Some of us tried to stop it but we failed. Like the people who voted for Brexit, there are more idiots than sane people right now.

Fight against this in your country. It's a huge problem that isn't going to get better.

If you give them an inch they will take a mile. Don't give them that inch

We call it grindr for business people.

Fuck LinkedIn and all, but in 2026 the only way to get a job in some industries is to have someone put in a referral for you. Messaging former colleagues on linkedin and having them submit a referral is often the only way your resume will even get looked at.

It’s fucking rough out there now. Having a contact list of who you know, and who they know, can cut your job hunt in half.

Open roles often get a thousand resumes submitted, and since hiring managers can’t read them all, they use an LLM to pick out the “best” folks. Connecting to real people is the only way to break through that shit.

While I completely agree that LinkedIn is shit, people need jobs and LinkedIn is often the only way to become visible to employers or recruiters.

Unfortunately it’s how the business world runs. Especially when looking for jobs. The company I was at wouldn’t even consider a candidate unless they were a) a referral or b) had a fleshed out LinkedIn in with a decent number of connections to know they weren’t a bot.

Look at linkedinlunatics style content for the true sycophants that want to be there. That's the actual target for your smug comment.

Otherwise, your shortsighted view overlooks the majority of people who are forced to interact with that slop bucket. It's become a necessity if you are seeking any kind of office job. With the literally millions of layoffs in the last couple years, not based on actual performance, you have a lot of decent people forced into that hell.

So speak less of a nuance you obviously know nothing about. Avoiding LinkedIn is a luxury. If you're privileged enough to not engage, then good, be grateful and stop trying to shit on the less fortunate.

It's fine if all you are doing is job searches. It's cringe when people treat it as social media.

.... Until you need a job.

I need a job so yeah, I did angrily send my passport to persona. What can I do? No job means I'll have to remigrate back, I'll lose everything I have built here for the past 5 years.

So I need linkedkn as half the jobs are there now.

Not that it mattered. I sent out hundreds of job resumes by now, and I had literally a single reply.

I did get an offer from a company, pay us 10.000 dollars and we will get you a great job, no guarantees though. Thry actually do seem to work, not directly a scam, but what the fuck, why is it that this is how i need to get a job?

Either way, its fucked and its done. 2 months from now I'll be living in a different country because I have gotten exactly a single interview in 2 months so far...

I'm in IT, so that's fucked, but I'm also on a work permit that requires anyone who wants to hire me to jump through a few hundred hoops, and they may need to wait 2-16 months (!!!!!!!!!!) for me to get the required permissions to start. Granted, 16 months is an extremely worst case scenario, BUT IT IS A POSSIBILITY as laid out to me by multiple immigration lawyers by now. I'm highly qualified, I'm very nice in person, respectful and calm, I can build up your entire IT department myself as I've worked literally at every position from the lowest to the highest. I have broad knowledge about almost everything IT. I'm willing to take low level jobs if that will get me something.

Nothing

So I'm fucked and fuck this world

TBH I'm impressed you got that far. I'd have thought they would 100% stonewall you.

Good riddance for sure. That co has a long history of being sleazeweasels.

Thanks for this post. Saving it in case I ever need it.

I hear you, but leave to where? Are we being expelled from society for not accepting this bullyish control.

And we are leaving behind the masses, the society that cannot find alternatives and will continue there and give them their information, if just 50% of the people do that, it is a huge success for them.

We have to think how to reclaim these spaces, otherwise we are just running away and losing the cultural war

But then what's the solution? How do you find jobs without LinkedIn? The corporation hell prefers "efficiency", they'll always prefer these centralized solutions to find workers.

Always has been.

Linked In is extremely useful for open source intelligence.

Keep getting hung up on or sent in loops by the automated phone system? Find the engineer at the company on linked in and email them directly

I got my current job through Linkedin, pretty nice one even

Edit: just saying it can work. I hate the garbage on that site otherwise and never logged in anymore until i need to search for a job again

I got several jobs through it. It's good place for its core goal, which is to be found and to look for posted openings.

All the other crap is pointless: posts, discussions, trivia, games etc.

The identity verification is a mixed bag.

It's mostly pointless in the EU because each country has a government body that tracks each ongoing employment contract for the purpose of tax, insurance, credit, work laws, regulations etc. So you really cannot misrepresent yourself.

But there are shenanigans like fake profiles made by bots, or someone putting up a profile pretending to be someone else who may or may not be already on LinkedIn etc. Not sure how you can weed those out without some sort of identity check.

There are however better ways to go about it. For example the EU countries have been (slowly) coming up with benign forms of identity checks.

My country has an online identity platform ran by the government directly, where citizens can enroll voluntarily and use it to perform federated login to other government platforms, and can also see and approve what personal details are shared with those platforms when they do. It's a completely voluntary alternative to the good ol' way of making a different account with every government website. (I'm still floored they had the insight to make something so nice.)

So anyway it hasn't been opened to commercial entities but I could see it be safely used in the future to confirm to a company like LinkedIn that you are indeed a live citizen and nothing else. Just a live API "yes" response with a hash of the citizen ID number; no pics, no data to store.

That's the worst part, their justification for more information to make one safer doesn't even work.

For-profit security theater.

I got at least one job through LinkedIn but it wasn't a quality job. Pay was good but was subcontracted and we were treated differently. In my industry you really need to know someone. Linkedin does help in a pinch for sure though.

Maybe a Freindica Business option. Wonder if it's open source. Maybe, it needs to be free with student IDs or some type of apprenticeship, and paid for by professionals, or just some other bot prevention measure.

Maybe have it with an interface that auto uploads formats that can be used by employers for resumes. Then you can sell the interface option to employers as a way to get resumes autofilled. Might be complicated.

As awful and shit as it is, it's still what you gotta put up with if you want to get hired...

The job postings don't work anymore, and sending applications is a waste of time, but the last 2-3 jobs I've gotten were because a recruiter found me on LinkedIn and messaged me...

Why did you not refuse and find a new place to do business that doesn't use computer programs to police their sites?

Unironically, North Korea

There are many platforms, I would search for those specific to your area of expertise

Like don't ask for the passport?

It is a website, this info is not needed at this stage

lol 20 years ago this would be considered an absolute scam