The antisocial network: why LinkedIn is such a disaster.
Of all social networks, LinkedIn is arguably the most cynical, craven and exploitative. It's failures can't be fixed by technology.
I think I’m about done with LinkedIn. I’ve been souring on it for a while, but it was a suggestion from my therapist that truly caused me to reflect on what a hell site it truly is—and how it so perfectly reflects what is wrong with our personal and professional connections in the internet age. I’ve written about this sort of topic before (Facebook, specifically), but in thinking on the particular failures of LinkedIn, which are somehow even more fundamental than Facebook’s, I did a lot of thinking about social media in general and how it’s become such an amplifier of the pain and frustration of modern life. On one level it seems straightforward, and it is: if something, whether a technological innovation or a relationship with a company, an institution or a person is not working for you, you should ditch it. But LinkedIn, more I think than most social media, gets its hooks into you in even more insidious ways by prodding your brain into generating reasons why you should continue to tolerate it. That’s been my experience, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
Most of us probably think the major utility of LinkedIn is to enable us to “network” professionally. That’s certainly what I thought when I joined; I’ll explain a little later my own personal history on the platform, which has clearly yielded some significant positives. But I’ve come to realize that “networking” or “professional development” isn’t really what LinkedIn is about. As I browse a feed full of news stories about climate change and the Ukraine war appended with tomes of bickering comments, interspersed among promoted posts (advertisements) for investing apps and planet-killing cryptocurrencies, motivational pap from Gary Vaynerchuk and the waif-like eyes of jobless 20-somethings with forest-green “OPEN TO WORK” rings around their heads, I begin to feel a deep sense of cynicism about what I’m doing there.
I’m not naïve. I knew long ago that my eyeballs and the people I know, in reality and in cyberspace, were long ago commoditized for the benefit of LinkedIn’s shareholders. But I bought into the supposed value proposition, that lending these aspects of myself to LinkedIn was a fair tradeoff for what it, and the people on it, could do for me. Now I’m not so sure that the value proposition pencils out. In fact, I’m not sure it ever existed in the first place. I was just deluding myself.
I have, at least up until now, been a pretty heavy user of LinkedIn. I believe I joined when I was still working on my Ph.D., after I’d already spent 12 years practicing commercial real estate law. I joined for the same reason everyone does: to “network” and meet people who might prove professionally useful. I’d originally been gun-shy about it because of the explosively enraging emails that LinkedIn spammed the world with in the 2013-14 period (“You have not responded to Jack Spratt’s LinkedIn request!”) by hijacking everyone’s Outlook contacts, an abuse for which they were sued. Two years or so after that died down I signed up, but didn’t make much use of the platform until I again found myself in the private sector, post-Ph.D., attempting to make a living with an unwieldy hybrid of law-plus-consulting specifically relating to climate change. In 2018 and ‘19 I truly began to lean into it, seeking to connect with people in the climate change community and also with academics and historians. For a while, before the pandemic, I had a dedicated half-hour a day set aside for browsing and cultivating LinkedIn connections. Probably many of you reading this now are doing so, directly or indirectly, as a result of connecting with me there.
For a while, it seemed to work. In 2019 I made a connection there with a guy working on a climate change project that looked promising, and I did some consulting work for him; the next year, just before the lockdown hit, I secured another climate-related consulting project that ended up paying well. I occasionally wrote or posted articles that gained significant traction and drove some traffic to my website and eventually this Substack blog. My bubble of connections grew steadily. The daily half-hour I spent on the site seemed to be paying dividends.
