I think I can speak for everyone when I say that at some point, political talk can become incredibly difficult to take in, especially if there’s seemingly nothing beneficial to be had in engaging such posts. So, how would you react if I told you that there’s a way to turn off political content entirely? Would that improve your user experience?

For many, it would, and while not all platforms offer the option, LinkedIn, fortunately, does. LinkedIn’s currently running a new test that provides users with a way to switch off all politics-related posts and updates, thereby effectively rendering their Feeds tranquil.

No Politics Zone 

As explained by LinkedIn CEO Ryan Rolansky to The WallStreet Journal, the new option, which is currently available to some US users, makes use of keywords and signals from users and certain inputs from LinkedIn’s editorial team, allowing people to identify political posts and eliminating them from their Feed. It’s said that users will also soon be able to block certain topics to prevent them from appearing in their stream.

It’s an interesting test and a likely future control option that would no doubt help LinkedIn further boost its numbers. For the most part, political posts don’t even naturally fit in LinkedIn. Then again, a lot of people also work in political and advocacy roles that could theoretically get caught up in this ‘cull’ option. That would impact platform reach and overall performance, at least in some way.

This is a keynote, one that related businesses should closely monitor and observe. Even if LinkedIn isn’t as exposed to political content as Facebook and Twitter are, it doesn’t mean that it’s immune. On that note, if enough people do choose to toggle political posts off, it could mean significant impacts for politically-aligned brands and businesses.

Because it’s currently in testing, users should expect a couple of glitches and discrepancies now and then. Nevertheless, it can be a valuable experiment, which could lead the way for other platforms to follow and implement similar controls. That being said, it would also be hard to implement such protocols on platforms like Facebook due to their heavy involvement in political discussions. Both Facebook and Twitter have high political engagement rates, so it’s unlikely that they’d want to limit those kinds of conversations.

The Wrap

On a contrary note, Meta did say that last year, one of the most common feedback notes it got from users was that they didn’t want politics and fighting to take over their in-app experience, leading to Meta launching a new experiment for Facebook to address such concerns.

LinkedIn, though experiencing less of an overall impact compared to the sites mentioned above, will be an interesting case to observe, especially in how it goes about warming its users about the option. Even more interesting would be the extended effects it would have on all user types.

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Sources

https://bit.ly/3HK4STN