Goodbye LinkedIn

There is something I have been monitoring on the internet since the pre-maturity of online social media networks, and even as early as the end of Myspace. What makes this article so interesting is that I have tested, contacted, collected all the evidence of this and am prepared to show you specifically how major social media sites censor sharing of thought and ideas.  What better time than the Monday following the collapse in share price of LinkedIn of almost 50%, and continual fall in share prices of other social media companies.

Collapse of Social Media

The Internet is being corporatized and if it continues, it will be the end of social networks being a place of opportunity and sharing of information online.

Now, social media has changed all of or lives, from reconnecting long lost friendships, finding that awesome party, the latest news and social movements, to rekindling the love of my very own life. Social Networking is pretty powerful stuff.

Social Media sites control a large portion of the information and communication distribution of the entire world. That’s why Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Yelp are worth billions of dollars, each. They are publicly traded companies whose power is centralized and out of our grasp.

How Social Networking Sites Censor and Control Distribution of Information

With algorithms and even more simply, manual deletion or sanctioning of content and social media accounts. No way!

Yes. Yelp (just last week), LinkedIn and Yahoo have manually deleted my posts, locked my accounts, and disabled commenting in that order. With out appeal or even pointing to specific examples of violations or reasons why. Here are some of the comments and free content I made over the years that was obviously valuable to the readers.

Screenshot of Yahoo Comments June 13th, 2012
I wrote a 400 word article, commonly referred in the website production world as “User Generated Content” for Yahoo Answers for free for them. Account was banned.

It’s Not Over Yet

At this point, there are still a lot of people on the social networks, but engagement is down. If the censorship and feature restrictions continue to increase at the rate they have been, users will get less value and either move to newer services, or do the unthinkable = stop using social media. So much potential squandered.

Make a Difference

I will be updating this article in shortly with the email conversations between the various social networks and more examples of social media censorship, so please let me know any questions you have or similar experiences in the comments. Please like and share to get the word out, which if this goes viral, will help bring light to the CEOs and share holders of these offending companies that we know what is happening.

UPDATE – NEVER DID THIS, BUT HAVE THEM IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED. INSTEAD, I WROTE MORE ABOUT THE TOPIC: