I'd love to be able to filter the feed so it only shows me actual posts by my connections. I do not care about comments my connections made on strangers' posts, and I surely do not care about posts by strangers that my connections 'liked'.
I'm not at my computer, but I've got such a thing. It's a ViolentMonkey script, something like LinkedIn Sponsor Block or similar. Does just what you need.
Right, there are real posts from people I know hiding amongst the crap of promoted and suggested content. Not much, but it's there. It would be a shame to miss something from someone reaching out after a layoff or posting a job position at their company.
My feed is filled with startup/VC/recruiter people liking vibe-orientated junk economics or junk science more than AI. Would love to see a browser like Orion or UBlock Origin just build this in as a feature.
Or, and I know this is novel to the subliterate Wall Street types, just show me my network. I'll even give up on chronological feed if they'll just show me the people I want to see. I don't care what an HR Recruiter for a regional organic pet supply company in western Canada has to say about crypto.
I used to waste lots of time scrolling LinkedIn, I don’t really know why as it was never great but sometimes you learned something interesting.
Now I find it the opposite of addictive because of how bad it is. It’s just AI slop, both the copy and the pictures, there’s virtually no hope of anything engaging. Maybe it’s just me, it feels like AI has broken their algorithm, there’s nothing at all worth showing. Even the stupid business parables are all worse because they’re just Claudeslop.
Anyway what I find most interesting is I recently signed up for twitter for work (to like some posts in a campaign). I hadn’t looked at twitter in years, but found now it’s almost exactly the same as LinkedIn (the “for you”) part, it’s just inane AI engagement farming that is so uninteresting you don’t want to scroll for more.
Anyway, that’s dead internet theory, I think they’re both done (either that or the algorithms know me really well and just recognize my unadmitted love of AI slop about tips for getting cheap airfare or something)
Heh, maybe if that had been thought of earlier. Meanwhile what I didwas just delete my linkedin account. Not much good could come of it anymore anyway I don't think.
It’s actually a great data set, knowing what job and background people have, and who they know. If you’re looking for a job or selling something this is amazing data for figuring out who to talk to.
All the surrounding stuff is useless, the feed, the job postings, the ability to share, etc. That’s all just to keep them top of mind and their dau count up I think .
I missed out on the heydey of LinkedIn tech hiring frenzy, because I was just doing my work (on a very small, super-effective team), and didn't want to be on sketchy LinkedIn. Then an SF colleague told me what I had been missing out on, and that other people were job-hopping constantly, and making many times more than I was making.
That job market era is past, but now I think of LinkedIn as a serendipity lottery ticket. Because you're on LinkedIn, some founder or hiring manager or legitimate recruiter doing a keyword search stumbles upon you, some past colleague can see you're available, etc.
(Though the last recruiter I agreed to a call with there sounded possibly delegated to LLM, then said his colleague would be doing the call. On the recruiting firm's Web site, I saw the colleague's title was Customer Success, so the recruiter wasn't even willing in invest in the call like I was. Also on their site, they had an infographic example placement success... and the featured example was into what might be the most infamous tech company right now. I bowed out of that one last week, but I'm keeping the LinkedIn lottery ticket.)
I use it to keep tabs on competitors, finding out what potential prospects are posting, mapping out relations between companies in our focused industries, etc. Basically for new business signals.
It’s a great additional channel to find recent info on companies and people. Sites are usually stale, people post a ton of stuff on LinkedIn. We don’t get our clients through linkedin, but it gives our salespeople better angles to attack.
We used it for recruiting but it’s not great for that, tons of low quality replies. We never reach out, i personally hate that.
It's more or less expected that candidates have one, at least in tech/eng jobs I've looked at. For some, the field to enter your profile URL is required in the form.
Been adding ad-hoc OFX export to more than one bank's site using Greasemonkey for exactly this. Scroll the page, suck up the transactions, I no longer need to wait on the bank to do shit properly. I am reasonably sure if someone can bundle all of these pieces up, there's a small subscription service in letting people configure the web through a chat window.
I used to maintain a project called LikeBuster back when Facebook started polluting your news feed with people's likes in. It was a lesson in how brittle DOM-based filtering was. Makes me miss times when a few well-placed CSS selectors could drastically improve your web experience.
Per Cory Doctorow, this is exactly why every website is trying to push you to their app -- so that they have legal grounds to prosecute anyone who tries to find workarounds to the constant enshittification.
2. Unfollow every connection (N.B., this doesn't mean remove connection, just that you won't see their posts).
If you do this, it wipes your feed clean and will literally display "Something went wrong" where your feed used to be.
