[rnts08]

We absolutely need a better platform for professional networking. A platform that's not filled with people who dislocate their shoulders trying to pat themselves on the back for some "inspirational" social media babble about the last time they managed to send an email.

[lvncelot]

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.

[xnorswap]

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.

[crtasm]

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.

[bitcharmer]

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.

[rnts08]

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!

[xtracto]

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

[AmericanChopper]

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?

[attendant3446]

> 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.

[AmericanChopper]

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.

[swores]

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.

[attendant3446]

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.

[guappa]

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

[xnorswap]

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.

[giamma]

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.

[bawolff]

Using just the website works well for me.

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

[AmericanChopper]

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.

[snatchpiesinger]

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

[IshKebab]

I agree. Reading the fluff nonsense is totally optional.

[p-e-w]

> 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.

[emsixteen]

> 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.

[p-e-w]

> 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.

[mppm]

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.

[guappa]

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.

[blueflow]

> 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.

[dghughes]

>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.

[Log_out_]

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.

[bee_rider]

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.

[mandmandam]

God it really is heinous.

However, I don't think it's a consequence of the platform, but of work culture. People are like that because it works, and it works because we're deep, deep into a headlong rush toward annihilation in the name of profit.

The people profiting from destroying every public good - peace, pollution-free air and water and soil, housing, healthcare, etc etc - own basically everything. Our politicians, our media, our military. It's been this way for a long time.

Speaking up against this isn't what most people want to hear. It's uncomfortable - and a distraction from short-term survival. There are no easy answers. It's not a message you'll ever hear amplified on corporate media, and it doesn't fit well into a soundbite or tweet.

There's an ocean of subtle and not-so-subtle messaging across every type of media telling you not to look behind the curtain. There are very real consequences for doing so in a way that gets peoples attention.

LinkedIn rewards superficiality over substance because our society does, workplace culture especially so. Professional posturing is a byproduct of a system that commodifies everything: even authenticity, even revolution.

Essentially, our 'hearts and minds' have been hacked, in every possible way.

That said, if you have any good ideas on how a different platform could change that I'd love to hear them.

[mondrian]

Relatively speaking, Instagram and Twitter are far more interesting than LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a special kind of horrible.

[xeyownt]

Twitter is the most terrible platform ever. And it got only worse after Mr. X bought it.

[mandmandam]

Absolutely, which is saying a lot given Twitter's current state.

But most employers won't be looking you up on Instagram or Twitter, unless you're in the type of work where they need to make sure your socials are sufficiently 'clean'.

[konschubert]

> deep into a headlong rush toward annihilation in the name of profit.

Poverty, illness and starvation are the default state of mankind and the fact that almost nobody lives in deep poverty any more is because people get up in the morning and work hard to produce value.

[hkt]

This is simply untrue. Most of the dire circumstances of people around the world today can be traced back to European or American imperialism and increasingly financialised economies.

[konschubert]

Yea and before that, people just chilled all day and the fried chickens just flew into their mouths while the all lived to see their kids grow old.

Got it.

[goodpoint]

Human civilization existed for thousands of years before the concept of work, value and money.

[konschubert]

I guess you don’t consider hunting and gathering work?

And humans were still starving, sick and poor.

[mandmandam]

> Poverty, illness and starvation are the default state of mankind

A most wretched lie. Systems of entrenched inequality and widespread poverty mostly emerged after agriculture and centralized state systems, not during early human history.

That lie serves to shift the blame for people's struggles away from oligarchs and owners and onto their victims. Do you own a company perchance? ... What do your down-stream labourers earn per hour, compared to you?

... Do you think billionaire CEOs and trust-fund nepo babies work harder than people in sweat shops? In mines? Nurses?

Poverty, illness, and starvation are not inherent states. They are outcomes of structural and economic choices.

> the fact that almost nobody lives in deep poverty any more is because people get up in the morning and work hard to produce value.

Another lie, long debunked, labelled "The Protestant Work Ethic Myth". It can be disproved with Nobel economist research [0], World Bank reports [1], or a simple graph [2], not to mention the first few pages of 'Capital'.

Historical evidence and economic research overwhelmingly show that poverty, illness, and starvation are due to structural forces and political choices, and that poverty reduction comes from systemic changes far more than from individual work ethic.

