LinkedIn has a deliberately atrocious UI. Because it forces users to wade through endless paid-for advertising to find something – anything – of interest.

At the heart of the problem is monetization.

Over the last 20 years consumers and business users have been socially conditioned to prioritize ease of accessibility over privacy. You get “free” or easy-to-acquire access to systems, services and apps (Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, Youtube, whatever) but you surrender the ©opyright and your privacy. Every email, every post is tracked, read, scanned, databased.

Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft and the rest run a BigData model to track your cross-application activities. They track you when you have their apps installed on mobile devices: what you are doing, your location, which sites you use and browse.

This data is sold to advertisers and corporations. They also cross-monetize, paying each other to use their systems, and to force regular updates of key apps, which in turn drives sales of new mobile phones, tablets, laptops, software.

LinkedIn is a factory farm. A plantation. A greenhouse. A hunting ranch. A battery hen shed. The users, paid or not, are the product. The bait. The producers. LinkedIn sells Sales Navigator subscriptions like tickets to a shooting gallery, and you are the target.

The North America, Australian and Western European markets are the most valuable franchises in the LinkedIn operation – they have potential buyers and content producers. The monetization of these users works on selling Sales Navigator to organizations who are often outside these markets, wanting to sell into the markets, and to advertisers.

Mixing metaphors – LinkedIn users are sitting ducks being hunted by Sales Navigator users and advertisers.

There’s A Better Way. Coming Soon.