This has made LinkedIn truly blissful for me, but this only seems to work on the LinkedIn web app on my PC. Doesn't work on the mobile web app for some reason...
I recently got what I hope to be my last job ever, and I cannot wait to banish linkedin to the netherrealm forever. It's just so creepy, I don't want people to be able to find my face, where I work every day, and whole job and education history when they google my name.
I honestly understand the idea but removing the entire feed might be a bit much at least for a job seeker. I've certainly found about interesting companies, fellowships, jobs, etc randomly on the feed so I wouldn't want it gone entirely. Granted any sort of "it's tailored to who you follow" is kinda BS so basically don't think too much when using linkedin might be the best way to use it
I’ll never understand why LinkedIn is making these product choices. They have a legitimate moat, I and basically every other tech worker is exclusively on LinkedIn. They devalue their product by chasing engagement in service of ads, while allowing things like juicebox to scrape and steal their most valuable asset.
This is short term, make it to next quarter thinking. You couldn’t pay me to use their AI product, they should focus on making that actually work, get the slop out of the feed, and be professional and distinct from TikTok, Facebook, instagram etc.
I've been experimenting with posting on LinkedIn and realized what the deal is. Basically it's a lot less hostile than other social media for people with no pre-existing audience: on Twitter you can post and nobody cares, in HN you can submit and nobody cares, on Substack you can write a personal blog post and google doesn't care to show it in search results, on Youtube you make a video and nobody cares, etc. (And let's set aside even more difficult stuff like making a podcast and hoping anyone cares)
Meanwhile on LinkedIn if you post your thoughts on something, share an article, or mention a project they give you a good push to at least a few dozen people and you may see a like or two from a 3rd degree contact(!) within minutes. And then they aggressively SEO the feed too so now if someone Googles your name your LinkedIn posts will show up
What’s the best possible outcome from posting on LinkedIn? I personally think it’s a poor place to “build your brand” - it’s mostly your friends or existing professional acquaintances that see your stuff, and whether you’re looking for a job or trying to do business development, those people are rarely your target market. I think the engagement is better because you have a natural “following” of all your friends / colleagues, but it’s meaningless.
This is par for the course for Li, I’ve found it seems to be about activity or making you feel like you’re doing something, without actually getting any value and in reality just scrolling social media.
YMMV of course, maybe there are real people who’ve had great value from posting?
It sounds like a modern Twilight Zone premise. There's one social network left where any engagement is possible, but it's the one where nothing worthwhile is being said.
Agreed. I don't have adblockers installed atm, so used this as an opportunity to experiment with a smaller extension. Good to know for the future though, thank you!
I've been using a simple uBlock Origin filter, and it works OK only. LinkedIn work very hard to stop people scraping, which means they regularly seem to shift the structure of their layout, and descriptors are weird. If this guy did a regularly-updated FF extension, I'd probably preferentially install that.
I'd love to be able to filter the feed so it only shows me actual posts by my connections. I do not care about comments my connections made on strangers' posts, and I surely do not care about posts by strangers that my connections 'liked'.
Anyone know if such a tool exists?
Built one 6 years ago that I gave up on https://github.com/mihailthebuilder/simplyfeed. The problem was that so many posts were filtered out that the feed would just show up empty.
Tells more about the Linkedin-feed than the tool.
Sounds like a great feature!
I'm not at my computer, but I've got such a thing. It's a ViolentMonkey script, something like LinkedIn Sponsor Block or similar. Does just what you need.
Right, there are real posts from people I know hiding amongst the crap of promoted and suggested content. Not much, but it's there. It would be a shame to miss something from someone reaching out after a layoff or posting a job position at their company.
I use this: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/linkoff-filter-and-...
My feed is filled with startup/VC/recruiter people liking vibe-orientated junk economics or junk science more than AI. Would love to see a browser like Orion or UBlock Origin just build this in as a feature.
Or, and I know this is novel to the subliterate Wall Street types, just show me my network. I'll even give up on chronological feed if they'll just show me the people I want to see. I don't care what an HR Recruiter for a regional organic pet supply company in western Canada has to say about crypto.
> My feed is filled with startup/VC/recruiter people liking vibe-orientated junk economics or junk science more than AI.
so basically it's /r/linkedinlunatics/ ?
Just add this to uBlock origin:
``` linkedin.com##main#workspace section:has(div[componentkey*="container-update-list_mainFeed-lazy"]) ```
or via stylus
new style for feed -> paste:
[data-testid="mainFeed"]{display:none}
in full:
/* ==UserStyle==
@name www.linkedin.com/feed
@namespace github.com/openstyles/stylus
@version 1.0.0
@description A new userstyle
@author Me
==/UserStyle== */
@-moz-document url-prefix("https://www.linkedin.com/feed/")
{
But then how will I possibly know that someone in my network achieved a new highscore in puzzle solving??
