#indieweb 2026-03-22
2026-03-22 UTC
[Al_Abut], BigShip, joshtronic, toastal and WinnerWind joined the channel
# 
[morgan] Relevant enough to indieweb enough to mention https://indieweb.org/silo-quits I have gone 60ish days now with my Linkedin account turned off. I had a toxic relationship with that website spanning basically decades, where I felt I should keep posting or interacting with a small group of people I wanted to keep touch with, who would occasionally like my posts and Id get a little dopamine hit. Meanwhile, exposing my eyeballs to the feed and
# [morgan] invasive notifications like "someone looked at your profile (please pay us money to see who it was)" was basically dealing me super-effective psychic damage each time. I know lots of people need to keep their Linkedins for work but Ive basically prospered so far without it and recommend it to anyone to get rid of their LI if they can.
cotsuka joined the channel; toastal left the channel
# [Michael_Kupiet] Funny, second time today quitting linkedin has come up for me. I haven't been on LI since September. That site is incredibly toxic. My account is still active but I haven't checked it. At some point I will need to, I suppose, but I'm not looking forward to it.
toastal, barnaby, TactfulCitrus, lars_the_bear, blacklight, coldfeet and lars_the_bear_ joined the channel; toastal left the channel
# 
[capjamesg] I would like to quit LinkedIn. I am thinking about how to do it now.
# [capjamesg] I’d much rather have a web page that represents me than an account on a platform that keeps showing me content I don’t want to see.
# aspizu i managed to quit linkedin by getting perma banned from it
# [morgan] I have become quite convinced there are no actual jobs to be found there and its more likely to just be surveillance, ads and drudgery. There was a time in like 2016 when I was fresh and interacted with some recruiters on it, but its basically been a waste of time I put into it for a decade
# [morgan] [capjamesg] I believe in you, your skill and acumen can shine from a personal website and networking that doesn't rely on that site
mrCoolCola and [tantek] joined the channel
# [morgan] There are good people who use it for its intended purpose for sure like you but I feel I am an individual contributor at work and not likely to help anyone connect or find anything. At any rate, I had a posting habit that made it not great. I guess I retain the ability to start up my account again if I really needed to do extra networking again.
# [morgan] There was a period of time that it seemed to be mandatory to get a job in anything tech related to have a linkedin, such as it being included in job applications. But the hiring process and job application process for so many things currently seems completely broken in the current economy + AI generated cover letters and so on Im deciding to try and make a break from it
# [morgan] The stream of stuff is truly bizarre, my brain got hooked on posting like once a week for a while because there was like 5-6 people in New Zealand who would read my stuff and occasionally comment. Once I identified my sort of thought process for posting, I realized it was driven by this theme of wanting to keep alive connections that were loose and stale at best.
# [morgan] Anyways, I recognize definitely that people in leadership and senior positions may want to keep their account, and many people have better self control than me. But for a lot of individual contributors, even job seekers-> I strongly question the value of posting or being active on Linkedin, or even just using it for its job board.
coldfeet joined the channel
# [morgan] Ive read so many things I cant unread there 😣
# [morgan] I will just emphasize how low quality I think the job postings are, even if you keep a low profile and dont post, I really really strongly think the job listings are mostly all spam or filled by internal referrals and networking
gordinator joined the channel
troojg, TactfulCitrus, ax562, barnaby, coldfeet, proofreed, DKordic, AcesAndEights84, [artlung] and lars_the_bear_ joined the channel; toastal left the channel
# [Michael_Kupiet] think LinkedIn is worse in terms of the self-promotion and absolutely valueless, self-serving posts, and with worse (IE no) privacy controls. But I did manage to connect with interesting people on there, some of whom I even stayed in touch with since I stopped engaging on there. And as my job search spun out longer and longer and became more and more difficult to cope with, those social connections were a big help. My first eight months
# [Michael_Kupiet] I actually did find a great deal of community and a lot of interesting people through LinkedIn over the last fee years, but it took a lot of effort and wading through a lot of nonsense. As far as the feed goes, it’s all engagement bait, it’s just another social media site dressed up as a place to make employment connections, just like Facebook is dressed up as a place to keep in touch with your friends and keep up on your interests.
