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Now that I think about it, most of my complaints about LinkedIn is about the "news feed". Its full of mostly useless content by wannabe thought leaders drowning

• distances 6y ago
  It's easy enough to block the feed in your browser. I've done exactly that with Facebook. I haven't deleted my FB account as I still get some random messages from old acquaintances that don't have my phone number, but I removed the feed with uBlock to make sure I'm not exposed to that.
  • cylinder 6y ago
    I did that manually on Facebook exactly four years ago. Unfollowed everyone one by one so I have no feed. Now I rarely log in to FB at all and have forgotten about so many people I had no business remembering but only did because of the Facebook news feed.
    • smt88 6y ago
      Before I deleted my profile, I fixed my feed by unfollowing all pages and all news. I unfriended people who were not true friends. My feed went back to being social rather than emotional manipulation or clickbait news. It was amazing. Eventually the site lost its value for me because 75% of my real friends deleted their profiles, so it was an awkward/depressing ghosttown. I eventually deleted mine because of ethical qualms.
    • CrazyStat 6y ago
      During the 2016 election cycle I started unfollowing everyone who posted political stuff unless it was someone I was actually close with (immediate family and a handful of close friends) or I thought their posts were actually interesting or insightful. My Facebook has been much nicer since. I still have a feed but it's people I care about and people who post actually interesting stuff.
  • smhmd 6y ago
    I did something similar lately. But it's hard to keep up with local news, now. I couldn't find a news aggregator for my country/province. Maybe, I need to build that myself.
    • eddieroger 6y ago
      I recently started reinvesting in RSS via reader that I can sync, and was pleased to remember that my local paper (a Gannett paper, which matters since they use the same engine on all their properties) supports several RSS feeds, from a site-wide news feed to counties or topics. It's been good enough for me to not push further, but I imagine my local TV news sites have similar feeds. This should scale up from county to city and state, I'd think.
    • colek42 6y ago
      I went through an "unfollowed" everyone in my feed except very close family and friends, the local farmers market, and my local newspaper. Facebook is actually useful now.
      • bonoboTP 6y ago
        Some people don't believe it when I say this, but when I unfollowed lots of people, after some time Facebook just automatically re-follows a few. It has happened multiple times. I explicitly unfollow someone, never interact with them in any way, and then they again pop up in my feed after two weeks. Somehow if you follow too few people, Facebook just picks some more people for you to follow without ever asking you or telling you.
    • downvoteme1 6y ago
      What country would that be?
  • smt88 6y ago
    FYI your Facebook profile and Messenger account seem to be decoupled now. I deleted my profile but still have a Messenger identity that people can message.
    • reportgunner 6y ago
      Are you sure you deleted it ? The behavior you are describing reminds me of the behavior that happens after deactivating your account, not deleting it. I deleted my facebook last year so maybe things have changed.
      • smt88 6y ago
        Unfortunately, I'm not sure I deleted it. You may be right. My main goal was to harm Facebook's ad business, so I still accomplished that. As far as privacy, I've mostly given up on escaping from Facebook's databases.
• artsyca 6y ago
  First thing I did was block the usual mega influencers and it got super quiet.. Not to mention any names but you know who I'm talking about.
  • felipemnoa 6y ago
    >>Not to mention any names but you know who I'm talking about. Not trolling but I'm willing to bet that the majority here in HN, including me, do not know who you are talking about.
    • Nextgrid 6y ago
      Agreed. I checked my LinkedIn newsfeed and while there's a lot of noise, I don't see any single source for it. It's actually worse, because the spam is now distributed instead of originating from a single bad actor. It seems like I would have to unfollow everyone, which is not a big deal for me (I don't look at the newsfeed to begin with) but could be problematic if you find some content useful.
    • dghughes 6y ago
      To me it seems like (in no particular order): Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Richard Branson, Guy Kawasaki.
      • Nextgrid 6y ago
        The "verified" badge on there is a good heuristic for who not to follow (if not outright block them) because those are not people anymore, but marketing/PR operations. LinkedIn desperately tries to get me to “follow” the people you mentioned which I always ignore however not following them still doesn’t isolate you from the noise. It seems like everyone on LinkedIn is trying to be an “influencer” or wannabe thought leader posting bullshit motivational content or presenting obvious facts as something groundbreaking.
