LinkedIn is the perfect panopticon

LinkedIn will tell you who is spying on you if you pay them.

I don’t know why Facebook doesn’t borrow this gross behavior from LinkedIn. If you don’t know, LinkedIn has a premium level and, if you’re not on it, every few days they send an email saying that people are looking at your profile and, for a fee, they will provide you a list of potential stalkers.

It is the height of selling your own information back to you and it absolutely works on some people.

I still get a fair amount of cult emails, so I’m not dying to know who’s looking me up.

It’s also a (not-so-subtle) reminder that people you look up on LinkedIn can pay to know that you’re looking at their profiles. It is SO goddamn creepy, but it’s something we put up with for access to a social media network where people know their boss is watching.

The idea of the panopticon is that when people feel watched, they don’t behave as poorly as when they believe they’re not being watched. Therefore (so it goes) if you make people feel watched they’ll behave whether they’re being watched or not.

<tangent>I wonder if Facebook would be less toxic if it sent you an email every day with a list of the companies where people looking at your profile work. That’s not really Meta’s business model, though. Its business model is buying your psychological hangups from BetterHelp (this is a story that did NOT get the attention it deserved).<endtangent>

It’s also a little depressing that the only functional social network is panopticon-based rather than culturally-based. It’s also why I keep pushing people to spend more time on Substack (here’s a link to my Notes page!). Substack created a culture of conversation. That means that people who are adding to the conversation get more attention and trolls mostly get ignored.