How to handle LinkedIn spam

Like many of you, I originally joined LinkedIn to increase my social-professional circle. Later on, finding (or offering) a job became another reason to visit the site. But I feel like in recent years the site has turned into a spam distribution center. And no, I don't mean the endless "8 people looked at your profile and we won't tell you who because you're not paying us" LinkedIn marketing spam.

I mean service providers.

For some reason, service providers have decided a social network is a great marketing vector for them. I don't know if LinkedIn is actively encouraging it, or charges for it. All I can say is that most of the messages I get, and most of the requests to connect on the platform are from people trying to sell me something.

If your title includes any technical managerial position (such as yours truly), you'll be inundated by software development service providers from all over the planet. Closely followed by QA services, marketing services, recruiters... All happily ignoring the fact that their request to "join my network" is not genuine or organic - it's just a way to sell me services.

Worse. Ever since ChatGPT was made public, the spam is not even original anymore. It's templated, insulting (when they don't even get your line of business right), and repetitive. The call to action is always "a 15 minutes call", or "here's a link to my calendar" etc.

I started combating this by adding a line at the top of my LinkedIn profile saying "no solicitations". That didn't phase anyone. I made it sterner, saying I'll immediately delete any soliciting message - that actually doubled the amount of messages I got. To me it suggested that these people didn't even bother reading my profile, or they just didn't care, as there were no consequences to ignoring my plea.

Finally, I decided that if you can't beat them, join them: I created an online paid appointment, and asked ChatGPT to generate a generic reply saying "Thanks for your exciting offer! I'd be glad to hear about your service, but please be aware that I charge $100 for a 30 minutes consultation call. Please let me know where to send the calendar link, and we can discuss your offering after you pay. If this is not to you liking, please remove me from your marketing list".

I use this not only on LinkedIn, but for the spam email I receive to my company's email. For some strange reason, I never received a follow up to any of my replies.

If you'd like to share how you combat LinkedIn spam, or learn how to set up a paid online appointment, or get my exact response message text, please leave a comment below. If you want to learn about the amazing things we're building at Kima, I'll be glad to share.