I like LinkedIn. But its starting to wear on me. One of the problems I've noticed of late is that LinkedIn's algorithm seems to be going the way of Facebook and other social media platforms by pushing content designed to poke, provoke and stimulate people so as to keep them on the platform far longer than they need to be. It rewards engagement. I'm learning to recognize the signals and to discipline myself so as to waste less time and stay focused on people who bring real value, not people trying to game the algorithm by posting constantly. The AI slop is a real nuisance. It seems Stefan Schubert is right, that the solution is to 'retrain' the algorithm so that one's feed is not inundated with slop and half-baked content. But that takes an investment in time.
Yeah, no social media platform is perfect--and none of them has a good out-of-the-box experience either (with a possible exception of Substack Notes). But what Bluesky shows is that even without an algorithm, humans still tilt toward engagement-bait and provocation. Perhaps we should all just take a break from social media every once in a while :)
To a large degree it's the humans who are the problem not the algorithm. The algorithm just sees what you are liking and he says, "If you like it I will give you more of it." It's like with the sugar and obesity
Well, quite refreshing to read a positive post about LinkedIn.
You can ask yourself: how many people outside academia are on Bluesky? Not many. Maybe one or two journalists. But for LinkedIn, there are loads. CEOs, public policy professionals, and your neighbor.
So if your goal is to reach beyond the academic ivory tower, walk to the public square where people are gathering.
I feel like the issue is at a simple level that social media doesn’t actually work mostly. LinkedIn radically slows the velocity of exchanges down allowing some genuine exchanges to occur - but even there, if you occasionally get a post promoted by accident you see the same old behaviour.
Real name posting seems to be a huge quality filter.
The only other unenshittified products with the juice? Substack (populated by truth-seeking nerds) and YouTube (not the shorts!)
I think both stand out because the whole point is high production values and effort. A poorly made YouTube video with low production values simply doesn’t get the views. A poorly written essay doesn’t get the clicks. They inherently reward clarity of thinking and effort by design.
I agree with you, I have been pleasantly surprised to see the number of discussions on social topics on LinkedIn and majority of it is civil. I have been using it a lot more!
Thanks, we should spread the word! Every time I mention LinkedIn to my academic colleagues who are not terminally online, they're surprised the platform even has any social media capabilities.
I use LinkedIn for real non-anon me. I use twitter/bluesky others for anon me. I do wish there was a way to mash the feeds together in one big rss feed. twitter has plenty of issues, but i am glad i dont have to use gettr anymore to get what is now allowed on twitter. i just like to see where both sides are arguing, what they are arguing and so forth. rcp use to be a good place for this but sometime after 2012 i feel the aggregator declined in selection quality.
Good points. I use LinkedIn daily, and my feed is great for insight, technical conversations, and relevant news. All it took to get there was "educating" the feed algorithm on what I actually need. I keep removing irrelevant stuff that sometimes shows up unexpectedly, and, well, it just shows up less with time. LinkedIn is actually a quite decent source of information, after you do homework for feed clearing and following relevant experts.
This is a really interesting take. But for me, LinkedIn feels very connected to my employers, who pay me to care for patients and teach medicine to students and residents. I might post something there regarding my thoughts on a new medical education curriculum. But my work in public health and health policy needs to be separate from that. And although I see this later work as intrinsically aimed at helping my colleagues and patients have a better experience of medicine and medical care, I feel it’s too controversial to potentially link it to my employers. As I write this, I’m wondering if that is something I should rethink.
"...show up under their real names and engage with each other because the professional cost of behaving badly is real."
I think it is this which keeps the standard of debate high. LinkedIn has succeeded as a discussion forum by accident. There is no point in joining a networking platform under an alias, even if you could. I can't remember. I only joined to see what my nieces were up to.
I do think it is impossible to have a constructive conversation without some type of self awareness and empathy for the feelings of others. For good or for ill, LinkedIn somewhat enforces this via the knowledge that there are potentially real consequences for what one says. I've had to be careful myself. While it can be frustrating to walk carefully at times, on the brightside, I've yet to receive a single death threat or ad from a national government on why I and the research I produce are trash. So that's something.
Great overview. Fwiw, I don’t find three emoji bullet lists cringe…lists are efficient and emojis make them more visual and memorable without being obtrusive. There’s a bit of “too cool for school” in declaring them cringe imo. The alternative is often no post because few get paid to generate (human) post content.
Interesting. Makes sense that a site where people do not remain anonymous is going to have a higher level of discourse than those where people are anonymous.
A possible advantage of LinkedIn is that it has lots of money.
Twitter never really made money, and bluesky I think neither. And this influences service quality
It's pretty obvious that X is understaffed, and bluesky seems the same.
Those systems needs lots of cash to be working effectively
Good point, I haven't thought about this aspect!
Now that X is owned by xAI/SpaceX, it’s been publicly documented that X is basically run by Grok with everyone’s individual tweets training it.
