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I’ve been on LinkedIn a few years less than what I’ve been a QA, and for most of that time it was fine. Useful, even. You’d scroll through, see what people in your network were up to, maybe find a job lead or stumble on a genuinely interesting take from someone who’d actually done what they wrote.
That’s not what my feed looks like anymore.
Now it’s motivational posts that read like I’m on Facebook for professionals, “look at me”. Fake job listings that lead nowhere but data farms. AI-generated thought leadership from people who are too lazy to use their own original thoughts. And somewhere in the middle of it all, real humans trying to find work, getting ghosted by companies that never intended to hire them in the first place. Or, lost in the flood of bot applications, ‘cos seriously, a job ad up for <1 hour already has 100 applications? Is noone even looking at the company for background, finding out if they are going to be compatible long term?
I’ll be honest. LinkedIn in 2026, even the in last ~5 years, feels less like a professional network and more like content landfill with an ATS job lottery bolted on.
The Slop Tsunami
There’s a word for what’s taken over the feed: slop. Not content, and not even thought leadership. Just plain old slop. Mass-produced, AI-generated filler that exists to fill space and assumingly chase engagement, detached from any actual human experience or expertise. There are some posts that look like a 50/50 AI collaboration, to bridge the English gap sure, that I understand.
And it’s not a small problem. Originality.ai analysed thousands of long-form LinkedIn posts and found that roughly 54% of them are likely AI-generated. Since ChatGPT launched at the end of 2022, AI-generated posts on the platform surged by 189%. Posts got 107% longer too, because apparently more words equals “more smart”, or something.
Here’s the kicker though. Engagement has dropped by 45%.
People are writing more and saying less, and the intended audience knows it. Most readers can smell the difference between someone who’s lived through something and someone who asked a chatbot to “give me some snippets on a subject, sounding professional for 300 words”. The posts that apparently do well now? Personal updates, engagement announcements, and stories about getting fired. Basically Facebook, so the stuff that’s unmistakably human. Which is ironic for a platform that was supposed to be about professional expertise.
I saw a post last week from a “leadership coach” that was three paragraphs of pure AI output. You could tell because every sentence said absolutely nothing. No named examples, no actual experience. Just word salad and a bunch of em-dashes.
Meanwhile, a mate of mine posted a genuinely thoughtful breakdown of current state of his industry. Specific details, experiences, named tools, lessons learned. Great insights for 12 likes, and a comment from one of his previous staff agreeing with every word.
That’s the platform now. LinkedIn has become the place where bots post content for other bots to engage with, while real people scroll past wondering if anyone’s actually home. Dead internet theory anyone.
Phantom Jobs and False Hope
If the content problem was the only issue, you could just scroll past it. But LinkedIn has a bigger problem, and it’s one that actually hurts people.
Ghost jobs or worse, fake jobs.
A ResumeBuilder survey found that 40% of companies posted fake job listings in the past year. Not stale listings they forgot to take down, they were intentional fake postings. Then there’s those dodgey mofo’s that post jobs, through hacked profiles, wanting to farm your data, likely for nefarious means.
Let that sit for a second.
The reasons are about what you’d expect, and none of them are good. Companies do it to build talent pipelines for roles that don’t exist yet. They do it to project growth to investors, based on things that are not real. They’re doing it to make current employees feel replaceable and keep wages low. Think of all those “Reposted” jobs, with ~5000 applications.
The red flags are there if you know what to look for. No posting date. A listing that’s been up for months. Roles that only appear on LinkedIn but not the company’s actual careers page. Or the dreaded “No longer accepting application”, 28 minutes after posting.
But spotting them doesn’t undo the damage. Every fake listing represents someone’s time. Someone tailored a resume, wrote a cover letter, maybe even sat through an interview. For what?
The Ghosting Effect
And then there’s the silence.
Getting rejected is one thing. You can atleast work with a rejection, you know where you stand and you move on. But come on, not after 4-6 weeks, that’s just lazy. Being ghosted is something else entirely.
The data on this is grim. Research shows 75% of job applications receive zero response. No rejection, not a ‘thanks but no thanks’. No breakdown of why they didn’t select you and what you could work on for future applications. Just, nothing. And 72% of job seekers say the search process has negatively affected their mental health, with ghosting cited as one of the biggest contributors.
