, it has been known as the “Facebook for the workplace” of sorts. But no one knew exactly what to do with it. Most of us still don’t. While LinkedIn is handy for being an “online resume,” other than that, it just seems like a random website without a purpose, right?

People that you don’t know connect with you, and as soon as you connect, they pitch you on something you don’t want. If you message someone, unless they are on the website all the time, you don’t hear back for months, if ever again.

A little history. LinkedIn was created in 2003, and Microsoft bought LinkedIn back in 2016 for around $26 billion. Ever since then, LinkedIn has changed its site to become more like Facebook. There is more of a focus on video and “non-professional” content and the algorithm favors this kind of content.

Here’s a quick breakdown of how LinkedIn works:

Posts are reviewed by bots: This happens immediately. The intent is to flag anything that is spam.

Next, content is scored by the algorithm: Quality is assessed based on the reactions (or lack of reactions) from the post’s first viewers. This is key. If first viewers like it and interact, then the content has a much better chance of going viral.

Posts are then reviewed by actual humans: People employed by LinkedIn hand-pick posts to distribute beyond the poster’s own network. That’s those articles you’ll often see off to the right side. Essentially, it is curated content.