Since a year or so the deterioration of the LinkedIn timeline has been very visible to me. Next to an increasing number of people sharing things as if LinkedIn is Facebook, the timeline is not under the control of the user, and presents algorithmically determined items. Sometimes that results in seeing things days or weeks after they were posted when I would have liked to see them the day they were posted, but instead got the rants of someone else. The only way one can shape the LinkedIn timeline is by removing people from it. So I did, and removed all people from it. I came to the conclusion that I’d rather have no LinkedIn timeline, and use it as it was in the past, as a digitised contact list. Of course that brings my LinkedIn experience back to the place where it was when Jyri Engestrom predicted its demise if it didn’t introduce an object of sociality in April 2005. I’ve been using LinkedIn since June 2003 (user nr. 8730), and the barebones ‘digital rolodex’ actually serves me well, to see the background of someone I meet, and to allow others to see the same about me. From now on I can skip the timeline that LinkedIn serves me as a default, and engage with people in my network, and the things they share on my own terms and initiative, seeking them out when I want. Next to keeping my own notes.
To get to an empty timeline I had to unfollow everyone I’m connected to. Which is not a simple thing to do, as LinkedIn provides no easy option to unfollow large amounts of people, and requires you to unfollow everyone one by one. Of course there are work arounds and that is what I used, with a snippet of code in my browser console.
LinkedIn can be nice and quiet, with everyone unfollowed
@ton oh, Ton, how will we form business synergies now?
Social media-free rolodex. zylstra.org/blog/2021/09/e…
A pretty regular week, with nice weather during the weekend.
This week I
Started preparing for a training on the use of data w.r.t. corruption and integrity, which I will provide in two weeks time for an international group of government officials and NGO employees from around the world
Prepared two presentations on the European legal framework for data
Had the weekly client meetings
Got about half way with replacing Flickr embeds (half way in terms of postings, not images)
Sat in on an interesting presentation on energy transition by Arash Aazami, which I need to look for online and rewatch
Started ordening and reading the EU Green Deal legal package, to find the connections with the EU legal framework for data.
Met with Y’s teacher face to face for a conversation about how Y is doing
Couldn’t make our monthly all hands meeting, this time actually face to face in Amsterdam, but did join the group for the end of the afternoon and a shared Indian dinner.
Gave the two presentations I prepared earlier in the week
Took care of Y for a full day, as she had two days of while her teacher was going on a training
Removed my LinkedIn timeline
Decided on a date for a next Dutch Obsidian users meet-up, on October 9th
Went to the frame maker with E and Y to pick up two framed photos by Elliott Erwitt, two large posters we bought at the Louisiana museum in the summer, and the especially beuatifully framed Hockney print by the RA for E’s birthday.
Gave all the newly framed artwork a place in our home.
As the weather was very nice today, I spent time in the garden doing some pruning.
Picasso’s mother and child, poster of the Louisiana exhibition Mor! The other Louisiana poster we got framed was an A0 sized poster of ‘Dagen Efter’ by Mamma Andersson
After a two year hiatus, Luis Suarez is blogging again. It was a pleasant surprise to see his voice resurface again in my feed reader in recent weeks. Just like it was two years ago when he resurfaced after a three year hiatus. Luis has been in my feed reader since when he started blogging in 2005 or thereabouts.
In his first new posting he describes the impact on himself and on our ways of working of the pandemic, as well as how he was very active in closed group spaces where people would ask him where to find more of his writings. His blog would be the logical answer, except he hadn’t written there in a good while. So back to the mothership it is. Home Sweet Home!
His last few postings are about the changing experiences one has on Twitter (I and II) and LinkedIn, and I can only echo his sentiment there (although in general I’ve always felt less enthusiastic about Twitter, seeing it as a step down both from IRC and Jaiku in terms of affordances.) Similar contemplations led me to unfollow everyone to clear out my LinkedIn timeline.
Looking forward to renewed distributed conversations on the open web with you, Luis! Blog on!
Hi, Ton,
I received your pingback to your blog post shared above around LinkedIn and I can share plenty of the sentiment you have described above. In fact, if I were to write about all of the things I find horrifying and excruciating about LinkedIn, it would never end! However, this quote of yours: ‘the timeline is not under the control of the user, and presents algorithmically determined items’ is one of the main reasons as to why I have followed a similar path as I have described in this blog post http://www.elsua.net/2022/06/17/how-to-stop-linkedins-toxic-algorithmic-manipulation/
Being ‘served’ content by an obscured, opaque and rather obnoxious algorithm that doesn’t have a clue about what my interests and wants are, and with which I can’t do anything to improve it, is a no-go for me. I tried hard to make it work for me for about 4 years, but I just had enough with the non-sense, so I will be following a similar approach to yours. I have started to do a massive unfollow and once I reach 0 it will be down to a rolodex function with the odd reaction here and there. But, fresh, new content? No, thanks! That’s going into my blog, as I decided to stop feeding another walled garden I have never been able to control and move back to what we should have never left in the first place. The Open Social Web!
Blog on!