Games, on what was (initially) a professional networking site. Late stage of the platform.
My version of a feed blocker was to delete my account. Realized i was getting no value by being there, finally just let it go.
This is still my preferred way on Safari, no extensions needed. It uses custom style sheets in the Safari > settings menu. https://x.com/BlancoTech/status/2061521432085955039
I had to mark LinkedIns marketing and notification emails as spam and block their sender since all their opt out toggles are broken
I used to waste lots of time scrolling LinkedIn, I don’t really know why as it was never great but sometimes you learned something interesting.
Now I find it the opposite of addictive because of how bad it is. It’s just AI slop, both the copy and the pictures, there’s virtually no hope of anything engaging. Maybe it’s just me, it feels like AI has broken their algorithm, there’s nothing at all worth showing. Even the stupid business parables are all worse because they’re just Claudeslop.
Anyway what I find most interesting is I recently signed up for twitter for work (to like some posts in a campaign). I hadn’t looked at twitter in years, but found now it’s almost exactly the same as LinkedIn (the “for you”) part, it’s just inane AI engagement farming that is so uninteresting you don’t want to scroll for more.
Anyway, that’s dead internet theory, I think they’re both done (either that or the algorithms know me really well and just recognize my unadmitted love of AI slop about tips for getting cheap airfare or something)
The best Linkedin feature these days is the intrusive "DOWNLOAD OUR APP" popup on mobile. That makes me close the tab & browser 10/10 times.
Heh, maybe if that had been thought of earlier. Meanwhile what I didwas just delete my linkedin account. Not much good could come of it anymore anyway I don't think.
So many jobs have a LinkedIn page as a required field
Why do people use LinkedIn? I think I had an account for 10 years and all I got was recruiter spam.
Coworkers all use it. For what I don’t know. None of them were hired from there.
It’s actually a great data set, knowing what job and background people have, and who they know. If you’re looking for a job or selling something this is amazing data for figuring out who to talk to.
All the surrounding stuff is useless, the feed, the job postings, the ability to share, etc. That’s all just to keep them top of mind and their dau count up I think .
I missed out on the heydey of LinkedIn tech hiring frenzy, because I was just doing my work (on a very small, super-effective team), and didn't want to be on sketchy LinkedIn. Then an SF colleague told me what I had been missing out on, and that other people were job-hopping constantly, and making many times more than I was making.
That job market era is past, but now I think of LinkedIn as a serendipity lottery ticket. Because you're on LinkedIn, some founder or hiring manager or legitimate recruiter doing a keyword search stumbles upon you, some past colleague can see you're available, etc.
(Though the last recruiter I agreed to a call with there sounded possibly delegated to LLM, then said his colleague would be doing the call. On the recruiting firm's Web site, I saw the colleague's title was Customer Success, so the recruiter wasn't even willing in invest in the call like I was. Also on their site, they had an infographic example placement success... and the featured example was into what might be the most infamous tech company right now. I bowed out of that one last week, but I'm keeping the LinkedIn lottery ticket.)
I use it to keep tabs on competitors, finding out what potential prospects are posting, mapping out relations between companies in our focused industries, etc. Basically for new business signals.
It’s a great additional channel to find recent info on companies and people. Sites are usually stale, people post a ton of stuff on LinkedIn. We don’t get our clients through linkedin, but it gives our salespeople better angles to attack.
We used it for recruiting but it’s not great for that, tons of low quality replies. We never reach out, i personally hate that.
It's more or less expected that candidates have one, at least in tech/eng jobs I've looked at. For some, the field to enter your profile URL is required in the form.
Ew. What purpose does that serve?
It's for the ATS to check out the candidates and scrape attributes to rank them.
The web, at least on the interface side, is really easy to customize these days. Agents are pretty good at spinning out Chrome extensions.
e.g. you can easily reduce the intensity of feed-based UI by removing thumbnails, grayscaling, etc.
100%! Being able to tailor this made the website a much more pleasant experience for myself. Planning to experiment with other sites as well
Been adding ad-hoc OFX export to more than one bank's site using Greasemonkey for exactly this. Scroll the page, suck up the transactions, I no longer need to wait on the bank to do shit properly. I am reasonably sure if someone can bundle all of these pieces up, there's a small subscription service in letting people configure the web through a chat window.
I used to maintain a project called LikeBuster back when Facebook started polluting your news feed with people's likes in. It was a lesson in how brittle DOM-based filtering was. Makes me miss times when a few well-placed CSS selectors could drastically improve your web experience.