Twitter always had a problem catching on because by the time it came around, Facebook was already part of the muscle memory.
I like LinkedIn. But its starting to wear on me. One of the problems I've noticed of late is that LinkedIn's algorithm seems to be going the way of Facebook and other social media platforms by pushing content designed to poke, provoke and stimulate people so as to keep them on the platform far longer than they need to be. It rewards engagement. I'm learning to recognize the signals and to discipline myself so as to waste less time and stay focused on people who bring real value, not people trying to game the algorithm by posting constantly. The AI slop is a real nuisance. It seems Stefan Schubert is right, that the solution is to 'retrain' the algorithm so that one's feed is not inundated with slop and half-baked content. But that takes an investment in time.
Yeah, no social media platform is perfect--and none of them has a good out-of-the-box experience either (with a possible exception of Substack Notes). But what Bluesky shows is that even without an algorithm, humans still tilt toward engagement-bait and provocation. Perhaps we should all just take a break from social media every once in a while :)
The engagement algorithm is like cancer to civil discourse :/
To a large degree it's the humans who are the problem not the algorithm. The algorithm just sees what you are liking and he says, "If you like it I will give you more of it." It's like with the sugar and obesity
Re training your algorithm and feed is a great idea and very very few people do it
Well, quite refreshing to read a positive post about LinkedIn.
You can ask yourself: how many people outside academia are on Bluesky? Not many. Maybe one or two journalists. But for LinkedIn, there are loads. CEOs, public policy professionals, and your neighbor.
So if your goal is to reach beyond the academic ivory tower, walk to the public square where people are gathering.
I feel like the issue is at a simple level that social media doesn’t actually work mostly. LinkedIn radically slows the velocity of exchanges down allowing some genuine exchanges to occur - but even there, if you occasionally get a post promoted by accident you see the same old behaviour.
Real name posting seems to be a huge quality filter.
The only other unenshittified products with the juice? Substack (populated by truth-seeking nerds) and YouTube (not the shorts!)
I think both stand out because the whole point is high production values and effort. A poorly made YouTube video with low production values simply doesn’t get the views. A poorly written essay doesn’t get the clicks. They inherently reward clarity of thinking and effort by design.
I agree with you, I have been pleasantly surprised to see the number of discussions on social topics on LinkedIn and majority of it is civil. I have been using it a lot more!
Thanks, we should spread the word! Every time I mention LinkedIn to my academic colleagues who are not terminally online, they're surprised the platform even has any social media capabilities.
I use LinkedIn for real non-anon me. I use twitter/bluesky others for anon me. I do wish there was a way to mash the feeds together in one big rss feed. twitter has plenty of issues, but i am glad i dont have to use gettr anymore to get what is now allowed on twitter. i just like to see where both sides are arguing, what they are arguing and so forth. rcp use to be a good place for this but sometime after 2012 i feel the aggregator declined in selection quality.
Good points. I use LinkedIn daily, and my feed is great for insight, technical conversations, and relevant news. All it took to get there was "educating" the feed algorithm on what I actually need. I keep removing irrelevant stuff that sometimes shows up unexpectedly, and, well, it just shows up less with time. LinkedIn is actually a quite decent source of information, after you do homework for feed clearing and following relevant experts.
This is a really interesting take. But for me, LinkedIn feels very connected to my employers, who pay me to care for patients and teach medicine to students and residents. I might post something there regarding my thoughts on a new medical education curriculum. But my work in public health and health policy needs to be separate from that. And although I see this later work as intrinsically aimed at helping my colleagues and patients have a better experience of medicine and medical care, I feel it’s too controversial to potentially link it to my employers. As I write this, I’m wondering if that is something I should rethink.
"...show up under their real names and engage with each other because the professional cost of behaving badly is real."
I think it is this which keeps the standard of debate high. LinkedIn has succeeded as a discussion forum by accident. There is no point in joining a networking platform under an alias, even if you could. I can't remember. I only joined to see what my nieces were up to.
LinkedIn does the work of keeping the conversation censored, especially from the right, while also laundering that fact much more the Bluesky.
You’re right, it’s kind of perfect for the HR, corporate liberal. I’m surprised it took this long
I do think it is impossible to have a constructive conversation without some type of self awareness and empathy for the feelings of others. For good or for ill, LinkedIn somewhat enforces this via the knowledge that there are potentially real consequences for what one says. I've had to be careful myself. While it can be frustrating to walk carefully at times, on the brightside, I've yet to receive a single death threat or ad from a national government on why I and the research I produce are trash. So that's something.
Great overview. Fwiw, I don’t find three emoji bullet lists cringe…lists are efficient and emojis make them more visual and memorable without being obtrusive. There’s a bit of “too cool for school” in declaring them cringe imo. The alternative is often no post because few get paid to generate (human) post content.
Just the post I needed. Have followed 👋
Interesting. Makes sense that a site where people do not remain anonymous is going to have a higher level of discourse than those where people are anonymous.
Now compare LinkedIn with substack