I have seen this play out with people I know. Good people, smart people, sending out dozens of applications and hearing back from almost none of them. One guy I worked with years ago, great developer, years of experience, applied to more than 200 roles over six months. He heard back from maybe 15. Got interviews at 5. And this is someone with a strong resume, great references, and the ability to actually do the work better than most. So, you start second-guessing yourself, and wondering if you’re the problem.
You’re not. The system is and we all know it.
And it’s not just an inconvenience. When you’ve sent 50 applications and heard nothing, the 51st feels pointless. But you send it anyway because what else are you going to do?
Candidates are treated as data points, not people. Companies that would never dream of ignoring a customer enquiry think nothing of leaving hundreds of applicants in limbo. People do still talk with each other though. They leave Glassdoor reviews, they warn others. Companies that ghost candidates are slowly poisoning their own talent pipeline, and most of them don’t even realise it.
The AI Arms Race Nobody Wins
Here’s where it gets stupid. LinkedIn now processes around 11,000 job applications per minute. That’s not a typo.
The volume is so high that companies can’t process applications manually anymore, so they deploy AI screening tools to filter the flood. Meanwhile, job seekers use AI to mass-generate tailored resumes and cover letters to beat those same filters. Companies respond with more sophisticated screening. Job seekers respond with more sophisticated generation. Circles.
The result is a system where standing out as a genuine human applicant is nearly impossible unless you bypass the whole thing entirely. Direct referrals, warm introductions, and industry connections still work. The ‘apply’ button on LinkedIn? That’s increasingly a game of roulette.
This is the feedback loop nobody asked for. AI generates the job listings. AI generates the applications. AI screens the applications. AI sends the rejection, if it sends anything at all. Is that progress?
I reckon we’ll look back at this period the way we look back at the early days of email spam. Everyone’s doing it, nobody’s happy about it, and the solutions just create new problems. Companies like Chipotle are reportedly using AI hiring platforms that have cut their hiring time by 75%. Which sounds great until you realise that the speed gain comes at the cost of nuance, context, and the ability to spot someone who’s genuinely good but doesn’t match the algorithm settings.
The people who benefit most from this system are the ones who least need it. If you’re well-connected, already employed, and browsing casually, AI tools make your life slightly easier. If you’re unemployed, anxious, and applying to everything you can find, you’re competing against a machine-optimised pipeline that was never designed with you in mind.
Life Beyond the Feed
So where does that leave people who actually need to find work, build networks, or share what they know?
My honest answer: anywhere but LinkedIn.
That doesn’t mean deleting your LinkedIn profile. It still has utility for direct messaging, maintaining a professional presence, and connecting with people you already know. But for job searching, thought leadership, and genuine community building, for me the ROI has cratered.
Industry-specific communities are where the real conversations happen now. Wellfound for tech and startups, where salary transparency is built in. Behance for creative portfolios. ResearchGate for academic and scientific collaboration. Peerlist for developers who want to show work rather than talk about it. Even Slack communities and Discord servers are producing better professional outcomes than LinkedIn.
For job searching specifically, applying directly through company career pages still outperforms aggregator applications by a significant margin. Referrals remain the single most effective way to get hired. None of this is new. But it’s worth repeating when so many people are pouring energy into a platform that’s increasingly designed to benefit the platform, not the people on it.
The Take
LinkedIn isn’t dead, but it is pretty sick. The feed has been colonised by AI-generated slop that nobody reads. The job board is riddled with phantom listings that waste people’s time and damage their mental health. The hiring pipeline has devolved into an AI arms race where machines talk to machines and humans are an afterthought.
None of this happened by accident. LinkedIn built AI tools directly into the platform. Companies discovered there’s no consequence for posting jobs they never intend to fill.
For people using the platform, the play is straightforward. Stop treating LinkedIn as a one-stop shop. Use it for what it still does well, direct connections and professional presence, and go elsewhere for the things it’s failing at. Find the communities where people are doing real work and having real conversations. Apply directly to companies you actually want to work for. Build relationships before you need them.
The best opportunities in 2026 are unlikely sitting in your LinkedIn feed. They’re in smaller, human-centric spaces where people bother to show up as their true selves.
A Note on Context
Every business and every project is different. What works in one place won’t work in another, and that’s the point.
Nothing here is meant to be a step-by-step prescription. It’s guidance, drawn from my own experiences, and deliberately kept general to avoid pointing fingers anywhere.
Take what’s useful, ignore what isn’t, and adapt it to your own context. Or as Joe Colantonio always says: “Test everything and keep the good.”
