I've been experimenting with posting on LinkedIn and realized what the deal is. Basically it's a lot less hostile than other social media for people with no pre-existing audience: on Twitter you can post and nobody cares, in HN you can submit and nobody cares, on Substack you can write a personal blog post and google doesn't care to show it in search results, on Youtube you make a video and nobody cares, etc. (And let's set aside even more difficult stuff like making a podcast and hoping anyone cares)

Meanwhile on LinkedIn if you post your thoughts on something, share an article, or mention a project they give you a good push to at least a few dozen people and you may see a like or two from a 3rd degree contact(!) within minutes. And then they aggressively SEO the feed too so now if someone Googles your name your LinkedIn posts will show up

What’s the best possible outcome from posting on LinkedIn? I personally think it’s a poor place to “build your brand” - it’s mostly your friends or existing professional acquaintances that see your stuff, and whether you’re looking for a job or trying to do business development, those people are rarely your target market. I think the engagement is better because you have a natural “following” of all your friends / colleagues, but it’s meaningless.

This is par for the course for Li, I’ve found it seems to be about activity or making you feel like you’re doing something, without actually getting any value and in reality just scrolling social media.

YMMV of course, maybe there are real people who’ve had great value from posting?

It sounds like a modern Twilight Zone premise. There's one social network left where any engagement is possible, but it's the one where nothing worthwhile is being said.