A Modest Proposal
LinkedIn’s feed is cluttered with low-value content, hindering user experience and marketing effectiveness. The proposed solution involves implementing a monthly quota for free posts and an AI-based evaluation system to encourage users to create more thoughtful and valuable content.
Clutter.
In the post "Is LinkedIn Beyond Hope as a Content Platform" (which is admittedly a rant), I describe a fundamental problem with LinkedIn, a burgeoning professional content platform. LinkedIn’s feed is notoriousely overcrowded with low-value posts, harming user experience and marketing effectiveness.
Ironically, LinkedIn’s very success has become part of the problem. As the platform has matured, it’s become clear that there’s no shortage of content—far from it. What’s scarce are the high-value signals struggling to rise above the noise.
Self-congratulatory posts, humblebrags, overly upbeat updates, and lukewarm congratulations to near-strangers are widely—and rightly—perceived as low-value content.
The problem is, these types of posts are incredibly easy to produce in bulk, leading to a cluttered feed for the average user. This noise drowns out genuinely valuable content—posts that could enhance users’ professional growth through learning or connect them with concrete, relevant opportunities.
Guess what: You are not alone rolling your eyes over this kind of second rate content. This affects engagement. If you are not forced to use the platform, you'll frequent it less. If you must use it... tough titty!
Are you are a marketeer? then frustration starts to build: Your network is to even see your post for a single minute, brfore it is pushed down by countless garbage.
The Culprit.
At the heart of this issue is the negligible effort involved in posting. It is super easy by design (we're talking USG - User Generated Content) and social network DNA ensures it to be so.
The wrong kinds of incentives are there: Attention grabbing for free may lack on the magnitude, but what is not clear about the word "free"?
This launcher opens a post-writing modal:
The Fix. Improve Our Social Feeds
My modest proposal to reduce this content pollution entails voluntary acceptance of some limits on the quantity of free posting, all in aim to improve our social feeds:
Scarcity and holding you fire
A monthly quota of free posts, with additional posts available for a fee.
First, make the users aware that they have a limited amount of free posting. My assumption is that this information in itself will spur a notion of scarcity, hopefully causing some users to refrain from that lightweight post.
When your quota is exhausted, you are offered an option to pay for the current post:
Make it Substantial
I've add an evaluation step prior to publishing, where users receive an objective, unbiased review of their post—assessing its perceived value, tone, and style.
The system provides the best evaluation Ai can provide, on the accounts:
The intent of the post
The value offered to the readers of the post
How those readers are most likely to perceive its intent
A final 'verdict' - a recommendation
...and the polite recommendation to revise the post:
Of course, you may bypass the recommendation at your own perril, or get the greenlight, if your phrasing hit the nail on its head the first time around:
Conclusion.
LinkedIn doesn’t suffer from a lack of content—it suffers from an excess of the wrong kind. The platform’s ease of posting, combined with attention-driven incentives, has created a landfill of low-effort updates that drown out the few posts worth reading.
My modest proposal isn’t about gatekeeping or elitism; it’s about nudging users toward thoughtfulness. A post quota and Ai-based preflight check won’t fix everything, but they just might make users pause before hitting "Post." And maybe—just maybe—that pause is the difference between another eye-roll and something genuinely worth engaging with.
Oh! and there's a prototype you can toy with, to get the feel. (The evaluation works, magically)
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