LinkedIn Feed Blocker

(github.com)

53 points | by andrewpollack 1 hour ago

21 comments

  • apparent 57 minutes ago
    I'd love to be able to filter the feed so it only shows me actual posts by my connections. I do not care about comments my connections made on strangers' posts, and I surely do not care about posts by strangers that my connections 'liked'.

    Anyone know if such a tool exists?

    • mmarian 46 minutes ago
      Built one 6 years ago that I gave up on https://github.com/mihailthebuilder/simplyfeed. The problem was that so many posts were filtered out that the feed would just show up empty.
    • specproc 37 minutes ago
      I'm not at my computer, but I've got such a thing. It's a ViolentMonkey script, something like LinkedIn Sponsor Block or similar. Does just what you need.
    • rrr_oh_man 45 minutes ago
    • morkalork 51 minutes ago
      Right, there are real posts from people I know hiding amongst the crap of promoted and suggested content. Not much, but it's there. It would be a shame to miss something from someone reaching out after a layoff or posting a job position at their company.
  • jordand 58 minutes ago
    My feed is filled with startup/VC/recruiter people liking vibe-orientated junk economics or junk science more than AI. Would love to see a browser like Orion or UBlock Origin just build this in as a feature.
  • blancotech 39 minutes ago
    This is still my preferred way on Safari, no extensions needed. It uses custom style sheets in the Safari > settings menu. https://x.com/BlancoTech/status/2061521432085955039
  • coffeecoders 13 minutes ago
    Just add this to uBlock origin:

    ``` linkedin.com##main#workspace section:has(div[componentkey*="container-update-list_mainFeed-lazy"]) ```

  • Kim_Bruning 18 minutes ago
    Heh, maybe if that had been thought of earlier. Meanwhile what I didwas just delete my linkedin account. Not much good could come of it anymore anyway I don't think.
  • sethops1 35 minutes ago
    My version of a feed blocker was to delete my account. Realized i was getting no value by being there, finally just let it go.
  • wxw 59 minutes ago
    The web, at least on the interface side, is really easy to customize these days. Agents are pretty good at spinning out Chrome extensions.

    e.g. you can easily reduce the intensity of feed-based UI by removing thumbnails, grayscaling, etc.

    • andrewpollack 55 minutes ago
      100%! Being able to tailor this made the website a much more pleasant experience for myself. Planning to experiment with other sites as well
    • petesergeant 48 minutes ago
      Been adding ad-hoc OFX export to more than one bank's site using Greasemonkey for exactly this. Scroll the page, suck up the transactions, I no longer need to wait on the bank to do shit properly. I am reasonably sure if someone can bundle all of these pieces up, there's a small subscription service in letting people configure the web through a chat window.
  • at1as 1 hour ago
    But then how will I possibly know that someone in my network achieved a new highscore in puzzle solving??
    • edoceo 8 minutes ago
      Games, on what was (initially) a professional networking site. Late stage of the platform.
  • Mistletoe 8 minutes ago
    I recently got what I hope to be my last job ever, and I cannot wait to banish linkedin to the netherrealm forever. It's just so creepy, I don't want people to be able to find my face, where I work every day, and whole job and education history when they google my name.
  • andy99 1 hour ago
    I used to waste lots of time scrolling LinkedIn, I don’t really know why as it was never great but sometimes you learned something interesting.

    Now I find it the opposite of addictive because of how bad it is. It’s just AI slop, both the copy and the pictures, there’s virtually no hope of anything engaging. Maybe it’s just me, it feels like AI has broken their algorithm, there’s nothing at all worth showing. Even the stupid business parables are all worse because they’re just Claudeslop.

    Anyway what I find most interesting is I recently signed up for twitter for work (to like some posts in a campaign). I hadn’t looked at twitter in years, but found now it’s almost exactly the same as LinkedIn (the “for you”) part, it’s just inane AI engagement farming that is so uninteresting you don’t want to scroll for more.

    Anyway, that’s dead internet theory, I think they’re both done (either that or the algorithms know me really well and just recognize my unadmitted love of AI slop about tips for getting cheap airfare or something)

    • rrr_oh_man 41 minutes ago
      The best Linkedin feature these days is the intrusive "DOWNLOAD OUR APP" popup on mobile. That makes me close the tab & browser 10/10 times.
    • Dan_- 55 minutes ago
      [flagged]
  • 4lx87 31 minutes ago
    Why do people use LinkedIn? I think I had an account for 10 years and all I got was recruiter spam.

    Coworkers all use it. For what I don’t know. None of them were hired from there.