To say otherwise is to blame the victims of terrible crimes of exploitation, while absolving the perpetrators, despite mountains of evidence.

It's fine and good to work, yes. But we have green power, machines, 120 IQ AI, instant global communication... A world where everyone works 20 hours a week with no reduction in Quality of Life for 99% of us is entirely possible, right now; but the current owners of the world would rather see us all burn than move toward it.

0 - https://www.supersummary.com/the-great-escape/summary/

1 - https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview

2 - https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/23410.jpeg

[konschubert]

Look I’m very aware that the spoils of work sometimes get distributed unfairly.

Maybe we could work less and keep the standard of living the same. Or maybe we could work the same but live in a much better standard.

[mandmandam]

> I’m very aware that the spoils of work sometimes get distributed unfairly.

Most company owners are, especially those that involve manufacturing in countries with low wages. What do they do about that though? Do they pay lip service, or do they pay better wages?

Do they go around blaming the poor for not working, or do they put their focus on the systems designed to extract the value of their work?

You've made your position clear, and it's based on some very false ideas about the 'default' state of humanity. I addressed these ideas but you ignored that.

> Maybe we could work less and keep the standard of living the same.

Yes, we could. No 'maybe' about it.

The reason we don't is the dedicated effort of people who like the status quo as it is, and the people they employ across politics, the military and media to keep the situation as inequitable, extractive, and exploitative as possible.

> maybe we could work the same but live in a much better standard.

We could. But again, we don't, and for the exact same reason as above.

[konschubert]

That ad hominem got under my skin admittedly. I’m a company owner only in the most technical sense.

I still have to earn money by going to my day job 9-5. And while some parts come from China, I still assemble my epaper displays myself, on the desk where I work from home during the day.

So I know what it means to have to go to work. And I also know that work can be positive sum and make all sides of the transaction better off.

And again, I’ve never said that the world is FAIR or that I think it should stay unfair. I’m angry every day about how unfair it is!

I’ve just said that work is still a necessary part of this world.

[BlueTemplar]

It wouldn't, it will get enshittified too (see GP's issues with GitHub too), you have to go look beyound platforms.

(Well, I guess Hacker News remains an exception for now, due to a very specific model and circumstances I guess ?)

[janalsncm]

The issue isn’t just LinkedIn, it happens on all social networks I’m aware of. Take your account down for vague “violations” and make it nearly impossible to speak with anyone with common sense. Franz Kafka would be proud.

[bigfatkitten]

I use LinkedIn as a contact list and as a way to find jobs, but I cannot stand the 'content'.

I unfollow everyone I'm connected with just so I don't have to see any of it when I have the misfortune of having to log in.

[mrweasel]

LinkedIn starts to feel a little like Facebook years back. If you don't "engage" with the platform it will start throwing random posts at you.

Personally I think the shit posting started because people where not getting any reaction of Facebook anymore, after it turned into an algorithm driven ad pumping engine from hell. People want their posts read by other humans, and LinkedIn is the last place where this is actually happening. It's just that some people, especially those in marketing, online retail, management and HR absolutely suck at communication.

LinkedIn is great as a contact list and for job hunting, if you're a technical person. The same shit posting marketing people can't even sell themselves. If you have two people posting that they are looking for a job, and one it technical and the other is marketing or HR related, you'll see a clear different. The technical person can have multiple interviews lines up in hours, the marketing person will get comments like "Repost", "Someone has to know someone" or "Hire X, their great", but no one actually have a job.

[DebtDeflation]

Same. I treat LI as a host for my CV and as a job board. Zero interest in it as a content publishing platform or social networking platform.

[ulfw]

We never 'needed' a damn feed on Linkedin in the first place

I get updates from daughters fights with cancer of people I don't know. I don't need to see this on a 'professional' network. Not sure why people post such intimate private things.

[sulandor]

some ppl distinguish between professional and personal lives, most don't

[janalsncm]

You’re being downvoted but you’re right. The feed is really just a vehicle to deliver ads. The content I see there is almost entirely garbage. I only use my profile and the ability to DM with recruiters and maybe the jobs board.

[unixhero]

LinkedIn is awful