The fall (and fall) of LinkedIn

Off late, people who has been on LinkedIn for at least a few years might have noticed the quality of posts has deteriorated substantially.

As a matter of fact, it is deteriorating more and more with each passing day.
Nowadays it is really difficult to differentiate LinkedIn from say Facebook when you look at your wall. Actually, in some ways – it is worse than Facebook.

However, before I delve into this topic – let me clarify something, I am from India so most of my connections on LinkedIn are from India (well at lest 99%). So, people living other countries may not have the same experience.

For a start LinkedIn has now become a steady supply of quackery on Covid cures and prevention as well as fake news. It is strange that LinkedIn does not have any mechanism to track and stop these posts. While Facebook as well as Twitter both has such mechanisms in place (although their bias is well known, but at least they have something in place). Now the problem with LinkedIn is that when you see these posts from ‘reputed’ people – they are bound to have a much more effect on you than a random guy on Twitter or Facebook.

One more thing, that actually irritates me even more is the ‘politicization’ of LinkedIn. Now there are quite a lot of posts in LinkedIn which are plain and simple political – like who should be the next PM of India? This is actually the most common poll as of now! Does such polls have any place on LinkedIn ? Or asking you to select your favourite leader from a photograph – which almost always have Ratan Tata & Narendra Modi among others. Or how TMC defeated BJP in West Bengal etc etc etc! Exactly what are these posts / polls doing on LinkedIn ? They are ok on social platforms like Twitter or Facebook. Do they have any relevance of any kind for your professional growth ? I seriously doubt it!
What is even strange is most of these posts are made by people having thousands of followers (unlike FB / Twitter, it is quite an achievement on LinkedIn) who claim to be ‘mentor’ / ‘coach’ / ‘influencer’ and what not! One can only feel pity for people who are coached/ mentored or influenced by them.

The root cause for this, which I believe is that after Twitter and Facebook the Indian politicians have suddenly discovered LinkedIn. Now you will find a whole array of Indian politicians (from Tejaswi Surya to Arvind Kejriwal to Kiran Bedi) on the platform, publicising their ideology and what not. So, needless to say – they come with their set of ‘followers’ to further pollute the environment. Another thing I also find quite irritating is the Government employees (Indian) on LinkedIn. Most if not all Government employees in India don’t care about their professional growth or anything of that sort. They join a Government job and retire from it, does not matter if they get a career boost in their life or not.

Then the question is, why are the on LinkedIn ? Well, the truth remains that they consider LinkedIn just like any other social media platform like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. So they are here to spread their political messages or satisfy their political bosses (in case of Government Employees – you will only find highly ranked employees, in case you thought otherwise), which to be honest is a shame.
The least LinkedIn can do is not allow such people on-board. Else soon LinkedIn will become just like Facebook. Actually it has become, and in some ways it is much worse (there is no fact check available on LinkedIn, for a start). You can get away with a lot on LinkedIn, which you can’t on Twitter or even Facebook! But yes, if you raise voice against your high profile employer – you are bound to get banned!
I am just sharing some posts on LinkedIn A SUPPOSEDLY PROFESSIONAL NETWORK for the PROFESSIONALS, and want you to decide – do they have a place in LinkedIn?

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