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178A | THE ENSHITTIFICATION OF LINKEDIN – A SEASON 15 UPDATE

  • Writer: Carter Ferguson
    Carter Ferguson
  • 2 days ago
  • 5 min read

Hello and welcome to Film Pro Productivity, the show that helps creative people to live a more focused, effective and HAPPY life. My name is Carter Ferguson and this is EPISODE 178A – THE ENSHITTIFICATION OF LINKEDIN – A SEASON 15 UPDATE.

The enshittification of platforms is not a bug. It’s the business model. Cory Doctorow.

In the new year show, EPISODE 178 - STOP FEEDING THE MACHINE - START CREATING STUFF THAT MATTERS, I talked about platforms shifting from growth to extraction. At the start, platforms help you because it suits them. You post, people see it, the platform grows, and everyone wins. Once the platform is big enough, that changes. They turn the tap down. Fewer people see what you post, not because it’s worse, but because the platform no longer needs to help you. And then they offer to turn the tap back on. For a price. You haven’t failed. The audience hasn’t vanished. The system has just decided it’s time to charge you. That has already happened elsewhere, and now it’s happening on Linked In.


That episode did very well.


It reached number 27 in the Apple Podcasts self-improvement charts and number 46 in the education charts, and it charted internationally especially in the US where my listenership was 160 times higher than in the UK but also in Canada, Germany, Australia, and India. And that didn’t happen because I pushed it harder on social media.

It happened because I stopped using social media as a promotional engine.


I took the lesson from the episode itself and accepted that social media, unless I put some serious money behind it, was not going to share my posts with much more than the same 3% of followers that always see it. I used social platforms only to release information and I put my real effort elsewhere. I set up targeted, on-platform actions that helped new listeners find the show directly. The result was that overall listenership jumped by about 24,000 so I think it may have landed quite well… I haven’t been that viral since I released my first short film that hit 2 million views on YouTube - before they enshitified it of course.


That matters, because it demonstrates the point of the episode rather than my just talking about it.


Which brings me to LinkedIn.


Since that episode went out, one platform in particular has brought this into sharp focus, because people are now reporting the same thing independently.

LinkedIn.


People are seeing a sudden and noticeable drop in reach. For many, it’s around half. Posts that would previously travel are now barely moving. Content isn’t being removed or flagged. It’s just being quietly limited.


And this isn’t random. Like almost all enshittification – it’s a strategic planned action by the platform.


LinkedIn has changed the algorithm to restrict reach and increase dependence on paid visibility. Your content is being restricted, and payment is now being presented as the solution.


LinkedIn held out longer than most. Not because it was good, but because it was slower to degrade. As Instagram, Facebook, and X became increasingly enshittified, people still needed somewhere to write, think, and signal professional competence, so they migrated to platforms that appeared to still be organic.


LinkedIn became comparatively usable. Longer, text-led posts could still circulate. Experience still carried some weight. And you didn’t have to aggressively perform just to be visible.


That phase is ending.


What worked before will not work now. Posting more won’t fix it. Trying harder won’t fix it. The system is no longer designed to reward that behaviour. There will be new ways that will gain traction but if you have to hire an expert to make your posts reach and pay the platform to highlight them, you are simply feeding the machine again.


And because I make this show for creative people, I know you don’t have endless cash to burn on buying back reach that used to be free.


If something feels off, if effort is no longer matching outcome, if posts are going nowhere without explanation, you’re not imagining it.


That’s pattern recognition.


My advice is the same as it was last week.


Stop feeding the machine.


That doesn’t mean dramatic exits. It means downgrading LinkedIn to what it now is. A noticeboard with limited reach. A place to point outward. But not somewhere to invest serious creative energy or expectation.


Put that effort into things you actually own.


  1. Your own website.

  2. Email lists.

  3. Podcasts.

  4. Direct relationships.

  5. Smaller communities that aren’t built on advertising extraction.


None of these offer explosive growth. But they do offer control, and control is what’s being removed elsewhere.


Which brings me to the show itself.


Season 15 of Film Pro Productivity will launch later this month. I am still working on it and I can say it will have a new toxic archetype style show, one on High Impact Actions, One on Chat GPT and productivity – that’s been a long time coming – and I’m still working on it so don’t want to say too much more.


The podcast is in the strongest position it has ever been, and I’m opening sponsorship for Season 15.


Sponsorship is £25 per episode, paid via PayPal. Each sponsorship includes a spoken credit on the episode, before the titles, with a link of your choice in the show notes too, and that credit stays attached to that episode for as long as this podcast is running.

There is also an Executive Producer option, which associates your name and links with every episode in the season for £200, but there is just one of those, and it’s obviously only available to people or companies whose values align with my own, but effectively it’s a no work involved, promotional position.


Those credits are attached in perpetuity.


All money raised goes straight back into the show. Episode promotion, website costs, and basic sundries. Nothing inflated. Nothing vague. I do this show for free, but putting each show out now costs me in the region of £40, and anything I can gain from sponsorship is super useful.


If you want to support the show in that way, please send me an email to filmproproductivity@gmail.com and please don’t message me on socials as its far too hard to track all these different platforms and I have lost sponsors before – literally lost their messages. I’ll reply with the payment details and a couple of simple questions about wording and pronunciation.


Sponsorship opportunities are limited and allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

In the first episode of that next season I’m going to take a hard look at something that derails our creative work long before it ever fails.


Not burnout.

Not lack of talent.

People.


In EPISODE 179, I’ll be talking about how toxic behaviours poison creative drive. How confidence gets weaponised, momentum gets stolen, and projects stall not because the work is bad, but because the wrong voices enter the process.


It’s about recognising interference early, naming it clearly, and understanding why some people make progress feel harder than it should.


If you’ve ever found yourself slowing down, hesitating, or second-guessing work that once felt clear, that episode will matter.


I’ll end today’s show with this quote from Henry David Thoreau who said The cost of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

The Enshittification of LinkedIn

Now, take control of your own destiny. Keep on shootin’ and join me next time on FILM PRO PRODUCTIVITY!


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© 2018 Carter Ferguson - Film Pro Productivity

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