LinkedIn Engagement Pods - Enough is Enough. It's time to do something about it.

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PODS

I did some research. I searched on LinkedIn for "Pod, Pods, #Pods, #Pod, Pods Engagement LinkedIn -?? Bingo) I narrowed my search down to the past week and the results are clear as day; people are frustrated with Pods.

First off, for the untainted, What are LinkedIn Engagement Pods? ("Pods" for short.)

Some explanations that I've curated:

• A 'LinkedIn engagement pod' is a group of LinkedIn members who join together to game and hack the LinkedIn algorithm to increase visibility and reach by agreeing to interact with each other’s posts by commenting on them, liking them, or sharing each other’s content.
• A manual pod involves people (often from the same industry) joining a group on platforms like Telegram, Slack, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc., with the intention to engage with each other’s posts.?
• Automated LinkedIn pods - Tools like Lempod and Podawaa are tailored to automate LinkedIn engagement pods and boost your organic reach.?Both tools seem to have ceased working.
• A Hootsuite 2022 Experiment: Do LinkedIn Pods Work? (Or Are They Mostly Embarrassing?) I joined a LinkedIn pod so you don’t have to. Here’s how it helped (and hurt) my posts over the course of one week.

This article describes the purpose of being in a pod; In an engagement pod, members agree to like, comment, share, and react to each others’ posts on a regular basis. Often, this is done by posting your LinkedIn post in an engagement pod group or app, where members can view and interact with it. Most engagement pods work on the principle of reciprocity. So, if you want people to like, comment, or share your content, you’ll need to do the same for them. INSANE ??

Are Engagement Pods against LinkedIn's user agreement and policies? And can one report them? I wasn't sure so I asked LinkedIn. See my chat below:

You'll see below what I've copied directly from LinkedIn's user agreement and policies.

Do not spam members or the platform. We don't allow untargeted, irrelevant, obviously unwanted, unauthorized, inappropriately commercial or promotional, or gratuitously repetitive messages or similar content. Do not use our invitation feature to send promotional messages to people you don't know or to otherwise spam people. Please make the effort to create original, professional, relevant, and interesting content in order to gain engagement. Don't do things to artificially increase engagement with your content. Respond authentically to others’ content and don’t agree with others ahead of time to like or re-share each other’s content.

The quality of conversations on LinkedIn depends on healthy, relevant content. We may remove or limit the distribution of content designed to artificially increase engagement through misuse or misrepresentation of LinkedIn’s features. Examples of spam Emoji / reaction polls that artificially boost engagement. Posts that misrepresent the functionality of the LinkedIn platform (e.g. double-tap feature) to artificially increase engagement Widely circulated “chain letter”-type content, requesting likes, reactions, and shares Excessive, irrelevant, or repetitive comments or messages

Before you start reporting every profile that you think are part of a pod, or are gaming the algorithm by other support of users, it's important to be able to identify what signs may indicate a user deserving of being reported for review of their activity. (Please do not use this information for actions of malice or unjustified reporting not based on real engagement boosting activity)

I wasn't sure my self and asked a few people who were more "engaged" on the subject.

Things to look out for:

• If you see hundreds of reactions, dozens of reposts, and dozens of comments, that’s a tell tale sign they are paying for likes. or involved in a reciprocal engagement pod.
• If you see lots of comments in the first 30 mins of their posts and many of them seem like vapid, short comments.
• The same people consistently engaging with the same users activity over the course of a decent amount of days, weeks, months etc.

Use your judgment here on what you should spend time on and what you should turn a bind eye at. As time goes on I imagine everyone will be more skilled at identifying abusers and hopefully LinkedIn will review and act when necessary on reporting.