There were a few ugly moments, of course, and some frustrations. Posting anything on social media about climate change brings global warming deniers crawling out of the woodwork like the cockroaches they are, and the deniers on LinkedIn seemed especially vituperative. Also, I noticed that LinkedIn’s algorithm could never really figure out who I was or what I did. It assumed that my primary professional identity was as a lawyer. I know this because literally every single time I clicked on the My Network tab, in the “People You May Know” section it suggested that I connect with a lawyer I once knew—I’ll call her “Tessa Orbach” (not her real name)—who was at the first law firm I worked at as an associate in 1998. I did not practice in the same area as Ms. Orbach, I never directly worked with her and did not know her socially. But even after clicking the X to decline the suggestion, it would never take more than two subsequent visits to the Network tab before Tessa Orbach would pop up again. She’s still at the same firm, 25 years later, now senior partner—and LinkedIn still thinks she’s a hot connection for me. And, whenever I would click on the site, I’d see an ad up top saying, “Are you a lawyer? New cases in your area!” This persisted long after I ceased practicing law and even removed references to law practice in my profile. LinkedIn suggested Tessa Orbach as a connection just yesterday, as I was writing this article. It still thinks I’m a lawyer. To LinkedIn, human beings do not exist—only job titles do. Context is beyond its capability to analyze.
My first real trouble on the platform came last summer. I received a connection request from a person, a woman from Pakistan, who judging from her profile appeared to be an academic and totally legit. We had several connections in common. As sometimes happens, she sent me a message thanking me for accepting her connection request. Then I received another message from her, in broken English, to the effect of, “I so lonely, what I would really like to be do is to find a nice man! I know
you not come to find romance on LinkedIn but if you would be to explore
our feelings...” It was a dating scam. I flagged the message and clicked a button to report it, and the user, as inappropriate. Within 10 minutes, I received an automated reply from LinkedIn stating that the message did not violate LinkedIn’s Terms of Service. Say what? I had a lengthy go-round via email with one of LinkedIn’s “Member Safety and Recovery Consultants” before he finally, and quite reluctantly, conceded that romance scamming was not permitted on their platform—but he was unable or unwilling to explain why the messages and profile I reported were allowed to remain. In fact, he blamed me for the incident. He said I should never have accepted the request.
Then I started getting connection requests from financial advisers. Most of them looked the same: well-meaning white guys usually in their 30s, smiles and suit collars practically gleaming in their profile pics, working for companies with words like “Assurance” and “Fiduciary” in their names. All of these men were quite nice, sending me messages professing to share my concern over climate change or complimenting me on an article I’d posted (often from this blog). But after two messages they would invariably ask to have a Zoom call with me to discuss my financial future. It got to the point where, if I received any message from a financial adviser, I would say, “I’m happy to connect, but I’m not looking for financial planning services and do not wish to discuss my finances.” Not one replied after that. It turns out they weren’t too interested in talking to me about climate change after all.
And then came the virtual assistant pushers. On a single occasion two years ago I hired and used a virtual assistant. A very good one was referred to me by a friend (not on LinkedIn). Word must have gotten out that I was a mark, because suddenly, late last year, I was besieged by agents selling virtual assistant services. One of them got my email from LinkedIn and I got into a sales funnel. Every two days for about two weeks I’d get another email with a subject header like, “What would you do with extra time in your day?” and “Can I call you tomorrow?” This kind of thing happened several times. I guess competition in the virtual assistant business must be fierce if they have to push so hard for leads.
Again—annoying, but relatively minor in the scheme of things. Then, in late 2021 and earlier this year, I had several articles on climate change which I posted on LinkedIn go viral. (This one and this one are among them). I did reach a lot of people, and the vast majority were supportive and positive. The deniers spewed their usual vitriol, which I expected. With the exception of the deniers, I had no problem with how the individual people I was reaching were reacting to me, but I was starting to feel uncomfortable with how LinkedIn itself was reacting to me. I started getting a lot of connection requests, overwhelmingly from Europeans, working in various sustainability and climate-adjacent fields. Although the vast majority were legit and obviously good people, some were not; one turned out to be a cryptocurrency shill, and another was trying to recruit users to another social network. I started getting suggestions to join groups and sign up for newsletters, mostly again sustainability-related. Although the algorithm continues to believe I’m a practicing lawyer, I started seeing a lot more green-ringed “OPEN TO WORK” 20-somethings whose profiles said they were in sustainability jobs, or seeking them. Because it does not recognize human beings, only job titles, LinkedIn assumes that if you have anything to do with climate change, you must be a sustainability consultant.
