LinkedIn: A Bullshit Factory in a Business Suit

LinkedIn can make an ordinary Tuesday sound like a Nobel Prize acceptance ceremony.

A meeting becomes a leadership breakthrough. A sandwich becomes a lesson in resilience. A sales pitch arrives wrapped in gratitude. Everyone is humbled, honoured and apparently changing the world.

The performance would be harmless if professional reputation were just entertainment. People use this platform to choose consultants, evaluate candidates, find clients and make decisions involving real money.

That makes manufactured credibility a business problem.

The Applause Has a Manufacturing Process

On March 13, 2026, LinkedIn publicly described its action against engagement pods and automated comments.

Engagement pods are coordinated groups that like, comment on and share posts to inflate their visibility. LinkedIn says this activity undermines trust and violates its rules. The company described removing groups associated with these behaviours and warning participating members about possible restrictions.

It also acknowledged that automated comments can flood discussions and crowd out useful contributions.

The implication is uncomfortable: some of the applause beneath professional content is being organised or generated.

For a buyer, recruiter or potential partner, a busy comment section can look like independent endorsement. Coordinated engagement compromises that signal.

An impressive audience still leaves the important questions unanswered. What did this person deliver? Under what conditions? Can a client confirm the result? Does the work hold up when someone examines it?

A hundred variations of “Great insight!” answer none of them.

The Cleanup Confirms the Problem

A day earlier, on March 12, LinkedIn announced feed changes intended to reduce recycled content, repetitive posts and engagement bait. It also described efforts to curb automated conversations and make engagement pods ineffective.

Those measures deserve credit. They address problems LinkedIn itself has identified.

They also expose how badly professional discussion can be diluted by content designed to extract a reaction. A useful network needs more than an endless supply of people asking strangers to applaud them.

The editorial criticism is straightforward: professional reputation becomes harder to judge when substantive work has to compete with manufactured social proof.

LinkedIn’s response should be assessed by how effectively useful contributions become easier to find.

A Million Clicks Against the Slop

In a subsequent public update, Hari Srinivasan reported that people had used LinkedIn’s “seems like AI slop” feedback option more than a million times.

He also reported 40% fewer views of content the company classified as AI slop compared with a few weeks earlier. He explained that distribution uses multiple signals, with safeguards intended to prevent unfair targeting through individual reports.

These are company-reported figures, based on LinkedIn’s own classification. They describe progress on its chosen measure.

The harder editorial test is whether the remaining content is worth reading.

A post can have flawless grammar and still contain nothing useful. Meaningless leadership advice remains meaningless after a human rewrites it. Recycled wisdom gains no professional value from being broken into twelve dramatic lines.

The standard should be originality, relevance and substance.

Premium: A Better Seat in the Theatre

At the time of writing, LinkedIn’s official Premium Business page lists US monthly pricing starting at $69.99 per licence. Prices vary by market and billing arrangements.

The advertised features include 15 monthly InMail credits, profile viewer information and additional visibility through exclusive Premium placements.

LinkedIn also promotes an average of 13 times more profile views among Premium Business subscribers, citing its March 2026 data.

That comparison alone cannot establish how many extra views purchasing Premium will cause. Subscribers may differ in their activity, existing networks and reasons for using the platform.

A commercial buyer needs a more demanding measure: qualified conversations, relevant introductions, interviews or signed contracts.

The features can support prospecting. Their value depends on what they produce for the person paying.

The subscription invoice arrives whether the sales pipeline improves or stays empty.

A Premium badge confirms a subscription. Professional competence still requires evidence.

The Real Cost Is Performing Success

For a small business owner, maintaining visibility can become a second job: choosing hooks, formatting posts, responding to comments and trying to understand distribution.

Some of that work can generate valuable relationships. The commercial failure starts when activity becomes its own justification.

A crowded analytics dashboard can make a weak pipeline look busy. A growing follower count can distract from a lack of qualified inquiries. Posting every day can feel productive while the actual business goes nowhere.

The relevant accounting includes the hours spent performing for the feed.

What did that time produce? Was the audience relevant? Did a conversation advance? Did anyone buy?

Businesses cannot pay salaries with impressions. Job seekers cannot pay rent with profile views.

The professional who delivers excellent work should be able to demonstrate it through evidence that clients and employers can inspect. Endless motivational wallpaper makes that evidence harder to see.

Verdict: Stop Selling the Costume

LinkedIn needs to make professional substance easier to assess.

That means sustained enforcement against coordinated engagement and automated comments, clearer explanations of distribution decisions, and meaningful information about the results users can expect from paid features.

Its cleanup reporting should help users understand both progress and the limits of the measurements. Its visibility products should explain their claims clearly enough for buyers to judge them.

Users also have a responsibility: inspect the work behind the performance. Ask for relevant experience, specific outcomes and references that can be checked.

A crowded feed full of people celebrating themselves is a miserable substitute for professional discovery.

The Corporate Shitshow verdict: LinkedIn’s credibility depends on whether it can make demonstrated expertise easier to find than manufactured applause.

Until then, the business suit is doing far too much of the work.

A Premium badge cannot turn bullshit into expertise.

Sources

• LinkedIn — Authentic Content and Conversations, March 13, 2026. Engagement pods, automated comments and enforcement. news.linkedin.com
• LinkedIn — Improving the Feed, March 12, 2026. Changes addressing recycled content, engagement bait and inauthentic conversations. news.linkedin.com
• Hari Srinivasan — Public Update on AI Slop. Reported feedback usage, reduction in views and safeguards. 195 comments
• LinkedIn — Premium Business. Pricing, features and subscriber profile-view comparison.