Enshittification = the extreme degradation of something into a worse version of itself.
I remember a time when LinkedIn was a very "clean" place. Professional, calculated, a little sterile. Everyone wrote the same things, everyone sounded the same, and there was almost nothing there that truly revealed who the person behind the profile really was.
And then the enshittification began.
More personal posts. More politics. More extreme opinions. More provocations that gain exposure because the algorithm loves noise.
For anyone looking for a purely professional platform, this looks like deterioration. And to a large extent, it really is.
But from my perspective, something interesting happened here.
It is precisely this "out of place" content that begins to tell the real story.
When I check someone as part of a background check from open sources, I'm not just looking at what they do. I'm looking at how they think. How they react. What sets them off. Where their boundaries are.
And these things almost never showed up on the old LinkedIn.
Today they are there. In abundance.
A political post written without filters, an aggressive response to a professional discussion, a choice to join a provocative trend, these are no longer "noise" to me. They are signals.
What was once a barren wasteland in terms of understanding personality has become a gold mine of behavioral indicators.
So yes, LinkedIn has changed. And maybe not for the better for those looking only for professionalism.
But for those who understand how to read between the lines, it's a platform that tells far more truth than it did before.