Tag: social media

Get real (again)!

The Internet and social media in particular, which essentially guarantee anonymity and prevents accountability, have pretty much destroyed trust. When the current torrent of AI-generated text and images is added to the picture, trust can safely be declared dead, and it shows no signs of being resurrected. 

This technology was exciting and promising at the outset some decades ago, but it has gone astray, led off the path by the promise to platform providers of fabulous wealth and by the arguably justified confidence that the ignorance and inaction of people sleeping at the wheel, including both legislators and user-victims, would protect their gold mine.

Given the poor prognosis for recovery, I think it’s time to retreat from the digital world and advance (back) into the real world, and the real world is not on your iPhone screen or computer display.

Get real!

The Demise of Authenticity

Is authenticity no longer a “thing?”

I encountered a conversation on LinkedIn yesterday where the original post was clearly written in ChatGPTese or a dialect thereof, and every single comment was responded to in the same ChatGPTese. 

When I questioned whether the original post and the responses to numerous apparently human-created comments were being written by a carbon-based entity or something else, I received a quick response, also in ChatGPTese. It didn’t at all read like there was a human behind it.

Authenticity is becoming rare, both on LinkedIn and on other social media platforms. The only input needed from a carbon-based participant is a prompt to a silicon-based assistant, then you just post the result.

Who could tell the difference? Well, just about anyone more intelligent than a starfish and who has not been blinded by the AI hype.

And now, a moment of silence in memory of our dear departed friend, Authenticity.

Sluggish Microsoft AI?

It took Microsoft almost 30 minutes recently to start shadow-banning a post I made on its LinkedIn platform, reporting what is happening in the war in Europe, coupled with a common-sense suggestion of what needs to be done (essential, to achieve a solution to the Russian problem, in form of a decisive defeat of Russia and removal of their ability to continue their aggression).

I suppose the shadow-banning is understandable, since Microsoft continues to promote the fantasy that its LinkedIn platform is a useful business platform, rather than what it actually is, just another social media platform, created and operated for the same purpose as other social media platforms.

A company of the stature of Microsoft, however, should speed up its AI-driven shadow-banning so as to more effectively prevent this kind of unpleasant content about the real world from reaching its founder and creator users, who might not be excited, thrilled, or honored to see such stuff.

They might be more interested in turning the page to embark on a new chapter, continuing to elevate their journey and, on the way, opening doors that lead to exciting places in the LinkedIn Phony Kingdom.

I wonder if Microsoft’s AI would have been able to figure out the sarcasm in the above paragraph. Perhaps, but it is irrelevant; Microsoft is basically the same as operators of other social media platforms.

What LinkedIn Has Become: Taking silly and vapid to a new level.

Years ago I was under the impression that LinkedIn was a platform where people searching for employment could interact with potential employers. Silly me to believe that the platform would not evolve into what it is today.

Today, the platform is awash with self-congratulatory posts from people who are likely desperate to find their next “role.” This makes me wonder just it was when a job became a role. I guess the term position needed to be “elevated,” and I think it was some time after problems became issues and considerably after the personnel department was rebirthed to HR. But I digress.

Another annoyance that LinkedIn provides is the countless self-styled coaches, many selling advice on how to “succeed on LinkedIn.” My guess is that many are themselves desperate to succeed and are working the aisles of other desperate LinkedIn users.

Then there are the AI evangelicals, promoting collections of computer code running in silicon-based entities as the answer to all the problems…uh, issues…faced by carbon-based entities.

Quite central to most of these vapid posts is the use of a blinding variety of buzzwords and buzzphrases, devoid of any identifiable substance, but trendy nonetheless.

It appears that substance takes a backseat to fluff on LinkedIn, which is rapidly coming to rival all other social media platforms, although perhaps without the same level of criminal activity (yet, anyway), and no single identifiable Trumpic sycophant at the helm.

One algorithm leads to another.

[Originally posted on LinkedIn on January 16, 2025]

Disclaimer: I don’t have a LinkedIn account to find clients or look for a job, since my client demographic is essentially absent from LinkedIn, and I am not on LinkedIn looking for a job.

Now, with that out of the way:

The often-heard claim that LinkedIn is a business-related platform is delusional if we are talking about people seeking work.

There are people looking for employment on LinkedIn, but all that Microsoft’s LinkedIn is doing is using their algorithm to give users the opportunity to face yet other algorithms, operated by what they think are potential employers.

They will need first to game the Microsoft LinkedIn algorithm and then will further need to game a hiring algorithm to even get an interview, which apparently is a rare occurrence.

Those games are generally meaningless, and desperation and delusion are the only reasons many people hang onto LinkedIn, which is demonstrably just another social media platform, owned and run by Microsoft for much the same reasons Zuckerberg owns and runs Facebook and the reasons Musk owns and runs X. And we know those reasons, don’t we? Enough said.