Readers Write In #852: 90% of LinkedIn seems noise, 10% might be valuable

By Aswhin Kumar

Many years ago, like most people, I signed up for LinkedIn. The reason being – to build connections, improve my chances of finding a job, or maybe even switch companies someday. It seemed like the thing to do. Everyone around me was signing up, and it felt like an essential part of operating in the professional world.

As I was fortunate to be in a secure role, and that meant I never really felt a strong need to network actively. Because of that, I didn’t log in frequently or treat LinkedIn as something central to my professional life. And whenever I did log in,  usually when I was thinking about a job change or just curious about the platform  what I found there never impressed me.

What I saw instead often felt like junk. There was endless self-promotion, people turning even the most trivial experiences into some kind of “life lesson,” and titles that felt inflated to the point of being meaningless. Everyone seemed to be a “leader” or a “guru.” Every profile, every post, carried some lofty tag. And I couldn’t help but wonder: if everyone is a leader, then who’s actually doing the work? 🙂

Because of that impression, I made a conscious choice not to be an active user of LinkedIn. So, when people asked me after a meeting or workshop, “Can we connect on LinkedIn?” I would politely tell them, “I am not really an active user, so this connection may not be of much use.” More often than not, people looked surprised at my refusal. For them, connecting on LinkedIn had become a social obligation. My refusal broke the norm, and that surprise on their faces confirmed how deeply LinkedIn had become embedded as part of professional etiquette.

After many years of staying away, I recently logged back in. I was curious to see how the platform had evolved and whether it might feel more useful now. What struck me almost immediately was that things hadn’t changed much. The same patterns were there, but this time I started noticing a few other details more clearly living my intentionally slow life.

The first thing that stood out was the comments. Extremely few comments perhaps only 5% at best added anything meaningful to the conversation. The rest, a vast 90%, were repetitive affirmations like “Yes, I agree,” “So true,” “Well said,” or “Timely reminder.” or comments praising the post. These weren’t comments that moved the conversation forward or brought in a fresh perspective. They were simply nods of agreement.

I even noticed some people leaving 5 or 6 such comments on different posts in a single day. Each of them looked similar affirmations in nature. And I couldn’t help but wonder what if, instead of scattering half a dozen shallow comments in a day, they invested their time in writing just one thoughtful response on a post that truly resonated with them? One comment that engaged deeply with the idea, that added to it, or even questioned it constructively. That single response would have so much more impact than six empty affirmations scattered across different threads.

This led me to another realization which was, on LinkedIn, the occasional post may genuinely have something useful to say, that’s like the signal. But the comments that pile up beneath it mostly create noise. Instead of enriching the discussion, they drown it out. What could have been a thoughtful conversation often gets lost in an echo chamber of agreement, where the loudest thing is not the original idea but the chorus of “Yes, so true!” responses.

The second observation I had was about engagement patterns. People seemed to only engage with the original poster. Very rarely did I see anyone acknowledging or liking a fellow commenter’s perspective. In other words, there was almost no cross-connection. Comments existed in isolation, like separate islands, each directed at the original poster but never at each other. This meant that conversations weren’t really conversations at all and they were just affirmations.

The third observation was about influencers. Especially among Indian influencers, I sensed something more troubling – a kind of entitlement. They seemed to post random thoughts, often without much context or depth, as though confident that whatever they put out would be embraced without any critique. And sure enough, their followers would blindly validate it. The likes, the comments, the affirmations would pour in, rarely with any critical questioning or genuine debate. It felt less like professional networking and more like a form of cult followership, where the leader can post anything and still be applauded.

Most of what  I saw was people selling themselves, their titles, their image. The original spirit of networking and knowledge-sharing seemed buried under layers of branding and positioning.

Of course, I also don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking my own view is the absolute truth. This might just be my lens of LinkedIn and shaped by what I see and notice. Others may have very different experiences of the platform. I will end saying I wonder and curious how many do find  genuine value there. My conclusion is simple: 90% of LinkedIn is noise, but maybe 10% still holds some value. So that’s why I shall hang in there while being mindful of the time I spend on it.