I think I’m finally over LinkedIn.
Sunday, October 18, 2026 at 18:33:29
LinkedIn has been around for a long time. When it first started, it was a place to put your resume and a way for you to talk a little bit about your doings in the working world. That was fine…then Microsoft bought it and turned it into a social network with all of the baggage that involves. “Sanitized speech” everywhere, political spammers, AI slop so bad they had to make a joke button about reporting AI slop (while here’s some tools we’ve made to help you make more AI slop!) and all the artificial outrage you can handle.
I can hear the comments now. I’ve been over LinkedIn for years. I don’t blame you.
Let’s set the stage for our performance:
In technology, there are terms that we need to use that the modern world has deemed to be offensive. Words like:
Stopcock
Master-Slave
Crippleware
Dummy values
Male/Female
Various mnemonics for the color codes
And, of course, there’s television. You had the Indian Head logo, and a whole bunch of terms for early CRTs:
Suicide Tubes
Widomakers
Mankillers
Where did these come from? Well, the early CRTs used a metal shell (the “bell”) as the accelerating anode. That is, the entire tube had high voltage on it. You reach in when the set is on, you get 25kV, and you’re off to see the wizard. Some companies tried to mitigate this with a plastic coating, but the fact remained that you had a massive area of high voltage just inside the box waiting for unsuspecting fingers. There was also the technical problems of leaky glass-to-metal seals, but that’s a different story.
So why am I over LinkedIn? I think that last term did me in. Mankiller.
I recently posted a picture taken at the Early Television Museum in Hilliard, Ohio. That of a DuMont RA-119 television. It used a 30” B&W CRT, and was the largest B&W set ever made. And yes, it had a giant metal bell that was at the accelerating potential voltage. Big enough that you could hug it.
The image simply does not convey how big this thing is. You don’t buy this television for your house, you buy a house for this television. It was expensive, and wasn’t really made for you and me. Let’s just say this thing is massive. Enormous. Giant. Is that enough adjectives?
In the discussion about that set, someone made a comment about obsolescence. I made the comment that the biggest fault with these was the mankiller CRTs that leaked and had high voltage on the shell.
I’m only guessing of course. I’ve received no indication of account problems. Just logged out and forced to identity verify again. No appeal notice, no indication that I did something wrong, nothing. And that’s about the way modern platforms go - they hold all the power and refuse to tell you what you did wrong according to them.
So…what did I do? No idea. That’s my guess however. I submitted the required documents, but there’s no way for me to explain my case, or even see my case.
I’m over the site, because it doesn’t really do much anymore. I mean, I’ll probably open a new account if that one is locked, but it will simply be as it was put to me: my professional business card. Here’s my profile, here’s links to my portfolios, no posts, comments, feed views, nothing. It’s simply not worth the time to mess with it these days, especially if you’re going to get the algorithm-squad terminating you for using a valid tech term it thought was bad.
You have to log in to view that link!
Assuming I can get back in, I’ll grab the few contacts I need and remove all of the comments and posts, leaving nothing but the resume. Yes, I could just kill it right there and open a new one, but it’s more satisfying to me to delete everything and have people go “Why are you doing this?” Well, here is the reason. There’s also the crap with opening a new account, they require a lot more info these days that I’m simply not willing to give.
The reply
LinkedIn replied to my request for re-instatement. The information I received was confusing, as I was being chastised for not keeping my location up to date and that’s very important. Uh…my location hasn’t changed for 35 years. If you haven’t guessed it by the posts I make here and the shows I attend, It’s Columbus, Ohio. Now you know.
The fallout
What does this all mean? Well…it means that the risk outweighs the rewards. I see online that the “yer locashuns!” is generally a cop-out from microsoft when they don’t want to tell you want you actually did wrong. Whether it was an automated flag on ‘mankiller’ or just LinkedIn’s notoriously broken geo-verification algorithms, I can’t say. I can only tell you that I see one thing, and that thing immediately happened after the other thing. Post hoc ergo propter hoc so to speak.
Where does that lead me? First and foremost, as stated - there is risk. Unfortunately, the site is still just barely useful as an employment site, although you’d never know it. I need to keep it open for that reason…but posting there is no longer an option. Other than perhaps 1 post on the anniversary of this blog, I won’t be making regular appearances there. I’ve gone through and deleted all but a few of my more generic posts. I’ve removed all of the comments that weren’t on the posts I left behind. The lack of posts will certainly reduce my visibility, but that also means that the lo-rent job spammers and Chinese “No we just want to connect :)” scammers should slow after a while. It also has the benefit of removing those last few links to pygg.xyz that were hanging around.
LinkedIn is a liability. You need to be visible, but you can’t post something without wondering if this is going to trigger the hammer that falls on your fingers. You can’t say something that is perfectly valid in the terms of the conversation when someone who has no business being there may show up and declare it to be offensive. It’s just not worth the time, effort, or risk - especially when the engagement you do receive is nothing more than a drive-by liking without any real discourse.
Speaking of engagement - there isn’t any on LinkedIn unless you’re posting flashy slop. Some of my posts did get quite a few views - 50,000+ in one case (thank you!) but the click-through wasn’t there at all. I was hoping that people would click my link, read the full story here, and then comment - that either didn’t happen at all (no click-through) or you just had someone who read the summary, made decisions, and tried to engineer the situation without any information at all. In a couple of cases, there was even a few of the “Why are you doing this? Just do that instead” people. You have to manage your expectations with what you actually received here, and what was received just wasn’t doing it. I realize that sounds like whining, and it probably is. But my time is limited, and I want to give both you and I the best bang for the 5 minutes you spend with me on this site.
That sums it up, I think - risk vs. reward. There’s no reward, so no risk should be taken. Very limited posts just to keep the account active-ish, but no more comments unless it’s in direct reply on the 2 posts a year I can see needing to be made. Nothing more than a business card with a “Best wishes in the new year” postcard in late December. and a “Happy Birthday” in July.
That’s all…stick around. There’s magic fire bottles that we need to light up so we can accomplish something together.