Note: This was originally published asa LinkedIn poston November 11, 2025.
I need to make a painful confession: somehow, LinkedIn has become an important
social network to me. This isn’t necessarily due to LinkedIn’s sparkling
competence, of course. To the contrary, LinkedIn is the Gerald Ford of social
networks: the normal one that was left standing as the Richard Nixons and the
Spiro Agnews of social media imploded around them. As with Gerald Ford, with
LinkedIn we know that we’re getting something a bit clumsy and boring, but (as
with post-Watergate America!), we’re also getting something that isn’t totally
crooked — and that’s actually a bit of a relief.
But because I am finding I am spending more time here, we need to have some
real talk: too many of you are using LLMs to generate content. Now, this isn’t
entirely your fault: as if LLMs weren’t tempting enough, LinkedIn itself is
cheerfully (insistently!) offering to help you “rewrite it with AI.” It seems
so excited to help you out, why not let it chip in and ease your own burden?
Because holy hell, the writing sucks. It’s not that it’s mediocre (though
certainly that!), it’s that it is so stylistically grating, riddled with
emojis and single-sentence paragraphs and “it’s not just… but also”
constructions and (yes!) em-dashes that some of us use naturally — but most
don’t (or shouldn’t).
When you use an LLM to author a post, you may think you are generating
plausible writing, but you aren’t: to anyone who has seen even a modicum of
LLM-generated content (a rapidly expanding demographic!), the LLM tells are
impossible to ignore. Bluntly, your intellectual fly is open: lots of people
notice — but no one is pointing it out. And the problem isn’t merely
embarrassment: when you — person whose perspective I want to hear! — are
obviously using an LLM to write posts for you, I don’t know what’s real and
what is in fact generated fanfic. You definitely don’t sound like you, so…
is the actual content real? I mean, maybe? But also maybe not. Regardless, I
stop reading — and so do lots of others.
So please, if not for the sanity of all of us than just to give your own
message the credit it deserves: have some confidence in your own voice — and
write your own content.