After I posted a job opening on LinkedIn last summer for my new online journal, New Guard Press, the social media site removed the listing, citing “discrimination.”
My crime? I wrote that my post sought “young writers who believe in our mission of reviving American culture.”
A label on that job posting for New Guard Press in my LinkedIn account still says it was “removed for discrimination.” I originally got the notification on July 4, 2023.
This was not the first time I had trouble with LinkedIn’s Jobs section. Two days earlier, I had received the same notification for an almost identical job posting. I appealed, asking LinkedIn to take a second look.
I hoped that a more reasonable person would review the job posting, see that there was nothing remotely discriminatory about it, and return the post to the platform.
Twelve minutes after I requested a review of the earlier post, I got another email. LinkedIn confirmed that my job listing did in fact violate its “Jobs Terms and Conditions.”
After capitulating and removing the word “American” from the job description (a decision I now regret), I tried to post an entirely different job. Following this, I got an email July 7, 2023, saying that my ability to post jobs had been suspended for a week.
In August, LinkedIn banned me for another six days for “recurring violations of our Jobs Terms & Conditions and Quality Job Post Guidelines.”
By this point, I had found out that LinkedIn doesn’t have accessible customer service. The only option is to direct-message LinkedIn on X (then still called Twitter), which I did after getting banned a second time.
Thirteen days later, I got a message back saying: “It looks like this has already been resolved. Please let us know if you still experience issues.”
Keep in mind that when all of this took place, New Guard Press had not published a single article. It was barely more than an idea in the head of an 18-year-old in rural southern Ohio who wanted to build a publication for young conservatives.
Some may dismiss this incident as just a flaw in an otherwise good algorithm that keeps the LinkedIn community safe and professional. Even if that were so, LinkedIn has annual revenue north of $13 billion. If removing a job posting on the Fourth of July because it contains the word “American” is a flaw in its automated system, surely LinkedIn has the means to rapidly fix that flaw.
But more to the point, behind algorithms are human beings with ideas.
After LinkedIn removed my job posting for New Guard Press, I made a post on my personal account containing screenshots of a job posting by Planned Parenthood for a “Lead Clinician” that openly included performing abortion as part of the job description.
My personal post included screenshots from a job posting by Indiana University Health titled “Academic Ob/gyn and trans/Gender Health Hybrid Position” and one from Rush University Medical Center looking for a “Gender Affirmation Advanced Practice Provider.”
LinkedIn allowed the listings for these two paid positions to remain on its website but removed my posting for an unpaid job at a new publication, New Guard Press. It’s clear that LinkedIn isn’t even pretending to be politically neutral.
“LinkedIn is not only as woke as other social media companies, but probably even more so,” The Heritage Foundation’s GianCarlo Canaparo and Daniel Cochrane wrote for The Daily Signal in April.
“And it doesn’t hide it,” they added. “On the contrary, LinkedIn devotes a great deal of its resources to publicizing its ideological bias.”
LinkedIn “regularly publishes blogs touting its commitment to DEI,” Heritage’s Canaparo and Cochrane noted. “It produces hundreds of videos and classes to teach other people how important DEI is. It celebrates the DEI awards it wins from left-wing groups.”
This suggests that LinkedIn took down my job postings not because “reviving American culture” is discriminatory, but because LinkedIn discriminates against conservatives.
If LinkedIn truly wants to be a respected professional platform, it should at the very least fix its algorithms, so they don’t flag the word “American” as a form of discrimination.
And if LinkedIn truly wants to be a beneficial part of the online landscape, it should do away with policies that enforce the Left’s political agenda.
