Although I will resume posting on LinkedIn at least links to this blog or its parent site, I deleted all of the small number of posts I had left on LinkedIn yesterday, and I started the rather tedious process of deleting comments I have made on others’ posts, mostly to correct outrageous nonsense that people post and think will be accepted. I will keep a small portion of the comments I have made on the accounts of people with whom I have had meaningful interactions; most other comments are being trashed.
I have also now deleted nearly all of the 130-plus received connection requests that were pending, these mostly being from people I don’t know and don’t want to or need to know. Many are from the Global South, and probably a good number of them are from people who mistakenly think that I outsource translation work to freelancers. I do not.
Anyway, here are just a few of the salient and mostly annoying characteristics of Microsoft’s LinkedIn that I have observed:
- LinkedIn promotes AI and promoters of AI.
- LinkedIn has lately been flooded with slop posts written by AI.
- The Microsoft LinkedIn algorithm does not work in the interest of users, but rather (of course, and understandably) to maximize engagement, which turns into income for Microsoft.
- LinkedIn fills my feed with many posts from people with no noticeable substance, but who breathtaking overestimate the credulity of people who might see their posts.
- LinkedIn fills my feed with posts about Japan from people who seem to know nothing about Japan, many of these people being in places from which they will never come to Japan.
- LinkedIn has many accounts of translators who are in serious denial and delusion, thinking that they won’t be replaced by AI. They are wrong.
- LinkedIn throws much more annoying things at me, including stuff from LinkedIn coaches working the aisles of desperate LinkedIn users struggling to survive and, even more abhorrent, posts from translators engaged in the business of selling coaching to other translators, thereby furthering the misconception that freelance translation is going to survive.
- LinkedIn rewards phony narcissistic fluff with visibility, but punishes straight-talk posts by shadow-banning them.
There you have it. It is not a pretty picture, and it shows that, on LinkedIn, there’s much less than meets the eye.
