A genuine question for the people here, I am just a college student so maybe I am missing something, but does anybody actually browse through linkedin? The only times I actually open it up is when either I did something that I would like to remember when I update my Resume at a later date, or when my friends text me to open it up and like their post :)
While I agree that most of the feed is filled with useless posts, for some business sectors it actually contains useful posts.
I work in the European energy market sector and LinkedIn is one of the to go places to catch up with developments in the markets, the latest the analyses, and upcoming events. And some posts are actually good, you just need to filter out the rest. I wish there would be a better platform for this specific content (maybe I'm simply missing it) but for now, I find it there.
Coming from a computer science background and kinda accidentally ended up in energy markets, I was surprised that LinkedIn is the place for this content I(in contrast to the computer science field).
Most people randomly accept invitations on LinkedIn: "We're both humans, so I felt we should connect!".
But if you actively prune / curate WHO you add to your LinkedIn, you end up with a feed that is genuinely useful.
What you do need to know is WHY you want to use LinkedIn. It could be to find your next job, finding potential customers, or just keeping up to date with <INDUSTRY>.
The trick here is to have connections that follow and like content that is worth following, ever since connecting with some peers in the database space, my feed is filled with things like new research, C++ performance optimizations, and the like, instead of management fables and feel good stories.
When Twitter imploded I expected technical discussions to migrate to Mastodon or Bluesky. What happened next shocked me.
Technical content appeared on LinkedIn.
Not just one or two posts. Tens of posts. Every day. Technical content from the thought leaders in the industry.
Yes, there was still corporate slop.
Yes, LinkedIn still mostly serves for self-aggrandisement.
But there were nuggets of gold, for who were prepared to look for them.
Seriously: LinkedIn is still mostly garbage. The quality of discussion is not great. But it has improved a bit, and given the fractured nature of social media at the moment it's somewhat viable to use it for technical content.
I don't add people to my network to reduce the noise. I don't pay but get "requests" for software development that are not personally directed, so I delete those. Any job advertisement I am notified about is closed by the time I click on it, within seconds of the email. Any misspelt ad is a phishing crime in the making.
Then tech jobs stopped existing and now Linkedin is a pure AI content driven jerk off engine for desperate people without a (real) job to sound important.
I find it's easy to scroll past very sloppy posts. And 1 in 2 posts are genuinely interesting/teach me something new about the world and the people in it - how people conduct business - and most of all their improbable trajectories that got them where they are currently in their career. It's very interesting and the recommendations are great for me. I don't find too much slop or cringe content, and am confused when people complain about it so much. It feels like people don't really know how to separate slop content (self-promotion/empty AI posts) from genuinely written life and work experiences. And HN is definitely an echo-chamber, I see a huge amount of people (more than instagram tbh in mid-30s age bracket) contribute regularly to linkedin.
Too bad the thought leader is spewing 500 Internal Server Error. "Oops! Our thought leadership engine is experiencing technical difficulties. Please try again." isn't something I'm proud to post to Slack.
Funny how easy it is to turn any banal situation into something that sounds profound.
I put my situation as "Playing with a frisbee, alone." and your person says "Life is like a Frisbee. You can't control the wind. You can only adjust your throw."
Apps like that (a customizable system prompt with a token api endpoint) would become more common if the cost of tokens decreases. Current AI subscription providers have been trying to crack that nut with GPTs, skills, extensions, etc, but they have the n+1 problem. The scope is too much to do it securely and get value other than entertainment from it. If one could make a link to take you to a Claude.ai interface for “generate a legit LinkedIn post”, next people are gonna want to connect it to their email and documents, and LinkedIn account then build a workflow for making posts and addressing comments, messaging leads and cross posting to Twitter or Reddit.
I was drawing the distinction more between productivity vs entertainment uses, as opposed to power vs regular users.
The problem with the later is AI’s entire sales pitch is to flatten those definition. If you can type it, the AI should be able to figure it out for the most part. You don’t even have to be very clear in your typing. You can just address the AI casually as you would address a person.
Entertainment apps are about increasing engagement. Like an AI driven game, ARGs, or this site. For example, Sora app was an AI entertainment app but it obviously was the wrong approach. I think there is an untapped potential there, but it remains under-explored because most are focusing on productivity now.
Very nice. I thought it wasn't going to save a "You Go Girl" style story about "My Dick", but it turned it into a conference anecdote with a powerpoint slide about Richard III. Hilarious.
People already posted this slop "by hand" before generative tech accessibility. In fact, generative models are good at it because they were trained on massive amounts of horse crap people posted and shared.
