[OPINION] LinkedIn's new content strategy
Got a notification from LinkedIn saying "You're one of the few experts who have been invited to collaborate on ..." I got curious and opened up the link.
Apparently, now instead of professional writers being paid to pen down their, usually, cohesive & authentic views, LinkedIn is trying out the idea of generating content using an LLM and then asking for free editorial services from users in exchange for "badges" 🤯 🤦♂️
This is cheap IMO. Even for LinkedIn.
What's happened to the "content team" at LinkedIn!?
Do you still remember when LI would ask you to give access to your address book and then proceed to spam all your friends? This level of scummy behavior is nothing new.
Not surprising. LinkedIn have always been scummy, going back to when they first started and they'd convince people to give them their email accounts and passwords so they could send emails to all their contacts to get them to join. They're also one of only 2 companies that at one point sold my unique email address to spam immediately after joining.
May I ask which was the other company?
Adult Friend Finder lol. Like, I kind of expected it with that company, but not so much LinkedIn.
The jury's out on exactly what happened. Maybe it was cyber crime, and someone had managed to infect a handful of websites, or maybe it was some underhanded commercial venture that certain places signed up to. I just know that my email address was only ever used on that website - the address didn't even technically exist either, I own a domain and make up emails on the fly, which filter through to my actual accounts. I've been doing this for years, and actually very few places compromised my email - which is why LinkedIn and AFF stand out so much.
Incidentally, I later created a new account with LinkedIn with a new email and didn't have this issue. However, I do still get occassional spam - and spam that is related to my career - so apparently there is still some way people can get LinkedIn email addresses.
I get spam to my work account saying that they got my information from LinkedIn. The e-mail I use on linkedin is a spam collection account that I never use for anything real. I check it every couple of months and delete the entire inbox.
The only place they could get my contact information is one of my suppliers has a shitty webpage design with my info listed. Easy for a bot to scrape and sell.
My current theory is that the professional "sales list" data collection companies are running scraped data against Linkedin data and claiming it came from there.
I get e-mails from from companies who want to sell "sales lead" lists to me as well as a few poorly targeted fools who bought the "sales lead" list from them.
LinkedIn is the worst. Scummiest platform bar none and it’s not even close
I actually scoffed when I saw there are official linkedin spambots masquerading as real people that message you and ask you to try LinkedIn Premium.
Would anyone actually believe a real person who doesn't work for LinkedIn is asking you to try LinkedIn?
Dead internet theories proving more and more applicable
You read thing on LinkedIn? Its just for posting bullshit corporate stuff anyway.
So they go from paying people to provide a service, to convincing people providing them a free service on a ""omg you so smart" basis., got it. That makes sense.
Stop training these companies AI for free
I've been getting emails with the subject line, "Your expertise is requested," from LinkedIn for several years now. They definitely know how to pander to their audience!
They're asking lunatics to train the psychologist.
Too late, unfortunately.
Like we need more keyword-optimized trash contant on that shithole of a site.
GenAI could have great use cases for LI (e.g. TLDR of posts/articles), but that won’t make you click on more spam, so we get this.
Anyone remember before LinkedIn when there was a law that people didn’t have to disclose their race on a job application, and how 90% of people ignored that protection and decided to post up their headshot on linked in anyway?
I think you may have slightly misunderstood that law... it says you must not discriminate based on race, not that you should never disclose your race anywhere. I mean, they're gonna see you eventually when you interview anyway.
Yes but at that point they might as well just interview you instead of dismissing on first sight.
There's something to be said about omitting unnecessary details from a job application, to prevent out-of-hand dismissal. But if bias exists it will manifest eventually anyway. If the HR department or management scours the internet for personal details as an excuse to reject someone they've already crossed a line, and a candidate somehow cunning their way into an interview won't change their bias.
Yes, but scoring the internet for negative properties is much more effort than looking at a picture the applicant has attached. Do they really have that much time (and the will) to basically background check every single applicant?
Good point! I just replaced my LI profile photo w/ an abstract image 🍻
I don't use LinkedIn unless I'm looking for a job.
And even then it feels dirty AF!
If I'm gonna be doing freelance editing work for LinkedIn, I'd be charging 125 CAD (90 USD)/hr, 2 hr minimum.
LinkedIn only helped a little with my job search, now I just like and re-share railway news, that's it.
I've been getting a lot of these. It was obviously low effort on LinkedIn's part, so I've been giving the same amount of effort by using chatGPT to write my contributions. Garbage in, garbage out.
Well, they are owned by Microsoft after all... Ramming AI into everything is all they've done in the last year or two (see edge, office etc).
If anything, I think it is a way to teach their AI how to answer more complicated questions. The AI may have access to the knowledge, but it doesn't understand how to process it. This gives the AI feedback on what is important in cases where the programmers don't have the knowledge base to correct issues.
Literally recycled garbage.