Re: Why LinkedIn Rewards Mediocrity
17 Aug 2025 #miscElliot Smith nailed it in his post Why LinkedIn Rewards Mediocrity.
It’s hard to disagree with that headline and his main idea. Yes, LinkedIn is a weird place. We do crazy things for a moment of fame or to impress future employers.
I’ve been writing consistently on LinkedIn since 2024, and here are my reactions:
It’s built for virality
Honestly, the best approach is to remember that LinkedIn is a website owned by Microsoft, trying to make money for Microsoft, based on time spent on the site.
Absolutely! Like any other social platform, they want us trapped.
If you have a LinkedIn account, you’ve already received the useless “someone on LinkedIn viewed your profile” email and plenty of others. The more time we spend there, the more ads they show and the more money they make. Our attention is the product they sell.
The feed, the algorithm, and the platform itself are created for virality, not depth. And truth be told, nobody goes to social media for depth. When was the last time you went there for that? We go there to scroll until it’s time to clock out. We might learn something dumb scrolling sometimes.
Social media might offer ideas, but only in 280 characters or a flashy image. Funny enough, my most viewed posts have been listicles and short controversial posts. They crush it on social media. But for depth, we have newsletters and books.
It has good content
Lots of people who write good content don’t live on LinkedIn, they might repurpose things for the platform but they exist elsewhere.
That’s true.
I use social media to test ideas and promote my coding newsletter and blog. No shame in being “salesy.” That’s what most creators do. After all, social media is built for dopamine hits, not depth.
It’s easy to support good content
If you’re more of a consumer than a producer and you want to help make things better the best thing you can do is reward the real stuff. Find those people who aren’t playing the game and promote that instead.
100% agree. If you comment that something is clickbait, you’ll only boost it. More comments = larger audience. Simply ignore that type of content. Engage with content worth spreading. That’s how we can fix the feed.