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There's a lot of hate on LinkedIn here, sorry to say I find it a highly useful tool and it appears to be the defacto way most companies hire so embrace the mons

by kfarr 6y ago

There's a lot of hate on LinkedIn here, sorry to say I find it a highly useful tool and it appears to be the defacto way most companies hire so embrace the monster or some other pithy phrase but you get the idea

tempsy 6y ago
But the point of this post isn’t that LinkedIn isn’t useful, it’s that it does have value but at the same time takes advantage of your need for their service in a hostage-like way by using lots of dark patterns and psychological tricks to get you to do things like pay for it and put up with being stalked by unsavory people (particularly if you’re female). It’s a story about how a useful service that is difficult to quit for professional reasons takes full advantage of that dynamic to get away with doing really annoying or awful things.
- devtosales 6y ago
  What? It’s just an online CV which has got me all of my jobs except my very first one. There are no dark patterns if you only engage with it as that.
  - tempsy 6y ago
    I'm not talking about whether you individually choose to ignore the bad parts. I'm saying that LinkedIn takes advantage of your need to be on their site whether you actually want to or not to introduce some very annoying features that they know will not churn you because, again, you "need" to be on it. The fact that certain individuals are more deft at ignoring or blocking or turning off the annoying parts of the service does not change the dynamic at all.
- loraa 6y ago
  The stalking thing did come up quite a bit but unfortunately this does often come back to the not so professional profile pictures.
ojnabieoot 6y ago
There are many features that make LinkedIn a good tool for professional networking, but as a social media platform LinkedIn has a hugely problematic culture - far worse than Twitter. While I think LinkedIn’s issues are best understood as symptoms of larger issues in corporate / middle-class culture, the article is on-point.

by kfarr 6y ago

tempsy 6y ago

But the point of this post isn’t that LinkedIn isn’t useful, it’s that it does have value but at the same time takes advantage of your need for their service in a hostage-like way by using lots of dark patterns and psychological tricks to get you to do things like pay for it and put up with being stalked by unsavory people (particularly if you’re female). It’s a story about how a useful service that is difficult to quit for professional reasons takes full advantage of that dynamic to get away with doing really annoying or awful things.

devtosales 6y ago
What? It’s just an online CV which has got me all of my jobs except my very first one. There are no dark patterns if you only engage with it as that.
- tempsy 6y ago
  I'm not talking about whether you individually choose to ignore the bad parts. I'm saying that LinkedIn takes advantage of your need to be on their site whether you actually want to or not to introduce some very annoying features that they know will not churn you because, again, you "need" to be on it. The fact that certain individuals are more deft at ignoring or blocking or turning off the annoying parts of the service does not change the dynamic at all.
loraa 6y ago
The stalking thing did come up quite a bit but unfortunately this does often come back to the not so professional profile pictures.

ojnabieoot 6y ago

There are many features that make LinkedIn a good tool for professional networking, but as a social media platform LinkedIn has a hugely problematic culture - far worse than Twitter. While I think LinkedIn’s issues are best understood as symptoms of larger issues in corporate / middle-class culture, the article is on-point.