Besides being full of AI-generated, useless content, the platform is also riddled with dark patterns.

I'm a newcomer, I’d never used LinkedIn before until I joined three months ago. Since then, I've been banned twice and shadow-banned several times.

1) Right after I created my account, I got shadow-banned. My friends couldn’t find me, and my profile wasn’t accessible via direct link. This issue wasn’t resolved until I contacted support; they confirmed that restrictions had been placed on my account and then removed them.

2) I shouldn’t even have to mention this, but as a professional in my field, after that incident I always ended up on the very last pages of search results for keywords related to my field. People without those keywords in their resumes, or whose work isn’t at all related to the field, kept being ranked ahead of me. I can’t say I was deliberately pessimized, but that’s exactly how it appears.

3) Some time later, I decided to get Premium and paid with my own card (issued in another country, with the same name as on my profile and my passport). That’s when I received the first restriction: I was locked out of my account and couldn’t sign in until I contacted support. They made me take a photo of myself and of my passport, and after that they lifted the restrictions and apologized.

4) Everything seemed to be going along normally, yet I remained stuck on the last pages of search, being outranked by completely irrelevant profiles, until I decided to write a post about my own article on Medium. Immediately after publishing the post with a link to Medium, I received a second restriction. I was locked out of my account, couldn’t access my messages or interview invitations, and even missed a call because of this. They once again required me to submit a photo of myself along with a copy of my passport. Although they eventually restored my account, this time the process took 4–5 days, which caused me to miss an interview.

5) Now my profile is accessible via direct link, but I’ve disappeared from search. No one can find me, and hardly anyone visits my page. My post was hidden while support was "sorting out" my account, and I lost all the potential post views it would have gained because it wasn't featured in the recommendations.

All of this happened within the first three months of using LinkedIn. I’ve never seen a more appalling social media, one so full of dark patterns and outright abuse towards its users, forcing them through humiliating identity verification processes and hiding them from search.

Needless to say, I have never violated any of the platform’s rules. I don’t spam, I don’t bother people, and I don’t advertise anything. Meanwhile, my friend, whose account is over five years old—can do whatever he wants. He uses VPNs, changes his profile location several times a week, and switches his VPN location from Dubai to Europe multiple times a day without ever facing any restrictions.

And yes, I completely forgot to add: when your account gets restricted, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a premium user or not — the treatment is equally poor and the response is equally slow.

I’ve never seen a worse social media, and I’d be thrilled if a worthy competitor to LinkedIn ever emerged, I’d be one of the first to join.

BONUS: This content was originally posted on reddit, quickly became popular in the LinkedIn subreddit and was then deleted by moderator who works for M$ (which owns LinkedIn). Frankly, it feels like the whole LinkedIn subreddit is highly censored by him.

user:	nikolamus
created:	March 31, 2024
karma:	6