      • artsyca 6y ago
        To name a few but you're missing the top dogs the ones who can't even squeeze any more connections and give advice on how to gain more connections.
• antonyh 6y ago
  Of late (this year) in my experience the job section is mostly reposts of other jobs or positions already filled or fake roles. Any post by a company with no logo is virtually guaranteed to be spam. I'm seeing them side-by-side with the real post. It's highly polluted by these bad actors.
  • Nextgrid 6y ago
    LinkedIn has their own job platform with the “Easy apply” feature, but also seems to scrape job ads from a lot of third-party sites. The scraped ones are the bad ones. Bad formatting and categorisation, not kept up to date (the job might be expired on the original site but still displayed on LinkedIn) and you have to register and apply on an external site. It’s quite ironic that LinkedIn is so against scraping despite doing it themselves.
    • falcor84 6y ago
      I'm not sure what you're seeing is scraping. There are various services where companies can upload a job posting once and it's automatically posted across multiple job platforms, with LinkedIn being one of them. Formatting often gets lost on the way.
    • C1sc0cat 6y ago
      All scraper job sites have low quality inventory eg indeed. Last time I was looking I used those sites to fil the quota for job applications per day that receiving JSA (social security) requires in the UK - whilst putting the real effort in to the 2-3 decent possibilities a week I found.
    • hirako2000 6y ago
      No company wants automation played against them, they want automation put to use by them, to benefit them. Hypocrite paradox. It wouldn't be the first one.
  • jonfw 6y ago
    My experience last year was the opposite- I used Linkedin, as well as my university board and competitors, but LinkedIn landed me 3/4 offers
• Hoasi 6y ago
  > Now that I think about it, most of my complaints about LinkedIn is about the "news feed". I am always wondering who reads that? It turns out that a lot of people do read (or at least see) the feed.
  • 42_ 6y ago
    I don't read it any more :) I used to go through the feed in search of quality content. Tried configuring it, but the signal to noise ratio is too low.
• jhallenworld 6y ago
  Some companies require engagement with social media as a requirement for advancement. So you are not wrong about the wannabe thought leaders. This is where they go. Nobody will make negative comments on these posts- it's like making a negative comment about your boss in public.
  • kyuudou 6y ago
    > ...it's like making a negative comment about your boss in public. That brings up another issue, that employment background checks are increasingly checking social media posts for "questionable" activity. It's already daunting enough to see that I can't express my true self on places like FB for various reasons but now it's a factor when I'm applying for work? I think if it was voluntary, and for like a PR position or other very public-facing, it would be different but when I found out this was going on I was relieved that I basically checked out of social media long ago voluntarily where I was already very guarded about how I expressed myself.
    • searchableguy 6y ago
      Isn't this illegal in EU? But you are right, seeing witch hunts on social media makes me think you shouldn't use them. I don't express a lot of my political opinions online anymore for this reason alone and am cutting on how much personal information I give up.
      • kyuudou 6y ago
        According to this site[1], the GDPR would likely delegitimize most of the social media checks. "The GDPR also requires that employers only view social media profiles when the information is relevant to the position being applied for. The advice also warns that, “The employer should – prior to the inspection of a social media profile – take into account whether the social media profile of the applicant is related to business or private purposes, as this can be an important indication for the legal admissibility of the data inspection.” This means that while business networking sites such as LinkedIn may be considered fair game, platforms used for more personal purposes, such as Facebook and Instagram, are possibly not relevant." I don't live in the EU, though, so I'm oblivious of the details. 1: https://checkpoint.cvcheck.com/the-gdpr-and-its-effect-on-social-media-screening/ https://checkpoint.cvcheck.com/the-gdpr-and-its-effect-on-so...
• dkersten 6y ago
  Yeah, that’s why I basically use it as an online CV host and little else. I din’t think I’ve ever read a post that was shared on linkedin, and rarely ever bothered reading any of the news/notifications/updates.
• mancerayder 6y ago
  > wannabe thought leaders A high percentage of which seem to be recruiters cutting and pasting words of wisdom, inspirational quotes that dozens of people "Like." I don't know how people can take this stuff seriously.
