It’s odd to see how conspiracy fantasies, suspect sources, disinformation and deliberate emotionally provocative or even antagonistic wording are on the rise on my LinkedIn timeline.
I first encountered a QAnon account in a comments section last August, but that person was still many steps away in my network. Now I see things popping up from direct connections and their connections. I had assumed that LinkedIn being tied to your professional reputation would go a long way to prevent such things, but apparently not any longer. In some instances, it’s almost as if people don’t realise they’re doing it, a boiling-a-frog effect of sorts.
One person being called out for some under-informed reactionary content by pointing out that their employer has the capabilities and resources to prove them wrong even responded “leave my employer out of it”. That’s not really possible though, as your employer is in your by-line and accompanies your avatar with every post and comment you make. Seven months after first encountering something like that on my LinkedIn timeline it is now a daily part of my timeline, and all coming from my Dutch network and their connections.
LinkedIn is starting to feel as icky as Facebook did three years ago. Makes me wonder how long LinkedIn will remain a viable tool. I don’t think I will be spending much or any attention on my timeline moving forward, until the moment LinkedIn is as much a failed social platform as others and it’s time to let go of it completely. That doesn’t mean disengaging with the people in my network obviously, but it is not at all my responsibility to help LinkedIn reach a certain level of quality of discourse by trying to counteract the muck. I was an early user of LinkedIn (nr. 8730, look at the source of your profile page and search it for ‘member:’ to find your number) in the spring of 2003, I know there’s already a trickle of people leaving the platform, and I wonder when (not if) I’ll fully join them.
@ton Move to @flockingbird ?
@VictorVenema @flockingbird is dat dan al iets verder dan de ideefase?
@ton @VictorVenema We’re moving forward, but not enough to “move to flockingbird”, no. There’s working software, but far from alpha even. Let alone that it’s running somewhere in production.
@ton Reading your blogpost, I’m wondering if you are in need of a place where there’s a timeline and comments but without the “q-anon”. Or whether you are in need of a place that has no timeline and/or comments at all.
@flockingbird Good question, I don’t know the answer. The timeline at L is ineffective in the same way FB’s is: it does not show me what my contacts are posting, it’s algorithmically manipulating what I see. (evidenced by e.g. getting served week old posts as if new, and posting something to a network of several thousand people being ‘seen’ a few dozen times at most, whereas plenty content _not_ from my direct network is being shown.) Yet, I also see some use for the timeline, .. 1/2