How to take back control of LinkedIn

LinkedIn can be a nightmare, here’s how to make it work harder for you.

LinkedIn is a critical network as the world of work continues to flex, morph, and settle. Your LinkedIn feed is made up of a lot of different content the algorithm thinks you’d like (or it wants to push out). There’s no easy way to fix it although the main ways are joining events, being more selective with connections, adding people from different industries, and unfollowing low-value, and spam, content people.

Recently I unfollowed (not unconnected) all my LinkedIn connections so you can still message them, see their details etc, just not all their posts unless you want to refollow them afterwards. To say it’s completely changed my LinkedIn experience is an understatement. Before the purge, the content I was getting served was spammy, quote porn heavy and I never interacted with much of anything. Now the opposite could be said to be true. Content is fresher, of higher value and feels more considered (although it's still automatically picked for me).

Unfollowing isn’t difficult but it does require a bit of tinkering and did take a bit of time because I have somehow amassed +18k followers (I think it must have been my Forbes days or people like cynical tech nerdery and adverts for ‘What Did OpenAI Do This Week?’(!).

Here are the steps to do the same.

1. Open Chrome on your computer (it’s best done on a desktop), and visit this link (linkedin.com/feed/following)

2. Right Click -> Inspect. Find the console tab which looks like this:

3. Paste this script into the console and press enter.

(() => {
  let count = 0;
  function getAllButtons() {
    return document.querySelectorAll('button.is-following') || [];
  }
  async function unfollowAll() {
    const buttons = getAllButtons();

    for (let button of buttons) {
      count = count + 1;

      const name = button.parentElement.querySelector(
        '.follows-recommendation-card__name',
      ).innerText;
      console.log(`Unfollow #${count}:`, name);

      window.scrollTo(0, button.offsetTop - 260);
      button.click();

      await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 100));
    }
  }
  async function run() {
    await unfollowAll();
    window.scrollTo(0, document.body.scrollHeight);
    await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, 1000));
    const buttons = getAllButtons();
    if (buttons.length) run();
  }
  run();
})();

4. Watch the ‘Following’ turn into ‘Follow+’ as the script unfollows — not disconnects — from people in your network.

If the process stops in the middle, just hit refresh or reload the page and repeat the steps until you see ‘Follow Fresh Perspectives’ or until the following count reaches zero.

Afterwards, you can start following people and organisations as you find them. Use LinkedIn’s search to find people who specialise in a field or area you are interested in. Remember, it’s not always the biggest followings that give the best signal. I hope this helps you on your journey to clean up LinkedIn and have a richer, more useful experience.

About the author

Paul Armstrong runs TBD Group; intelligence products, advisory and events. He wrote ‘Disruptive Technologies’ and created TBD Conference from it. He regularly contributes to The Information, Cool Hunting and is a trusted tech expert for the FT, WSJ, BBC, and CNN.