# [Michael_Kupiet] of looking for work, I didn’t even realize the same thing was going on all over the place, I thought it was just me, and finding real community on LinkedIn with other people going through the same thing proved to be a very useful support network psychologically. I basically used it as a place to be a squeaky wheel about what I was going through (some of which I’ve alluded to in conversations on here, but mostly I consider IndieWeb an
# [Michael_Kupiet] oasis and don’t talk about that stuff much.) I also did connect with a lot of job coaching, offers of free professional services and training, stuff like that that probably helped a little, although none of it ever ended up getting me a job. I even found my current therapist on there, she reached out having seen one of my posts, and she’s dynamite. But unfortunately, the flipside is, a prolonged career crisis can be personally
# [Michael_Kupiet] traumatizing at times, and when you’re feeling traumatic, LinkedIn is a terrible influence to be involved with, so I had to give it up. I only meant to take a few days away but now it’s been since September and I just can’t bear to go back.
daemonspudguy joined the channel
# [morgan] I can relate a bunch in that you just wrote. It's a hard nut to crack, and some good things and people can come through even pretty bad environments anywhere. But basically, I became allergic to the place after a while despite occasional carrots 🥕 of good stuff
# [morgan] I think it's the variable reward part of it that makes it bad for personalities like mine. Like I would read the feed and check the website and be subjected to all the notifications and feel absolutely rancid like 5/6 times and then occasionally there would be a little glimmer of engagement that seemed really good
# [Michael_Kupiet] You and I are alike in that way. I’m susceptible to the variable rewards thing too. In fact, since switching from using the web interface to using Slack for Indieweb chat, I’ve become very concerned that I’m getting caught up in that behavior again. Obviously the content here is a 100% different and entirely better ballpark, engagement here is constructive rather than toxic, but Slack’s sort of sticky addictive dopamine-feeding U
# [Michael_Kupiet] unread counts, little pop-up notifications and “look what you missed!” enticements, are the same and feel unhealthy to me. Frankly it’s only access to the unlogged channels that keeps me from switching back to the web interface. I think that’s a much healthier interface for me.
daemonspudguy joined the channel
# [morgan] Slack can get that way sometimes, definitely valid to watch how it also makes you feel
# [capjamesg] I have all my Slack notifications turned off.
# [Michael_Kupiet] I have notifications turned off as well, but I always know that seeing which channels are unread is just a tap away. The in-app notifications are enough to keep me hooked.
# [capjamesg] Yeah. Notifications is one area that I _really_ hope we design more thoughtfully in the future.
# [capjamesg] It is why I built a web reader without the concept of a “read” post. I don’t want people to feel like they are behind just because they haven’t checked their reader in a while.
# [morgan] I would kind of optimistically encourage you to feel alright about using slack as a little treat, moderation in all things including moderation itself kind of thing
# [morgan] Or if you prefer, a harm reduction metaphor
# [Michael_Kupiet] Yeah, I believe you’ve posted some links about similar ideas, either from yourself or other people, recently. It’s good thinking. I do feel that chat and blog posts are slightly different, and at some point I’m gonna write a piece about that… For real time communication a chat interface like the IW chat web UI Is ideal for me. Readers to me are a little more of a one-way communication… That feels to me a little more like “con
# [Michael_Kupiet] a little less like “interacting”. I don’t feel like it builds the feeling of community as strongly for me. Even when people are replying to each other’s blog posts
# [Michael_Kupiet] That reply was directed to James. Morgan, yeah, I’m not great at moderation.
# [capjamesg] Agreed. There is definitely a different dimension to chat versus blogging.
# [morgan] I think its valid to say that almost everyone here is on some kind of journey, part of which we know nothing about, just even because they had fun on a social media app that went sour or something. The balance between reading and interacting and consuming and so on is evergreen conversation to have 🙂
AcesAndEights84 joined the channel
# [capjamesg] I think the discussions about how we interact with the web and how we want to interact with the web open our minds to what is possible.
