Some sites just give off a vibe that prevents me from ever trusting them, LinkedIn is the most predominant in that category and I have never been able to put my finger on exactly why. The email proxy apps and the pay to see who viewed your profile aspects don't help.

I'm not saying that it's any worse than any other sites, but LinkedIn has always felt like a shady company, like they're not on the users side.

I was really hoping that the Google+ reboot would fulfill the niche market that LinkedIn dominates, but it did not.

The "best" feature they have is automatically sending notifications to all your peers (and through email) when you change one little thing in your profile. And they show specifically what you edited. You can disable it of course in settings, but you have to know about that. I've seen enough awkward situations come out of this. How is it even possible that they think it is okay?

I can see the rationalization: I've added React and Javascript to my LinkedIn profile, so it's probably nice to publish that to recruiters that I'm connected with, or friends who can endorse them.

Of course, I really don't want to spam them while I am rewriting prose about jobs until it's done, though, so it'd have been nicer if the spamming didn't happen until I pushed some kind of "publish" button.

its because they tell the user that you clicked their profile. what kind of bullshit is that, I wanna compare myself to other people without them knowing.

Try using the Incognito Mode in Chrome.

Of course, that will only give you a public view of a profile, but it seems to hide your identity nonetheless.

LinkedIn really is one of the worst websites I've ever used. I wish there were viable alternatives.

Are you for real or just exaggerating to add some unneeded emphasis to your disdain of LinkedIn?

While I don't think LinkedIn is the shining star, it's definitely not one of the worst websites I've ever used; it's actually been quite helpful for connecting with people.

Can't speak for the original poster but I'd say, without exaggeration, that in relation to what it could be, given its inputs, LinkedIn is the worst website I've ever used.

Even if you consider the number of design dark patterns used and deliberate content obfuscation to be justifiable from a business perspective, they manage to screw up things they don't have an excuse for. The jobs board has an abundance of jobs, unrivalled data to match people with them, and yet shows me very few, with very poor relevance, and big, shiny logos in lieu of a decent headline. LinkedIn Groups was the clunkiest discussion service I've ever seen (although they seem to have tightened it up a bit) which must be part of the reason why article spam vastly exceeds anyone's desire to have significant discussions in there. The UI feels cheap, tacky and glossy and my browser feels like it's choking on the infinite scroll. Even the part of the site which is well executed also happens to be the repository of the world's dullest linkbait...

I can't talk about the interface but for people who don't have an account there, this website is absolutely hostile. (think: much worse than most)

I'm a calm person but I needed serious gmail filter tinkering to catch all those we-want-you-to-join-or-feel-bad emails.

I'm not following... you're getting emails from LinkedIn even though you haven't signed up? You mean those 'I accidentally clicked a button without reading it and it spammed all my contacts' emails from current members?

Ironically, LinkedIn is the only site I've encountered where non-members get more access than (free-tier) signed in users. I regularly open a profile in a private window via Google search because it won't show me 3rd-degree connections without paying for them, but will happily share those profiles with Googlers...

> I'm not following... you're getting emails from LinkedIn even though you haven't signed up? You mean those 'I accidentally clicked a button without reading it and it spammed all my contacts' emails from current members?

As with many others, I get these constantly: "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn." with seemingly no way to disable them. You can stop them for that one person's 'invitation', but invariably someone else will start the process over again. I have a filter set up that sends all LI email to trash

> Ironically, LinkedIn is the only site I've encountered where non-members get more access than (free-tier) signed in users.

I can't even imagine how this is defensible. This kind of behavior doesn't give me any reason to want to make an account.

I think the worst thing they do is ask you to connect with your email account and then they continually spam your contacts to join LinkedIn. It's bad, but they're not the only ones doing that.

Interface-wise it's not that bad, but I don't use all the features (free user) and don't spend much time on there.

Try whitetruffle. Much less useless spam.

Agreed. LinkedIn used to be great, but is not completely unusable.

The website itself is awful to use, but the community is even worse. It is now just a tool for shameless recruiters to spam left and right.

I spent a lot of time working on my profile, clearly explaining that I reject connection requests from strangers, that I ignore messages for open jobs which don't include a certain set of items and I still get spammed all day long.

The problem is LinkedIn gets its money from recruiters who signed up for premium accounts so they cater to them.

> The problem is LinkedIn gets its money from recruiters who signed up for premium accounts so they cater to them.

I never thought about it that way, but it makes perfect sense. I deleted my account sometime last year (I think), and I deal with no shitty recruiters now.

I have the same opinion about them. worst UI. Useless emails. You have to pay them money for no reason.

They're fighting a symptom instead of the disease.