LinkedIn’s Response To Belinda Smith’s Column

We’re committed to all voices on LinkedIn being treated equally and having equal potential for reach. We are not censoring content and have not made any changes to our algorithm to reduce the distribution of content about these important topics.

We’re constantly adding new voices and sorting through requests to join this program. We’re also looking at how we can evolve and scale this process through the combination of technology and editorial curation. We encourage anyone interested in applying to email us at linkedineditorial@linkedin.com.

We’re seeing strong interest from other LinkedIn members in these perspectives. Individuals who have been featured in the Black Voices to Follow and Amplify Module have collectively added nearly 2 million followers since we rolled this out in June and doubled their followers, helping to strengthen the visibility of their content.

We’re also seeing an increase in conversations on LinkedIn, including an increase in discussions about diversity, race and discrimination in the workplace. Many of these have been constructive, with individual members and leaders of companies sharing what they’ve experienced, actions they are taking as individuals and organizations, and how they are using their platform to advocate for racial justice. A recent example includes Jon Fortt sharing how he brought a primetime story on the Black experience in corporate America to life.

We do believe constructive conversations about the realities and challenges we all need to overcome will move us collectively forward, but we also have clear guidelines for those conversations on our platform. We value freedom of expression, but context matters. To realize our vision of creating economic opportunity, LinkedIn is not a platform for all speech, but is a platform for safe and trusted speech, in a professional context.

More background on Black voices and perspectives highlighted across our platform.  

Whether that’s the LinkedIn News’ coverage of the strike by professional athletes across the U.S. in the wake of the Kenosha, Wisc. shooting of Jacob Blake or the LinkedIn Live conversation led by BBC and United Nations on creative diversity on International Diversity Day in May. And we continue seeing companies and individuals committing their support, including this post by Carla Harris on behalf of Morgan Stanley’s Black Managing Directors. Just last week, we hosted a LinkedIn Live conversation between Netflix VP of Inclusion Strategy, Vernā Myers, and LinkedIn VP of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, Rosanna Durruthy, where they shared learnings about actions LinkedIn members can take to be an ally in professional life. With our focus on education, we’ve also made LinkedIn Learning courses on allyship and anti-racism available for free. It’s heartening that when looking at our most popular courses in August, Stacey Gordon’s Unconscious Bias and Vernā Myers’ Confronting Bias: Thriving Across Our Differences are both in the top ten. Since June, we’ve seen learners engage with the courses in our Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging learning path nearly four times more (295%), when comparing June-August with March-May.