HN Debrief

LinkedIn Feed Blocker

  • Social Media
  • Developer Tools
  • Careers
  • Browser Extensions

The posted project is a simple LinkedIn feed blocker. It removes the home feed while leaving the rest of the site usable, which is exactly how many people now want LinkedIn to work. The comments make clear that this is not a niche annoyance. A lot of people already use uBlock Origin rules, Stylus, Greasemonkey, ViolentMonkey, Safari stylesheets, or even a weird built-in hack where setting the feed to “most recent” and unfollowing everyone causes LinkedIn to show an empty or broken feed. The common goal is not to quit LinkedIn entirely. It is to keep profiles, messaging, recruiter discovery, company intel, and job applications while deleting the algorithmic sludge.

If LinkedIn still matters for hiring, sales, or passive recruiting in your world, treat the feed as optional infrastructure, not the product. The practical move is to preserve search, messaging, and profile visibility while aggressively cutting the parts that waste attention or distort signal.

Discussion mood

Strongly negative about LinkedIn’s feed and product direction, but not about LinkedIn’s core utility. People resent the spammy, manipulative, low-value feed while still relying on the platform for recruiting, job search, sales intelligence, and professional presence.

Key insights

  1. 01

    Feed blocking is already a commodity

    The interesting part is not this specific extension. It is how easy it has become to reshape sites yourself with uBlock Origin, Stylus, userscripts, or browser-specific custom styles. Several comments shared working selectors and said a standalone extension is mainly useful when LinkedIn changes its markup often enough that somebody needs to maintain the workaround for you.

    If your team depends on a hostile web product, do not wait for the vendor to fix it. Lightweight browser-side customization can deliver immediate quality-of-life gains, but plan for maintenance if the target site keeps changing its DOM.

      Attribution:
    • coffeecoders #1
    • anotheryou #1
    • petesergeant #1
    • andrewpollack #1 #2
    • blancotech #1
  2. 02

    Shadowban claims are weakly supported

    A warning that LinkedIn may detect DOM manipulation and quietly suppress accounts got a lot of pushback because it mixed real extension fingerprinting concerns with a much bigger claim about search visibility and recruiter reach that was not substantiated. The useful distinction is that sites can detect browser modifications, but that does not prove they are penalizing job seekers for hiding feed elements.

    Treat anti-tampering and fingerprinting as credible technical risk, but do not assume business-impact claims without evidence. If account visibility is mission critical, prefer minimal CSS or time-limit tools over heavy extensions until you test the risk on a low-stakes account.

  3. 03

    LinkedIn survives as infrastructure

    People who defended keeping LinkedIn did not defend the feed. They defended the surrounding system. Recruiter search still produces jobs for some. Sales teams use it for fresh company and people signals. Hiring forms and applicant tracking systems often expect a profile URL and may scrape it for ranking. That makes LinkedIn less a beloved product than a mandatory identity layer for modern knowledge work.

    If you hire, sell, or recruit, keep your company and personal profiles in good shape even if you ignore the feed. The platform still acts as a public résumé, discovery index, and data source for workflows you do not control.

      Attribution:
    • neilv #1
    • michelb #1
    • nly #1
    • data-ottawa #1
    • bradleyankrom #1
    • edoceo #1
  4. 04

    A clean network-only feed may be nearly empty

    An older attempt to filter LinkedIn down to only posts from direct connections mostly produced blank pages. That is not just a funny indictment of the feed. It says the value proposition of a pure social graph on LinkedIn is thin for many users because most connections are not active posters, and a large share of visible content is manufactured by recommendation systems, promotions, or low-quality engagement farming.

    Do not assume a professional network has enough native content to support a social feed. If you are building around a graph product, be honest about whether users want updates from connections or just access to the graph for search and transactions.

      Attribution:
    • mmarian #1
    • morkalork #1
    • IncreasePosts #1
    • beezlewax #1
    • fg137 #1
  5. 05

    LinkedIn rewards posting even when the content is bad

    One commenter explained why people keep posting there anyway. LinkedIn still gives small accounts immediate distribution and name search visibility that are hard to get on other platforms. That makes the network attractive for attention, even if the resulting content is shallow and the engagement often has little commercial value. The product is good at making users feel seen. It is much less clear that it helps them reach the right audience.

    If you post on LinkedIn, judge it by concrete outcomes like hires, leads, or introductions rather than likes from loose professional contacts. The platform can be useful for lightweight reach, but vanity engagement is easy to mistake for traction.

      Attribution:
    • mmarian #1
    • add-sub-mul-div #1
    • firasd #1
    • andy99 #1

Against the grain

  1. 01

    Some users still want a better feed

    Not everyone wants the home timeline erased. Several comments asked for a filtered feed that shows only posts from actual connections because job openings, layoffs, fellowship announcements, and occasional useful updates do surface there. The complaint is less "feeds are bad" than "algorithmic amplification buried the one thing I came for."

    If you rely on weak-tie updates, use filtering rather than full removal. The right product opportunity may be a network-only mode, not a total blackout.

      Attribution:
    • apparent #1
    • morkalork #1
    • specproc #1
    • jordand #1
    • absoluteunit1 #1
    • tumidpandora #1
    • tolugenius #1
  2. 02

    The sludge may be working as intended

    A few comments rejected the idea that LinkedIn is merely mismanaged. They argued the low-value, sticky feed is the monetization engine. Engagement bait and constant prompts may look like product decay from the user side, but they are part of how a network with a strong moat keeps people returning and supports a large valuation.

    When a platform’s incentives depend on time spent, expect friction against any experience that reduces engagement. Build your own workflows around that reality instead of waiting for the product to become cleaner on its own.

      Attribution:
    • MarkMarine #1
    • mmarian #1
    • roncesvalles #1

In plain english

AI ↩
Artificial intelligence, software systems that perform tasks such as generating text, images, code, or predictions.
DOM ↩
Document Object Model, the browser’s structured representation of a web page that extensions and scripts can inspect or modify.
Greasemonkey ↩
A browser extension system for running custom user-written scripts on web pages.
Safari ↩
Apple’s web browser for macOS and iOS.
Stylus ↩
A browser extension that lets users apply custom CSS styles to websites.
uBlock Origin ↩
A widely used open source browser extension for blocking ads, trackers, and unwanted page elements with extensive custom filtering features.
ViolentMonkey ↩
A browser extension similar to Greasemonkey that runs custom userscripts on websites.

Reference links

Feed blocking tools and extensions

Detection and anti-customization references

  • linkedin-extension-fingerprinting
    Referenced in support of the claim that LinkedIn can detect browser extensions or page modifications.
  • Browsergate
    Linked as additional background on browser extension detection and related privacy concerns.

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