LinkedIn's New Option Lets You Switch Off Political Posts in Your Feed

Suppose you could choose to completely turn off political content on each social media platform, will that make a difference in your personal experience?

This is something that many people would like to see, although not all platforms are considering it (perhaps because it's one of their largest sources of engagement), LinkedIn seems to be, with a new ongoing test that will allow users to easily turn off all politics-related messages and updates.

The new option, which is now accessible to certain US users, uses keywords and signals from users, along with input from LinkedIn's editorial team, to detect political articles and remove them from your feed, as per LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. Users will eventually be able to restrict the number of posts that display in their stream based on their interests.

It's an intriguing experiment that could aid LinkedIn's 800 million members become more engaged. Political posts do not even suit LinkedIn in a sense, and besides, many people who work in political and advocacy professions might hypothetically be affected by this cull option, which could have an influence on platform reach and performance for some users. A critical point to bear in mind for linked businesses is that if a large number of individuals opt to unfollow political posts, the effect might be considerable - which is also dependent on how LinkedIn detects political content and any errors in its automated detection process.

Mis­takes are likely to hap­pen, but it's still a promising experiment that might lead to other social applications following suit and implementing their political exposure limits in their apps.As previously stated, it'll be considerably more difficult to deploy on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, where politics is so deeply embedded in-app usage.

The number of false alarms on those apps would most likely present a risk to user satisfaction than that on LinkedIn, but on the other hand, they presumably wouldn't want to restrict those talks too much and diminish usage.

Nevertheless, last year, Facebook's parent company Meta, said that one of the most popular comments from users is that they don't want politics and conflict to dominate their in-app experience. As a result, Facebook launched a new test in user feeds that minimize political messages. Considering this, it's feasible that Facebook will do something similar in the future, especially as it seeks to reclaim younger users.

You'd expect that the effects are much greater than on LinkedIn, but it'll be fascinating to see if LinkedIn users warm up to the option, and what long-term impacts they have on users, both personal and professional.

LinkedIn has begun testing the new feature with some users; if you have access, you will be able to turn off political messages in your settings, under 'Account preferences,' then 'Feed preferences.'