    • bradleyankrom 25 minutes ago
      It's more or less expected that candidates have one, at least in tech/eng jobs I've looked at. For some, the field to enter your profile URL is required in the form.
      • Loughla 15 minutes ago
        Ew. What purpose does that serve?
        • edoceo 10 minutes ago
          It's for the ATS to check out the candidates and scrape attributes to rank them.
  • firasd 1 hour ago
    I've been experimenting with posting on LinkedIn and realized what the deal is. Basically it's a lot less hostile than other social media for people with no pre-existing audience: on Twitter you can post and nobody cares, in HN you can submit and nobody cares, on Substack you can write a personal blog post and google doesn't care to show it in search results, on Youtube you make a video and nobody cares, etc. (And let's set aside even more difficult stuff like making a podcast and hoping anyone cares)

    Meanwhile on LinkedIn if you post your thoughts on something, share an article, or mention a project they give you a good push to at least a few dozen people and you may see a like or two from a 3rd degree contact(!) within minutes. And then they aggressively SEO the feed too so now if someone Googles your name your LinkedIn posts will show up

    • andy99 30 minutes ago
      What’s the best possible outcome from posting on LinkedIn? I personally think it’s a poor place to “build your brand” - it’s mostly your friends or existing professional acquaintances that see your stuff, and whether you’re looking for a job or trying to do business development, those people are rarely your target market. I think the engagement is better because you have a natural “following” of all your friends / colleagues, but it’s meaningless.

      This is par for the course for Li, I’ve found it seems to be about activity or making you feel like you’re doing something, without actually getting any value and in reality just scrolling social media.

      YMMV of course, maybe there are real people who’ve had great value from posting?

    • add-sub-mul-div 50 minutes ago
      It sounds like a modern Twilight Zone premise. There's one social network left where any engagement is possible, but it's the one where nothing worthwhile is being said.
  • absoluteunit1 1 hour ago
    This is awesome. I love tools like these.

    Reminds me of DF (Distraction Free) YouTube but for LinkedIn. Tools like these make these platforms usable for me. The feeds are too addictive

  • joshdavham 35 minutes ago
    There's another way to get this exact same effect without a chrome extension and requires two steps:

    1. Change your "Preferred feed view" to "Most recent posts" here: https://www.linkedin.com/mypreferences/d/settings/preferred-...

    2. Unfollow every connection (N.B., this doesn't mean remove connection, just that you won't see their posts).

    If you do this, it wipes your feed clean and will literally display "Something went wrong" where your feed used to be.

    This has made LinkedIn truly blissful for me, but this only seems to work on the LinkedIn web app on my PC. Doesn't work on the mobile web app for some reason...

    • plaguna 8 minutes ago
      This is what I do, but on the phone, the iOS app at least, it respects the unfollow preferences and displays that "Something went wrong" message.
  • tolugenius 1 hour ago
    I honestly understand the idea but removing the entire feed might be a bit much at least for a job seeker. I've certainly found about interesting companies, fellowships, jobs, etc randomly on the feed so I wouldn't want it gone entirely. Granted any sort of "it's tailored to who you follow" is kinda BS so basically don't think too much when using linkedin might be the best way to use it
  • tumidpandora 40 minutes ago
    this was much needed, thank you.. the feed is a massive distraction
  • MarkMarine 1 hour ago
    I’ll never understand why LinkedIn is making these product choices. They have a legitimate moat, I and basically every other tech worker is exclusively on LinkedIn. They devalue their product by chasing engagement in service of ads, while allowing things like juicebox to scrape and steal their most valuable asset.

    This is short term, make it to next quarter thinking. You couldn’t pay me to use their AI product, they should focus on making that actually work, get the slop out of the feed, and be professional and distinct from TikTok, Facebook, instagram etc.

    • mmarian 44 minutes ago
      Most people genuinely want that, even if they say they don't. It's the only reason I can think of why low-value posts get so many likes.
  • petesergeant 1 hour ago
    These ublock rules work badly, but OK, if you don't want to install an extension:

    www.linkedin.com##[data-lazy-mount-id]

    www.linkedin.com##div[data-lazy-mount-id][data-component-type="LazyColumn"]

    LinkedIn makes this hard for some reason, and keeps updating how it works. The above is functional but also breaks some stuff.

    • mmarian 43 minutes ago
      My suspicion is that it's by design, to fight scrapers and extensions like this one.
  • sbmthakur 1 hour ago
    I'd built a small extension for myself to ignore posts that included words like thrilled, excited, and so on.
  • morkalork 54 minutes ago
    Should block the puzzle games whatever fuck that is on the right too
  • ndbe 1 hour ago
    This could be a simple filter in uBlock Origin, no need for another extension.
    • andrewpollack 56 minutes ago
      Agreed. I don't have adblockers installed atm, so used this as an opportunity to experiment with a smaller extension. Good to know for the future though, thank you!
    • petesergeant 59 minutes ago
      I've been using a simple uBlock Origin filter, and it works OK only. LinkedIn work very hard to stop people scraping, which means they regularly seem to shift the structure of their layout, and descriptors are weird. If this guy did a regularly-updated FF extension, I'd probably preferentially install that.