Tag: Microsoft

What is it with the Microsoft thugs that own and run LinkedIn?

I trashed my account of about five years standing in October and LinkedIn sent me a “we’re sorry to see you go” email. Fine. I don’t need any emails from them, so I trashed the email alias on my company server that I had used as a contact address for that LinkedIn account.

Just today, probably seeing that email to the above-noted address is bouncing, these cyberlouts sent me a “You’re on a roll on LinkedIn” (subject line) email at a gmail address (mea culpa, mea culpa, mea big fucking culpa) I had once used as an address for LinkedIn things with an account I haven’t had for ten years, with a notification bell and number-of-notifications count, trying to get me to sign in (and revive?) the account.

If you click on it, a page pops us trying to get me to sign into that long-gone LinkedIn account.

To ad insult to injury, the email telling me that I’m “on a roll” itself has two introductions to a cumstain trying to sell akiya, of all things, to unsuspecting foreigners, intended targets surely including, but not limited to, self-proclaimed digital nomad hipsters who look forward to interacting with their peers, not realizing that it will be very difficult to find peers in Hachinohe or some other venue that has these lovely properties. Let the nomad beware. But I digress.

I am not thrilled, not excited, and not honored to get this shit sent to me, to borrow the phony formulaic openers self-proclaimed “founders” on LinkedIn often open with.

They have an Unsubscribe link to click on, but I suspect that clicking on it would just notify LinkedIn that there’s “somebody home.” I’ll let this sit for a while. The annoying thing is that this is not an alias address that can be conveniently trashed, but any email from them can be automatically trashed, and I will think of other ways they should be rewarded.

It’s good that the distance of Cyberspace provides the Microsoft people avoidance of accountability and protection from people who would do them physical harm.

Expanded Thoughts on My “LinkedIn Experience”

Executive Summary:  For any freelancer (and not limited to translators) not totally locked into sitting in front of their computer and hoping work arrives, LinkedIn is as useless as tits on a bull. In fact, even (and perhaps particularly) if you are locked into that strategy, LinkedIn is pretty much useless.

As I reported elsewhere, I have trashed my LinkedIn account. In the report of my leaving, I cited just a few annoyances with LinkedIn. Some others, including why it was of no value to me specifically (and to people doing in businesses similar to mine) are presented here

Some uselessness of LinkedIn not directly attributable to Microsoft:

  • Usage of LinkedIn by Japanese individuals and entities is tiny compared to the anglophone world, hence the small number of JA-EN translators I encountered there. One of the reasons I rejoined LinkedIn was because of the lack of online venues with active interaction between Japanese/English translators. LinkedIn did not fill that need.
  • Almost all of the hundreds of connection requests I received (and almost universally ignored) were from people in the Global South, some of them involved in activities not easily discernible from their profiles, but many being translators. Surely they saw my profile and company name and erroneously thought I had translation work to give them; I do not.

Uselessness of LinkedIn directly attributable to Microsoft and its business model:

  • Countless ads for AI systems.
  • Countless ads for jobs training AI systems by annotating data.
  • Many ads for training you to achieve “AI success” by learning how to prompt AI.
  • Incessant promotion by Microsoft itself of AI and AI promoters.
  • Phoniness and bluster are everywhere and rewarded by Microsoft with reach that leads to engagement. These are characterisitically from people claiming to be the best things since sliced bread and also fighting against tremendous odds and never losing. I feel some of these people have serious self-confidence problems, but I digress.
  • AI-generated posts clearly uploaded to farm engagement and often about topics totally unrelated to anything the poster’s profile might indicate that they do when they are not posting AI slop.

Uselessness of LinkedIn attributable to general users:

  • A large portion of users present themselves as consultants, coaches, and trainers.
  • Countless formulaic posts, many starting with the overworked expression of thrill, excitement, or honor about just about anything and everything. They often end with silliness such as “Hi, I’m Danny Deluder, and if you need…”
  • An increasing number of posts that include images stolen and unlawfully republished, probably by people who will conveniently tell you that the image was on the Internet, so it was “public domain.” These people should be beaten about the head and shoulders with a heavy shovel, but I digress.
  • Account owners who reply to every comment to a post they make using AI, easily discoverable from not only the vapid text, but also the lengths of the responses, the dispersion of which often no more than one or two words. It’s as if they told an AI to reply in N words.
  • Incessant posts from “LinkedIn coaches,” purporting to coach you in achieving “LinkedIn success.”
  • Countless posts by people self-identifying as

Uselessness and annoyance of LinkedIn attributable to translator users:

  • Many desperate and delusional translators chanting the “culture mantra,” which claims that, because translation requires an understanding of cultural nuances, humans will not be replaced by AI. These people apparently don’t know or want to know that most translation that is purchased is not affected by culture. Bless their hearts, but I have given up on trying to educate these people.
  • Ads by translators working the aisles of desperate translators and looking to take money from them for coaching.

Annoyance of a specific group related to business in Japan:

  • There is a Japan business group that has a few members who know about Japan and make sensible comments based on the real world, but almost all of the many thousands of members (over 15,000 if I remember correctly) are silent, and the group appears to be generally populated by non-Japanese looking to do business in Japan or, in many cases, just get a cover story to be able to come and live in Japan.
  • Because of the above demographic, there are Japanese members of the group selling services to foreigners trying to acquire visas or residence status in Japan.
  • Again, because of the above demographic, there are complaints that Japan is not fair to foreigners, including some comments about the unfairness of requiring proficiency in Japanese to gain employment. I will write about that particular silly entitlement at another time.

For translators specifically, I can say that, with translation quickly winding down as a realistic activity for most freelancers, the type of clients the few survivable translators will need to acquire are not going to be acquired by having a LinkedIn account or posting there. Many more—and much different—things are going to be required.

Coming to terms with the true nature of Microsoft’s LinkedIn business model

[Update: I trashed by LinkedIn account on October 28, 2025, after the post was uploaded]

Although I am still posting on LinkedIn, it is clear that the platform is not very useful, particularly because of Microsoft’s recent shadow-banning of posts that are not aligned with its business model of promoting AI, rewarding cheerleaders, and punishing people who have the temerity to be brutally honest.

I have recently deleted 130-plus recent pending connection requests. These were mostly from people I don’t know and don’t want to or need to know. Many are in the Global South, and probably a good number of these people 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 its 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, and 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 and in situations from which they will never be able to 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 and cannot be reasoned with, this being the reason for my deleting large amounts of writings for translators, as noted elsewhere.
  • LinkedIn throws much more annoying things at me, including ads and suggested posts from LinkedIn coaches working the aisles of desperate LinkedIn users struggling to survive and, even more abhorrently, posts from translators engaged in the business of selling coaching to other translators, thereby furthering the misconception that freelance translation is going to survive. It’s not.
  • 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.