(May 23, 2026)How Microsoft Has Made the LinkedIn Platform as Useless as Tits on a Bull
I had good reasons for falling terminally silent on Microsoft's LinkedIn platform.
While some of the reasons are related to the egregious behavior and business model of the platform's owner, Microsoft, there are other reasons that are attributable to the situation faced by (and mindset of) many translator users of the platform.
I will not trash my LinkedIn account, because it facilitates checking the digital footprint of people I encounter, including people encountered outside of LinkedIn, meaning mostly in real life.
That said, I am finished with writing posts or any other activity on LinkedIn and, accordingly, I have deleted every single post, comment, and reaction that I had remaining on the platform as of this writing, with the exception, of course, of the kiss-off post that leads to this page.
Microsoft-related Reasons for My LinkedIn Silence
The progressing enshittification of LinkedIn makes it highly annoying. This is encouraged by Microsoft's business model, which uses the platform to promote AI and reward AI supporters, while punishing those who don't have AI promotion and proliferation as a goal. Posts that are in any way negative of AI can be relied on to be shadow-banned by the algorithm Microsoft employs.
The specific annoyances are numerous and diverse.
Censorship by Limiting Posting and Commenting Functionality
This is something that has repeatedly happened to me. It includes not being able to make a comment on a post of even a LinkedIn connection or in a group of which I am a member.
The reasons for this hinted at (but, annoyingly not specified) by Microsoft include:
- My activity on the platform. That makes it sound like I did something wrong, although I have never been warned about any such activity.
- The number of people who have blocked me. This is totally bizarre, because the censorship (disabling of the posting and commenting functionality) was with respect to posts or comments made by me on posts of connections and a group of which I am member, not someone who has blocked me, since I would not be seeing their posts to make a comment on them.
- The verification status of information in my profile. This is veiled intimidation to make me verify by handing over to Microsoft personal information, including perhaps biometric data. That is not going to happen.
A constant stream of AI slop posts from Global South accounts.
I understand why people in the Global South see LinkedIn as a window to the Global North that most of them will never be able to access directly, and perhaps many don't realize that posting AI slop on LinkedIn is not going to be a path out of their circumstances.
That said, there is so much AI slop that simply blocking individual users is futile in stopping the flow of this aspirational slop.
Microsoft's AI promotion
The owner of LinkedIn is hell bent on promoting AI and supporting AI promoters. The slop feed I see is filled with such garbage, including large numbers of self-styled AI coaches and consultants.
Constant Unwanted Notifications of Meaningless Jobs
I am not looking for work of any type on LinkedIn, but LinkedIn apparently doesn't believe that, and kindly sends me notices of jobs that are almost exclusively either training AI or repairing AI output.
I suspect that much of this work is going to Global South people, who are more likely to accept the extremely low rates offered, but it will probably seem better to them than monitoring social media posts for videos of rapes, murders, and the like, a task that has in recent years been largely foisted off onto those less-fortunate members of the labor pool.
Targeting with toxic ads
- Bot-placed ads for crypto
- Jobs for "Indians only." I recently received nine of these AI-generated and probably bot-posted ads in a single day. They were all basically decorated with the same lovely AI graphics, but all ostensibly came from different accounts in India. I strongly suspect that those accounts were fake.
- Plantation investment scams
- Promotion of ads by LinkedIn itself, many trying to extoll the value of video content, with numerous ads trying to sell ads on LinkedIn.
- Ads for coaching
Punishment of "non-aligned" posts by shadow-banning
Posts that are in any way negative of AI or of the way the platform operated are almost certainly to be shadow-banned. The result is that even people you are connected with or otherwise follow you will not see your posts. This is not conducive to discussion between colleagues, but that never seems to have been a goal of the platform, at least after the acquisition by Microsoft.
The proliferation of hyper-curated persona
Phoniness appears to be a given among many LinkedIn accounts, the owners of which decorate many post with self-congratulatory nonsense as if it was an effective way of impressing people who would throw money at them.
The proliferation of self-styled coaches, many purporting to coach for "LinkedIn success"
Translation/Translator-related Reasons for My LinkedIn Silence
Despite the undeniable bleak outlook faced by most freelance translators, countless freelance translators cling to the delusion that AI will not replace them or (just as silly) that they can survive if they use AI themselves
Use of AI might help, but the outlook for freelancers is extremely bleak and they are losing their agency clients. Given that, even if they use AI themselves, they still have to find non-users of AI as replacement clients. Almost no freelancers can do that, but almost no freelance translators on LinkedIn address that issue.
What we hear is constant talk about "adapting" meaning—but it is often not mentioned as being—doing dirt-cheap post-editing or adopting AI for your own translation workflow. I can imagine the pain of facing the truth of what has happened, but I will no longer attempt to educate the uneducable. I'm done with that fruitless enterprise. Hanging out at the Denial & Delusion Cafe is not the solution.
Some translators are engaging in a coaching business, taking money from fellow translators for advice.
I find this abhorrent, especially when I see that mostly what they are selling is a stream of feel-good platitudes and common-sense that encourage their colleagues to look away from the real world out there.
Lack of both colleagues and potential clients for JA-EN translation
Compared to in the Anglosphere, LinkedIn is virtually unused by people in Japan and, probably because they realize that, colleagues that I interact with (many face-to-face) are virtually absent on LinkedIn, at least in terms of posting and discussions. LinkedIn is essentially non-existent in the world of JA-EN translation in Japan.