# [morgan] My website(s) are getting me engaged in my local community, Im really excited about it, Ive got a few drafts, but basically my websites have got me really close to some policy making. Its giving me the lifeforce I want 😄
# [capjamesg] I have recently concluded that I don’t want to use silos wherever possible. I instead want to interact directly with people ✨
# [Michael_Kupiet] I found in the past by the way, that email lists are an acceptable substitute for chat, when people are active on them and engaged. I’ve certainly been on plenty of email lists that were as lively and real time as this chat room is. I wonder if maybe the perceptual difference is in being able to see the stream of a conversation, not having to skip back-and-forth between blogs, Or even posts and comments sections on one blog, to read
# [Michael_Kupiet] replies
# [capjamesg] I have a blog post draft idea in my head that is something like “If it isn’t on the open web, I’m not going to see it.” (aka: I don’t have an account on the platform you are using, and it’s not my fault that I can’t see your link.)
# [morgan] Email lists were basically how much of the world we know was made heh. I always get too scared to post to some because the orgs that use them make it clear "What you email here is stored forever" with friction by design principles well used, but then I decide its not worth emailing
# [capjamesg] I prefer chat to emails for longer conversations in many cases because I don’t feel like I have an inbox to go through, but everyone has different preferences.
# [Michael_Kupiet] Morgan, that’s awesome. I haven’t seen much of Angelo lately but he uses his site in much the same way, tying it into civic engagement.
# [morgan] He is for the trees, I am for local healthcare
# [Michael_Kupiet] Morgan, you know, what you say here is stored forever as well, unless you say it in #indieweb-cafe
# [morgan] I know that, but its not the same level of formality
# [morgan] I feel a little intimidated about making a less supported claim at the consortium, so I go to slack where it feels a little more fast and loose
# [Michael_Kupiet] Hah. I get that.
# [morgan] If someone tracks me down here by my single name and has an issue with these pretty bell pepper opinions then I think I was already gonna have a bad time before posting. Thats sort of how my head works about this stuff.
# [Michael_Kupiet] Good way to think about it. Yes, in most places on the web, I don’t post as “kupietz”. But here, I very much doubt I’ll ever say anything I wouldn’t want people to associate with my IRL identity.
daemonspudguy joined the channel
# [morgan] At the end of it all, making websites still provides a massive amount of value in my life, and Im relatively on a name using basis for most projects. Theres just the whole "world wide" aspect of this pursuit which makes one have to think about all kinds of things, and spammers, and not good actors, all kinds of stuff. I haven't quit it yet 😄
# [Michael_Kupiet] Heard. For a long time I was very diligent about keeping my identities separate online. I went decades without my real name and my website domain name appearing on the same public webpage, anywhere.
# [Michael_Kupiet] It’s only since starting my current website 2 1/2 years ago that I finally decided to drop the barriers between my various online identities.
daemonspudguy joined the channel
# [morgan] Its not really the same thing but basically it was like 2016 when I moved back from 🇳🇿 and I was absolutely mentally entrenched in social media driven mostly by fear that I would end up going back there and didnt want to lose my networks. Sort of an immigration worry experience. Basically a lot of the progress has been letting go sort of thing, if I see them again Ill see them again
ax562, AcesAndEights84, troojg, AcesAndEights849, deathcomestotime, btrem, [marksuth], _justin_kelly7, gRegor, TheMusicDimensio, WinnerWi-, barnaby, gRegorLove_, daemonspudguy and thegreekgeek_ joined the channel