---
title: LinkedIn is hostile to content
date: '2026-01-19T18:39:33+05:30'
categories:
- how-i-do-things
description: LinkedIn is a poor medium for serious reading and writing, so blogs remain the better canonical home for durable content.
keywords: [LinkedIn, content strategy, blogging, distribution, creator platforms, network effects]
---

It's incredible how hostile LinkedIn is for reading / writing content.

- Posts containing links to external websites (like my blog) get significantly less reach. That's why you see links in comments, not the post!
- You can't copy content from posts on their mobile app. You can't even easily select the entire article on the web app! Selecting a part, and then shift-clicking elsewhere (which works almost everywhere) doesn't work.
- Also, the copied text isn't clean. It's filled with hidden text (e.g. "Skip to search"), duplicated text (e.g. author name repeated), and other junk.
- It's hard to export content. For example, the [export feature](https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a1339364/downloading-your-account-data) does not include the original links in your articles, nor the links to images you posted!
- It's hard to scrape content. LinkedIn actively tries to prevent scraping, and their TOS prohibits it.
- No formatting. You have to embed unicode characters.
- Search is terrible. You can't search for posts by keyword, date, or author easily.
- No public posting - so you need to log in to read anything.

![](https://files.s-anand.net/images/2026-01-19-linkedin-is-hostile-to-content.avif)

The only reason I'm on LinkedIn is because of the network. My current approach is:

1. Write on my blog: https://www.s-anand.net/
2. Copy paste on LinkedIn, formatted
3. Link to the original, and to hell with the reach

Over time, ... let's see.