Social Networking – Will Chatham's Blog

February 15, 2025August 9, 2025

LinkedIn is at Peak Enshittifaction

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These are my personal opinions, which exist in an entirely segmented realm of my brain and my existence than that of my employer. They are not associated.

This is a story about the enshittification of LinkedIn. You are probably familiar with it.

I’ve been on LinkedIn for about 20 years. It started as a useful way to demonstrate my work experience, connect with current and past coworkers, and build business relationships. It was useful as a digital calling card of sorts.

At security conferences, I’d quickly pull up the app on my phone and befriend someone I had just met and had a conversation with. We’d keep in touch and Like or comment on each other’s LinkedIn posts.

Admittedly, most of those connections I made would never become anything else. We didn’t continue any real-world conversations or reach out to each other at all. These “friends” just became reminders of a short conversation I once had at a conference or workshop. I started wondering what the use of this site was, yet, everyone seemed to be using it, so I found myself curiously coming back once in a while.

Persistent Outreach

I can’t pick out an exact point in time that it started happening, but there was a noticeable shift in the kinds of connection requests I started getting. Maybe it coincided with my job title changes as they evolved and became more desirable for marketers to reach out to. Maybe it coincided with LinkedIn becoming a marketing person’s fertile playground. I am not sure, but something shifted.

One change I did notice, and I never felt like figuring out why, is that I started getting Followers in addition to people asking me to Connect. Some people would Follow me and then ask to Connect later. LinkedIn never did anything noticeable to explain what this all meant, but it happened.

It was confusing, and I never felt like looking into it, so I just started ignoring them.

Sales Pitches

Everything started turning into sales pitches: requests to “run something by you,” get “10 minutes of your time,” show me an article they’d “really like your opinion on.” All in the name of making a connection –and possible sales lead– to meet a quota in SalesForce (most likely).

They even tried bribery in the form of sending me an Amazon gift card, just to meet with them for 30 minutes and hear their pitch. I know for a fact, based on experience, this would only lead to even more persistent follow-ups, “ticklers”, and pressurized tactics to sell to me.

I stopped going to LinkedIn as much.

Overly Persistent Salespeople

Within the last 2 years, I started getting connection requests alongside immediate follow-ups to my work email, and it became clear that I decided I needed to look into things – or shut down my LinkedIn account. Some setting somewhere must have changed, but I wasn’t sure what.

I was sure, however, that I had never put my work email address into LinkedIn. Yes, it was probably easy to guess based on who I work for, but this cold-calling tactic was sleazy and would immediately turn me off to any reputable vendors, especially when they had be annoyingly persistent by sending me multiple “just let me know if you’d like me to stop bugging you” types of emails.

In short: if you are a salesperson, please don’t do this.

Silent Privacy Changes

The company has implemented some invasive changes over the years, and didn’t bother to tell users – or buried the notices deep in their TOS that no one read. Their lack of privacy by default has always been concerning. Some of these were questionable, others, such as opting you in to AI training, were mind-boggling. There was even a short-lived lawsuit about that.

LinkedIn’s True Enshittification

The true indicator that we had reached the event horizon in the downfall of LinkedIn occurred sometime in the last year.

I logged in one day and saw that posts and comments had turned vitriolic. They had become like Twitter, like the comment section on your local newspaper’s website, or just about any thread on NextDoor these days.

People were making terrible statements with their employer’s name associated with them.

Posting your pronouns was never *required*. Why is it such a problem anyway?

Yes, it coincides with the political climate in the USA and the general climate of intolerant “free speech” that has proliferated everywhere as a result. But in a setting of professional profiles closely tied to employers? Why risk your job, your customer base, or your reputation?

I will just say this about that: we are all humans, we all deserve equal opportunity to live, love, and thrive. You know, that whole “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” thing.

Live and let live. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. A rising tide lifts all boats. You know…basic decency to others.

LinkedIn is now complicit in stifling these pursuits.

I am at a loss for any further words, really. Having left Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter within the last month, I am now shutting down my LinkedIn profile.

— willc

February 2, 2015

Why I Left Facebook For Good

I have quit Facebook for good, in case you came here trying to find out what’s up. Why have I done this?

Facebook made changes to their user agreement on January 30, and I don’t feel OK about them at all. This article, Get Your Loved Ones Off Facebook, factually sums up everything Facebook can do, and does do, with the information it collects about you, and it might give you the same uneasy feeling it gave me.

The information grabbing and sharing Facebook does reaches far and deep, and it’s not limited to what you do while on Facebook itself. Anything you do anywhere on the Internet where a Facebook Like button is present reports your activity back to Facebook. And that means just about everywhere.

“I have nothing to hide”, you say?

The issue here isn’t what we have to hide, it’s maintaining an important right to our freedom — which is the right to privacy, and the right to have a say in how information about us is used. We’ve giving up those rights forever by using Facebook.

I want to quote the part of that article that gave me the biggest heebie-jeebies, because I know most of you won’t actually go read it yourselves. As of 3 days ago:

Facebook is demanding to track what you buy, and your financial information like bank account and credit card numbers. It’s already started sharing data with Mastercard. They’ll use the fact that you stayed on Facebook as “permission” to make deals with all kinds of banks and financial institutions to get your data from them. They’ll call it anonymous, but like they trick your friends to reveal your data to the third-parties with apps, they’ll create loopholes here too.

Facebook is also insisting to track your location via your phone’s GPS, everywhere and all the time. It’ll know extactly who you spend your time with. They’ll know your habits, they’ll know when you call in sick at work, but are really out bowling. “Sal likes 2pm Bowling at Secret Lanes.” They’ll know if you join an addict support group, or go to a psychiatrist, or a psychic, or a mistress. They’ll know how many times you’ve been to the doctor or hospital, and be able to share that with prospective insurers or employers. They’ll know when you’re secretly job hunting, and will sell your endorsement for job sites to your friends and colleagues — you’ll be revealed.

They’ll know everything that can be revealed by your location, and they’ll use it however they want to make a buck.

And — it’ll all be done retrospectively. If you stay on Facebook past January 30th, there’s nothing stopping all of your past location and financial data to get used. They’ll get your past location data from when your friends checked-in with you, and the GPS data stored in photos of you. They’ll pull your old financial records – that embarrasing medicine you bought with your credit card 5 years ago will be added to your profile to be used as Facebook chooses. It will be sold again and again, and likely used against you. It will be shared with governments and be freely available from loads of “third-party” companies who do nothing but sell personal data, and irreversibly eliminate your privacy.

There you have it. You can still find me here and on G+. For now.