Per Cory Doctorow, this is exactly why every website is trying to push you to their app -- so that they have legal grounds to prosecute anyone who tries to find workarounds to the constant enshittification.
http://fbpurity.com/
There's another way to get this exact same effect without a chrome extension and requires two steps:
1. Change your "Preferred feed view" to "Most recent posts" here: https://www.linkedin.com/mypreferences/d/settings/preferred-...
2. Unfollow every connection (N.B., this doesn't mean remove connection, just that you won't see their posts).
If you do this, it wipes your feed clean and will literally display "Something went wrong" where your feed used to be.
This has made LinkedIn truly blissful for me, but this only seems to work on the LinkedIn web app on my PC. Doesn't work on the mobile web app for some reason...
This is what I do, but on the phone, the iOS app at least, it respects the unfollow preferences and displays that "Something went wrong" message.
I guess I really should download the iOS app when browsing LinkedIn on my phone then! Thanks for the tip.
This is awesome. I love tools like these.
Reminds me of DF (Distraction Free) YouTube but for LinkedIn. Tools like these make these platforms usable for me. The feeds are too addictive
I recently got what I hope to be my last job ever, and I cannot wait to banish linkedin to the netherrealm forever. It's just so creepy, I don't want people to be able to find my face, where I work every day, and whole job and education history when they google my name.
I honestly understand the idea but removing the entire feed might be a bit much at least for a job seeker. I've certainly found about interesting companies, fellowships, jobs, etc randomly on the feed so I wouldn't want it gone entirely. Granted any sort of "it's tailored to who you follow" is kinda BS so basically don't think too much when using linkedin might be the best way to use it
I’ll never understand why LinkedIn is making these product choices. They have a legitimate moat, I and basically every other tech worker is exclusively on LinkedIn. They devalue their product by chasing engagement in service of ads, while allowing things like juicebox to scrape and steal their most valuable asset.
This is short term, make it to next quarter thinking. You couldn’t pay me to use their AI product, they should focus on making that actually work, get the slop out of the feed, and be professional and distinct from TikTok, Facebook, instagram etc.
Most people genuinely want that, even if they say they don't. It's the only reason I can think of why low-value posts get so many likes.
this was much needed, thank you.. the feed is a massive distraction
These ublock rules work badly, but OK, if you don't want to install an extension:
www.linkedin.com##[data-lazy-mount-id]
www.linkedin.com##div[data-lazy-mount-id][data-component-type="LazyColumn"]
LinkedIn makes this hard for some reason, and keeps updating how it works. The above is functional but also breaks some stuff.
My suspicion is that it's by design, to fight scrapers and extensions like this one.
I've been experimenting with posting on LinkedIn and realized what the deal is. Basically it's a lot less hostile than other social media for people with no pre-existing audience: on Twitter you can post and nobody cares, in HN you can submit and nobody cares, on Substack you can write a personal blog post and google doesn't care to show it in search results, on Youtube you make a video and nobody cares, etc. (And let's set aside even more difficult stuff like making a podcast and hoping anyone cares)
Meanwhile on LinkedIn if you post your thoughts on something, share an article, or mention a project they give you a good push to at least a few dozen people and you may see a like or two from a 3rd degree contact(!) within minutes. And then they aggressively SEO the feed too so now if someone Googles your name your LinkedIn posts will show up
What’s the best possible outcome from posting on LinkedIn? I personally think it’s a poor place to “build your brand” - it’s mostly your friends or existing professional acquaintances that see your stuff, and whether you’re looking for a job or trying to do business development, those people are rarely your target market. I think the engagement is better because you have a natural “following” of all your friends / colleagues, but it’s meaningless.
This is par for the course for Li, I’ve found it seems to be about activity or making you feel like you’re doing something, without actually getting any value and in reality just scrolling social media.
YMMV of course, maybe there are real people who’ve had great value from posting?
It sounds like a modern Twilight Zone premise. There's one social network left where any engagement is possible, but it's the one where nothing worthwhile is being said.
I'd built a small extension for myself to ignore posts that included words like thrilled, excited, and so on.
Should block the puzzle games whatever fuck that is on the right too
This could be a simple filter in uBlock Origin, no need for another extension.
Agreed. I don't have adblockers installed atm, so used this as an opportunity to experiment with a smaller extension. Good to know for the future though, thank you!
I've been using a simple uBlock Origin filter, and it works OK only. LinkedIn work very hard to stop people scraping, which means they regularly seem to shift the structure of their layout, and descriptors are weird. If this guy did a regularly-updated FF extension, I'd probably preferentially install that.