Online pawn..?
In the algorithm game, who’s playing and who's being played?
“Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.” — Albert Einstein. 1
Do you have something valuable to say about organisations?
Maybe about leadership, culture, or other important topics?
Do you want others to engage with your ideas, offerings, and services?
If so, you’ve probably tried using LinkedIn to help get your message out.
How did your early attempts work out?
Were you disappointed by how little engagement you got?
Did you subsequently search for tips, tricks, and hacks to improve your results..?
Google a phrase like “Beat the LinkedIn algorithm” or “LinkedIn growth hacking” and you’ll find there are lots of checklists, coaches, and courses promising you better results — even to “Set your LinkedIn on fire and never worry about leads again.” 2
These will typically advise you to:
Post regularly
Not put off-platform links in your posts
Entice people to engage with and share your posts
Encourage comments, which the algorithm prefers to “Likes”
Not be first to comment on your own post
Respond to comments quickly
Comment in ways that encourage further comments
Use polls with very few answer options
You can see these tips, tricks, and hacks reflected in characteristic LinkedIn behaviours:
Since it takes a lot of work to post your own original content regularly, some users mostly post material created by others — typically tagging the original creators to avoid complaints of, and LinkedIn sanctions for, plagiarism. Some make genuine efforts to curate well, whilst others use these tactics to play the algorithm, treating those whose work they repost as pawns in their game.
Some users regularly comment with boilerplate words of thanks or praise, tagging the original poster (“OP”) to encourage them to comment back. This thanks or praise might be genuine, or it might be a tactic to exploit the algorithm’s rewarding of those whose comments garner further comments by using OPs as pawn in their game.
Off-platform links go in comments, not the actual post, which instead says: “See link in first comment”. Some users of this tactic may then “forget” to put the link in a comment — which achieves two things: firstly it avoids them being first to comment on their own post, and secondly it nudges others to ask “Where’s the link?”. The OP can then reply with the link, and further boost the post and their algorithmic status by thanking and tagging the user for their comment (see 2 above).
OPs will end their posts with a hook to entice comments — e.g. “Do you agree? I’d love to hear your comments.” It’s of course possible that an OP may genuinely love to hear your comments. Alternatively they may simply love the points your comments will score for them with the algorithm by using you as a pawn in their game. Another similar tactic is to promise to send a “valuable” resource to anyone who replies with a comment along the lines of: “Please send me the resource”. Obviously, the OP could have just provided a link to download the resource, but that wouldn’t help generate a potentially lengthy, algorithm-rewarding thread and, as an added bonus, a list of warm prospects for further marketing. 3
Polls with few answer options are likely to encourage comments that the OP missed other possible options. For example, the OP may post a poll: “Who should make decisions in organisations? with just two answer options: “Senior Executives?” or “Frontline Employees?” This will probably prompt comments along the lines: “It depends” or “Both should be involved together” or even “You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about”. In this way, the OP gets more comments traffic, and more users to thank, praise, and tag (see 2 above). Again, the OP may have only foreseen two options and be genuinely grateful to receive additional suggestions. Alternatively, they may be tricking others into commenting as pawns in their algorithm-hacking game…
Who’s playing who?
Do the LinkedIn algorithm designers know users apply these “growth hacks”?
Of course they do.
Do they know that whenever they make changes to the algorithm, this will trigger a new wave of tips, tricks, and hacks for seemingly gaming it?
Of course they do.
Do they know this will entice people into deeper game playing, taking this into account in how they tweak the algorithm?
Of course they do.
Some former social media insiders have publicly revealed how the algorithm game is played, most notably ex-Google ethicist Tristan Harris, who gave this summary in his 2019 testimony to the US Senate:
“Today’s tech platforms are caught in a race to the bottom of the brain stem to extract human attention. It's a race we're all losing. The result: addiction, social isolation, outrage, misinformation, and political polarization are all part of one interconnected system, called human downgrading, that poses an existential threat to humanity”. 4
He explains this “race to the bottom of the brain stem” as follows:
“At Google, I was a design ethicist where I thought about how do you ethically wield this influence over 2 billion people’s thoughts. Because in an attention economy, there’s only so much attention and the advertising business model always wants more. So, it becomes a race to the bottom of the brain stem. Each time technology companies go lower into the brain stem, it takes a little more control of society. It starts small. First to get your attention, I add slot machine “pull to refresh” rewards which create little addictions. I remove stopping cues for “infinite scroll” so your mind forgets when to do something else. But then that’s not enough. As attention gets more competitive, we have to crawl deeper down the brainstem to your identity and get you addicted to getting attention from other people. By adding the number of followers and likes, technology hacks our social validation and now people are obsessed with the constant feedback they get from others. This helped fuel a mental health crisis for teenagers. And the next step of the attention economy is to compete on algorithms. Instead of splitting the atom, it splits our nervous system by calculating the perfect thing that will keep us there longer — the perfect YouTube video to autoplay or news feed post to show next.” 5
Harris defines the ultimate outcome of the algorithm game — human downgrading:
“The race for our attention is the underlying cause of human downgrading. More than two billion people — a psychological footprint bigger than Christianity — are jacked into social platforms designed with the goal of not just getting our attention, but getting us addicted to getting attention from others. This an extractive attention economy. 6
By fuelling the addiction to getting attention from others, technology platforms deliberately exploit and manipulate human weaknesses:
“As magicians know, to manipulate someone, you don’t have to overwhelm their strengths, you just have to overwhelm their weaknesses. While futurists were looking out for the moment when technology would surpass human strengths and steal our jobs, we missed the much earlier point where technology surpasses human weaknesses. It’s already happened. By preying on human weaknesses — fear, outrage, vanity — technology has been downgrading our well-being, while upgrading machines.” 7
The evolution of the algorithm game in the three years since Harris’ testimony is evident in popular platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
YouTube has added “Shorts”, whilst Facebook and Instagram have added “Reels” to compete with TikTok who, by late 2021, had displaced Google at the top of the attention extraction rankings. 8
And, despite being a business-oriented platform, LinkedIn is increasingly adopting similar tactics to YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram — with whom it also competes for attention and the associated advertising revenue.
Have you ever had the feeling of being played by the LinkedIn algorithm?
Do you feel the pull to change your behaviour to “please” the algorithm?
If you’ve already used some of the above tactics, have you felt the need to escalate?
Do you ever feel exploited by other users seemingly playing the algorithm?
Do you think other users might ever wonder if you’re playing them?
Are you staying sufficiently true to your true values — which are the basis of your true value..?
LIFE Magazine 2 May 1955: “Death of a Genius” by William Miller. View on Google books.
Here’s an example promising precisely that.
In some cases the more unscrupulous game players won’t actually send the resource, saving themselves the effort of doing so and potentially driving more thread activity when non-recipients chase what they were promised.
“Optimizing for Engagement: Understanding the Use of Persuasive Technology on Internet Platforms” June 25, 2019 Testimony to US Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet — download p10.
Ibid Tristan Harris US Senate testimony — download p1.
Ibid Tristan Harris US Senate testimony — download p10.
Ibid Tristan Harris US Senate testimony — download p10.