Scorched Earth or a Path Forward: How LinkedIn’s core operations are impacting marginalized voices

Over the last 1 ½ years, I’ve noticed a specific subset of my content is treated differently by the Linkedin platform.

I think and talk a lot about remote work, journalism, modern workplaces, marketing, and leadership — all sweet spots for LinkedIn. 

With an audience of 6,000+ whose time, energy, and attention I respect, my content performs well, and I try to always add value and advance our ideas about what a workplace can and should be. 

But there’s one topic I touch on that regularly receives 10s or even, brace yourself, low 100s of views: r-a-c-i-s-m and a-n-t-i-r-a-c-i-s-m. 

Now, you may be wondering, what’s with the dashes? As I began to engage with and learn from brilliant folks who touch on these topics, we noticed collectively that content with certain words, phrases, and topics just did not get shown to many people—something true whether you have an audience of 60, 600, 6K, or even 60K. 

Occasionally, when I talk about these topics or participate in someone else’s conversation, I’ve also noticed my profile is unavailable for a few seconds to a minute, like when someone temporarily cuts power to your electricity. 

While this happens exclusively around the topic I mentioned, it was something else that caught my attention…

Leading voices on the platform who look different from me (👋🏿👋🏽) experienced all of the above but were also having their content and profiles deleted, sometimes multiple times per week.  

Sometimes the cause is clear— for example, r-a-c-i-s-t trolls regularly visit their profiles and report their content, which leads to poorly trained & biased LinkedIn support team members blocking, shadow banning, and removing content and profiles with no explanation. 

That scenario is pretty straightforward. More complex is the use of AI, ML, and language models to suppress or gate certain content, as is what happens when these repeated situations are sent up the chain to the policy team, senior leaders, and even executives, which has occurred.  

If you’d like to see more examples, Yeong Cheng, A Johanna, Isvari Maranwe, Khafre Jay, and Aaisha Joseph have written about specific instances as well as the bigger picture, and I recommend taking a good look through their feedback and documentation here, here, here, here, here, and here. 

Why is all of this happening? Here is my best guess as a loyal, active user & customer...

There is a great deal of technical, legal, brand, and leadership debt (harm/loss/opportunity cost) involved in how LinkedIn selectively removes and suppresses content from specific people and groups while leaving up violent threats and hate speech that could quickly be dealt with.

LinkedIn and its parent organization Microsoft are investing heavily in growing the platform (see: creator accelerator, news topics, etc.), but they have yet to invest in solving these serious issues, which suggests there are deep inequities within the company at all levels, and especially in senior leadership. 

In other words, the way that LinkedIn's executive team has failed to address these issues substantially directly contradicts their brand and mission. So far, they've signaled that silencing the conversation around it will continue to be their default position. 

If you’ve read the dozens of lawsuits Meta/Facebook is facing right now, you may recognize a similar operating model and challenges, and Microsoft/Linkedin may well face a wave of legal actions, too, if they don't address this.

I believe this is a fundamental moment in the trajectory of the company. We already know what happens when a social media platform openly allows hate speech and violent threats to remain while targeting specific groups for heavy-handed moderation, shadow bans, and blocks. 

We also know what the traditional methods look like, including PR spin, threatening employees, and hundred-page policies that feel good but aren’t followed. This is the brutal scorched earth playbook that Meta/Facebook have chosen to follow.  

LinkedIn can and must choose a different path for the sake of its product, brand, employees, investors, and users/customers. 

Last but not least, if you find yourself fast-forwarding to “but how do we fix it” mode, I recommend reading Sydette Harry's insightful piece in Wired last year, which frames why and how tech companies create this situation.

It provides many reminders about what’s possible if leadership at Microsoft/Linkedin chooses to do things differently than the Meta/Facebook/Zuckerberg scorched earth strategy.