I’m going to create a Chrome extension that hides all content with these phrases:
- “But nobody talks about this”
- “Breaking”
- “How to win at GEO”
Fifty percent of all posts would disappear.
LinkedIn has a content pollution problem. Not the people posting (they’re responding to what the algorithm rewards). The platform itself created this mess.
“But nobody talks about this” is almost always followed by something everyone talks about constantly. It’s a false controversy hook designed to trigger engagement.
“Breaking” is used for things that broke three days ago, or never needed breaking in the first place. Everything is breaking news when you need clicks.
“How to win at GEO” and similar SEO-bait headlines promise secrets that aren’t secrets. They’re repackaged basics wrapped in urgency.
The problem isn’t that individual posts use these patterns. It’s that these patterns have become the dominant mode of communication on the platform.
When everyone is shouting “breaking” and “nobody talks about this,” the actual signal gets buried under performative urgency.
I’m guilty of this too sometimes. The platform trains us all to optimize for engagement over substance.
But we can do better. We can write things worth reading instead of things optimized to be clicked.
The extension doesn’t exist. But maybe it should.
Or maybe we just need to stop rewarding the patterns that pollute the feed.