LinkedIn Can Now Keep You From Disturbing Political Content

LinkedIn allows users to customize the feeds they are interested in. (photo: doc. unsplash)

JAKARTA - Microsoft's LinkedIn continues to allow users to customize the feeds they are interested in or avoid, one of which is the presence of political content.

Now the professional social network has given users a choice whether they want to see political content in its feed or not.

Microsoft's LinkedIn business CEO, Ryan Roslansky, said the option button is available under Account Preferences then in the Preferences Feed. Chances are this option may have been around for three months or more in the test version.

The company says the feature is the result of user feedback on how an increase in political uploads is hampering the overall experience for platform visitors.

"Currently, political content includes content such as political parties and candidates, election results, and voting initiatives. We are constantly testing and gathering member feedback about the type of political content they prefer to view less on LinkedIn," said Roslansky as quoted from ZDNet, Friday, February 11th.

"Over time, based on member feedback, we can further develop the feature and expand it to more regions and languages," he added.

Apart from enabling it via settings, users can hide political content by selecting a specific post in the feed, clicking on the more icon in the upper right corner and selecting do not want to see this political content. This feature is only available in trials in the United States (US), it is not known when it will be available globally.

According to a Pew Research Center analysis, about 55 percent of social media users in the US say they are bored by political posts. About 64 percent of U.S. adults say social media is negatively affecting the country's current state of affairs, according to another Pew poll from 2020.

Microsoft is also planning to integrate LinkedIn with Teams, which will allow users to view their co-workers' LinkedIn profiles.