  • bonestamp2 6y ago
    I don't get any of these. Can you unfollow these people or are they some kind of sponsored/injected content? The only wannabe thought leaders I see are all people I actually know who are taking other people's thoughts and passing them off as their own. Thankfully, I rarely scroll the feed -- I only use linkedin to receive unsolicited messages from people who just want to be my friend so they can sell me their services. I should really delete my linkedin profile.
    • everythingswan 6y ago
      You can unfollow them if they are a connection by clicking the three dots on the top right of a post. You remain connected but you no longer see their updates in your feed.
  • ssijak 6y ago
    Or people pasting gotcha dumb math “problems” where hundreds of people reply the answer. I could never understand that.
    • vulcan01 6y ago
      People like being told that they are smart, indirectly. If someone posts a "hard" math "problem" and the viewer can solve it... that indirectly means that the viewer is smarter than the poster. Which viewers love.
    • staycoolboy 6y ago
      Did you read the comments from the guy that left facebook? It was like reading YouTube comments. People were flaming him from their professional accounts.
• allanbreyes 6y ago
  I use uBlock Origin to completely block out the news feed and messaging, and it makes my LinkedIn experience orders of magnitude better. When I visit linkedin.com, now, I'm greeted with a navigation header bar and a blank page where the news feed used to be. It's perfect. I personally found messaging to not be very useful or relevant, and I just couldn't keep up with the backlog of messages. If they really want to contact me, they can just email me. Here are the UBO rules: www.linkedin.com###voyager-feed www.linkedin.com###messaging www.linkedin.com##.msg-overlay-bubble-header www.linkedin.com##.msg-overlay-list-bubble__content--scrollable.msg-overlay-list-bubble__content www.linkedin.com###msg-overlay www.linkedin.com###messaging-nav-item
  • searchableguy 6y ago
    Reading the comments here. I find it scary that people are willing to deal with broken "tools" to such an extent and manipulate their own behavior to fit profit-seeking companies. I can see why we will be stuck with the same few social media and recruiting platforms because people are not willing to change but they are willing to put in the effort.
    • fossuser 6y ago
      All the recruiters are on LinkedIn and pretty much use it exclusively. There’s a similar network effect problem with Facebook, but it’s a lot easier to leave Facebook because you presumably can still message your real life friends in other ways. With LinkedIn you can’t leave without also seriously hurting your ability to get in touch with recruiters. That said, you basically don’t have to spend any time on it after you set it up. Maybe update once a year? So doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.
      • zenhack 6y ago
        Fwiw, I still get recruiter emails now and then years after having shut off my LinkedIn account. If they mention how they found me, it's usually through GitHub. ...not that I've ever had anything useful come from talking to a recruiter. The useful bits have always come through my existing personal network more directly, or through meatspace networking. I shut down my LinkedIn because I basically started to view recruiter emails as spam.
• asurty 6y ago
  I've been using it more to read Dalio's articles. Which makes me curious why he is using linked in and not just hire someone to set up a personal blog for him ( ? )
• FlaSheridn 6y ago
  LinkedIn has a news feed, and you actually look at it? There’s your problem. I’ve set up an OnMyCommand macro so that when I select some text and right-click, it will search for the selected name: open "https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=__OBJ_TEXT__" https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=__OBJ_... Apologies to non-Mac users. OnMyCommand is at http://www.abracode.com/free/cmworkshop/on_my_command.html http://www.abracode.com/free/cmworkshop/on_my_command.html, though for beginners I will immodestly suggest my fork of the ReadMe: https://github.com/abra-code/OMC/pull/9/files https://github.com/abra-code/OMC/pull/9/files
• apple4ever 6y ago
  The news feed, like many of them, is worthless. I rarely scroll. I'd really love to see others job updates there, or job openings. But mostly its just drivel.
• mihaaly 6y ago
  My complaint is more like the ludicrously low quality user interface. Lots of inconsistencies, ridiculously persistent notifications on actions you just did, supplying a stream of suggestions to completely irrelevant job ads where one is claimed to fit well, user unfriendly search history, not to mention the hopelessly clueless user support unable to grasp what one is talking about and answering for never mentioned aspects after asking for already supplied details and explanations, like if they were in write only mode. Not so long ago all icons disappeared for weeks without any fix which I did not report to user support for the obvious reasons. For a professional community it is hopelessly clumsy. Also overpriced.