I may or may not have instructed Claude to built me a LinkedIn Bot that creates posts for predefined topics, comments and likes others posts and scarpes the page for jobs. Let's say a minority on LinkedIn actually reads the content others post, so my reach and impressions are continually growing without me doing anything on that cesspool of a social app. Thanks AI, I guess.
Been laughing for the past 10 minutes, thanks for this one.
(I tried the death of my cat by car in front of my house in a Go Girl manner, absolute cinema)
A few weeks ago, LinkedIn introduced a "This looks like AI slop" button and to linkedIn's credit, my feed has been a lot better since that happened.
There's still some going around of course, but it's far less than the endless stereotypical linkedIn chum in the feed that there was.
I don't know if engaging with that button means I'm less likely to be served such content, or whether it's cleaning up everyone's feeds.
The worst were the ones starting, "I had a client phone me up", and when you'd look at the profile they wouldn't even obviously have such clients, and certainly wouldn't be the obvious person to call in that scenario.
I can't imagine being that shameless, and just to boost an artificial reach.
How is this so good. After playing around a bit with different inputs I then put in real beliefs and selected different cringe types and I wanted to off myself reading the beliefs I had parsed through these lens.
Sure, LinkedIn is cringe, but so is making an HN post for yet another slop site that was clearly made with at most three prompts to Claude. Especially when it begs for "sponsorship" in the footer.
I work in the European energy market sector and LinkedIn is one of the to go places to catch up with developments in the markets, the latest the analyses, and upcoming events. And some posts are actually good, you just need to filter out the rest. I wish there would be a better platform for this specific content (maybe I'm simply missing it) but for now, I find it there.
Coming from a computer science background and kinda accidentally ended up in energy markets, I was surprised that LinkedIn is the place for this content I(in contrast to the computer science field).
But if you actively prune / curate WHO you add to your LinkedIn, you end up with a feed that is genuinely useful.
What you do need to know is WHY you want to use LinkedIn. It could be to find your next job, finding potential customers, or just keeping up to date with <INDUSTRY>.
Technical content appeared on LinkedIn.
Not just one or two posts. Tens of posts. Every day. Technical content from the thought leaders in the industry.
Yes, there was still corporate slop.
Yes, LinkedIn still mostly serves for self-aggrandisement.
But there were nuggets of gold, for who were prepared to look for them.
Seriously: LinkedIn is still mostly garbage. The quality of discussion is not great. But it has improved a bit, and given the fractured nature of social media at the moment it's somewhat viable to use it for technical content.
Maybe I should give them money :)
Then tech jobs stopped existing and now Linkedin is a pure AI content driven jerk off engine for desperate people without a (real) job to sound important.
I put my situation as "Playing with a frisbee, alone." and your person says "Life is like a Frisbee. You can't control the wind. You can only adjust your throw."
https://translate.kagi.com/?from=en&to=linkedin
> Kagi Translate is temporarily offline for free users.
Though many follow a shorter sentence style.
Like this.
To go on and on about what they're going on about.
Brevity is the new thing.
Make it brief. (Lift, bro.)
The problem with the later is AI’s entire sales pitch is to flatten those definition. If you can type it, the AI should be able to figure it out for the most part. You don’t even have to be very clear in your typing. You can just address the AI casually as you would address a person.
Entertainment apps are about increasing engagement. Like an AI driven game, ARGs, or this site. For example, Sora app was an AI entertainment app but it obviously was the wrong approach. I think there is an untapped potential there, but it remains under-explored because most are focusing on productivity now.
Unfortunately, I suspect that it’s being hugged to death (I keep getting the “oops” response). Hope they can afford the tokens.
Friends don't let friends post cringe
There's still some going around of course, but it's far less than the endless stereotypical linkedIn chum in the feed that there was.
I don't know if engaging with that button means I'm less likely to be served such content, or whether it's cleaning up everyone's feeds.
The worst were the ones starting, "I had a client phone me up", and when you'd look at the profile they wouldn't even obviously have such clients, and certainly wouldn't be the obvious person to call in that scenario.
I can't imagine being that shameless, and just to boost an artificial reach.
I would guess it's both cause I've been having less AI slop on LinkedIn for the past few weeks (yet not none).
10/10 for hitting the satire mark perfectly.
Whoever did this actually pulled a rabbit out of a hat.
Bravo
I'm the proud author of Two such stories, if it pleases you:
* The One Shoe CEO
* Advice from a millionaire (true story)
You'll just have to find them.