Then it struck me: LinkedIn had recognized that I had value. To it. A lot of people were reading my stuff. A lot of people wanted to have me in their networks, for whatever reasons. But the reasons why these things might be desirable, for me, and for my work in history and climate change, are not aligned with why they’re desirable for LinkedIn. I want more people to know and understand history. I want more people to be prepared for global warming-related chaos. LinkedIn doesn’t give a damn about any of that. It’s not a value proposition: “I’ll help you achieve your goals, if you help me achieve mine.” It’s instead predation combined with indifference: “Give me what I want to help me make money. If you get something out of the bargain, great. If not, I couldn’t care less.”
The problem is that the purpose of LinkedIn is not to help me “network professionally.” Its purpose isn’t to help me find an audience, or to help those young unemployed sustainability consultants find jobs in their field. Its purpose is to make money for its shareholders. It’s the same problem that Facebook has, and that all social media has. Facebook’s purpose is to make Mark Zuckerberg rich. The benefit these networks supposedly provide to us, which is often said as being a means to “connect,” is entirely incidental, a sales job, a reason why you should buy. If they could eliminate that function and still have it make money for shareholders, they’d do that. Facebook sought to commoditize personal relationships. LinkedIn sought to commoditize professional ones. Both companies are essentially cannibalistic, and neither understand the relationships they’re consuming like pellets of fuel. They’re eating us, at home and at work, and pretending to give us benefits so we’ll continue to let them eat us.
In LinkedIn’s case, the predation is even more insidious because it has positioned itself as a necessity, especially for self-employed experts who often work on a contract gig model. If LinkedIn was a sentient thing, as soon as I said I wanted to dump it, it would retort: “But how are you going to find clients without me? How are you going to reach new people? Didn’t you get those great gigs because of me? C’mon, you can stick it out, can’t you? Romance scammers and virtual assistant pushers are a minor annoyance. Think about what I can do for you!”
Right now, I’m thinking more about what LinkedIn is doing to me.
LinkedIn has failed, but not because it didn’t deliver on the value proposition that I thought I was entering into when I joined in 2016. It failed because that value proposition only ever existed in my mind. A business relationship is, at its core, a sort of negotiation. I have X and want Y; you have Y and want X. To make a successful transaction with you, I have to care that you will actually receive my X in exchange for your Y that I want. LinkedIn wants my X, and it’s happy if I think I’m getting Y out of the deal, but it has no interest in whether I really do. It just wants X, which in this case is my eyeballs, the people I know, and my ability to get others I don’t know to connect with me. Technology can’t fix it. A faster, smarter algorithm can’t fix it. Policing scammers can’t fix it. In order to have value, it actually has to care, and it doesn’t, can’t, won’t, and never will.
The day before I wrote this article I got a connection request which was obviously another romance scammer. It’s pictured above. The profile was laughably false and the picture a hot Asian woman posing in lacy lingerie, probably stolen from a modeling or clothing site. This time I didn’t even bother reporting it. Not only does LinkedIn not care, but it’s clear that romance scammers trolling for marks and financial advisers hustling for clients are its bread and butter. It won’t jeopardize those income streams to better itself, or to help me have “a better experience.” It doesn’t give a damn what kind of experience I have and it never did. It just wants to eat me and, by extension if you know me, it wants to eat you. You cannot negotiate with someone who’s totally indifferent to what you want or need. It’s a hell site, a wasteland of toxicity dressed up like legitimate commerce. Connection declined. I don’t know LinkedIn.
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I’ve had a different experience… actually came across you on LinkedIn. I have no problem ignoring the BS
I disconnected from them when I got hacked. I realized that not ONLY have I no use for job information since I'm retired and highly unlikely to ever go back to work -- and boyoboy is this ever one amazing way to get personal information! All of these supposed "professional" networking media sites are bogus. In a different world, maybe they might have a purpose, but not in this one.