Month: March 2025

Pass the puke bucket: Microsoft’s LinkedIn rolls along as a platform for charlatans.

[I posted the following to LinkedIn yesterday, March 3, 2025, and it was quickly shadow-banned by Microsoft.]

This morning Microsoft’s LinkedIn algorithm thought (although it can’t think) I would be interested in a post (an ad, actually) from a self-styled LinkedIn ghostwriter claiming to have clients paying him 1000s of dollars a month to “grow their LinkedIn accounts” (totally meaningless, of course), saying he got thousands of connections for himself using an AI ghostwriting tool he developed. He claims that not only does the AI tool write viral, engaging posts for you on LinkedIn, it also generates ideas about what to post based on your business. It sounds like it tells you what to write.

This type of tool is best used by people who have nothing say and don’t know how to say it. Professionals know what they need to say and can say it.

This nonsense demonstrates quite well what Microsoft’s LinkedIn platform has become, a tool for charlatans working the aisles of desperate people who believe that LinkedIn “success” will save them.

I’m not surprised that this ad got hundreds of comments requesting the AI tool freebie trial. The wretched masses are yearning to get connections. Go for it. 

In case people are wondering, the ghostwriter is young and has a profile that doesn’t indicate any qualifications or experience; no education shown and no experience in organizations other than the business he runs, and its website doesn’t have a physical address and doesn’t even name him. You need to be really dumb to not realize what that suggests.

Charlatans selling to the huddled masses yearning to have connections and have “LinkedIn success” have become the norm on Microsoft’s LinkedIn platform.

And I guess the blocking of this garbage from your LinkedIn feed is left up to the unfortunate recipients.

LinkedIn has become pretty much meaningless, unless you are working the aisles of desperate users or you can’t resist the opportunity to say that you are excited, thrilled, or honored to announce something.

For my part, I am annoyed to announce that Microsoft has effectively removed any value from its LinkedIn platform.

Will the Czech interpreter raise their right hand?

One day interpreting in a deposition in which a deponent from a Japanese company was to be examined by a US attorney, the US official came into the room to administer the oaths as is the normal practice. We were all introducing ourselves and, when my turn came, I indicated that I was the “check interpreter.” It is customary (and almost always the case) that a Japanese/English interpreted deposition is attended by a lead interpreter and a check interpreter, the lead interpreter doing just what the position indicates, and the check interpreter listening to the interpreting and offering any corrections that they feel necessary.

When it was my turn to be sworn in, the Embassy official, whom I had never had the occasion to meet, reading partially from his cheat sheet and apparently filling in as he thought necessary, turned to me and said:

“Do you solemnly swear that you know the English and the Czech languages, and that you will faithfully interpret the questions in English into the Czech language, and that further you wil…”

It turned out that he was new on the job. It was a bit of comedy relief before a stressful day of interpreting between two people, one who wanted to ask questions and the other who was not necessarily cooperative.