LinkedIn’s Feed Does Not Respect User Choice

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — January 22, 2026

The Illusion of Control

LinkedIn presents following as a meaningful action. The implication is straightforward: when a user follows someone, they are choosing to receive that person’s work in their feed.

That implication is false.

LinkedIn’s system routinely prevents users from seeing posts from people they have explicitly chosen to follow. This is not a bug, a temporary glitch, or a matter of low-quality content. It is the predictable outcome of how the platform is designed to function.

Following Is Treated as Optional Metadata

On LinkedIn, following does not operate as a primary distribution rule. Instead, it is treated as a weak signal—one that can be overridden by engagement thresholds, format preferences, timing rules, and monetization incentives.

In practical terms, this means a user can follow dozens or hundreds of professionals and still see little to none of their work. The platform decides what appears, not the user.

This directly contradicts the idea of a professional network built on intentional relationships.

How This Distorts Perception

The consequences of this design are subtle but damaging.

Readers assume silence where none exists. Creators assume failure where none has occurred. Conversations appear to fade not because interest has declined, but because visibility has been restricted.

LinkedIn’s system ensures that neither side can easily tell the difference.

This distortion benefits the platform. Users blame themselves or each other, while the underlying distribution logic remains invisible and unchallenged.

Not Curation, but Interference

Curation implies organizing content in service of relevance. LinkedIn’s approach does something else entirely. It inserts itself between users who have already made a clear choice and selectively blocks that choice from being honored.

That is not neutral design. It is active interference.

A professional network that ignores explicit user intent undermines its own credibility.

A Simple Standard That Is Not Met

There is an uncomplicated benchmark LinkedIn fails to meet:

If a user follows someone, that user should reliably see that person’s posts.

Anything less renders the act of following performative rather than functional. LinkedIn has chosen a system where professional relationships are secondary to platform-driven priorities.

Conclusion

LinkedIn claims to add value by connecting professionals. In practice, it weakens those connections by refusing to respect them.

When a platform overrides user choice while marketing itself as relationship-centered, the problem is not perception. The problem is design.