The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants. — Albert Camus
I’ve been a journalist long enough to remember when platforms made the effort to pretend to care about the people who used them. I worked for the Sun-Times suburban papers and Patch when they still meant something—before “local news” became a euphemism for SEO filler and automated sludge. Since then I’ve watched newsrooms hollow out, good reporters give up and walk away, the mediocre force out the good, and an entire profession pushed onto the brink of the abyss.
LinkedIn is accelerating that process every single day. It’s not just irritating, it’s enraging.
There is a huge volume of online public complaints about so-called recruiting outfits like Crossing Hurdles and Mercor, and they can’t be cast off as isolated examples. They’re not sour grapes, either. They are repeated, patterned accounts from journalists and media workers describing the same behavior over and over and over again. Opaque hiring processes. Grand promises. Unpaid assessments. Ghosting. AI “interviews.” Bait and switch tactics that waste precious time and exploit quiet desperation.
Don’t take my word for it. The complaints are easy to find. Reddit threads. Job boards. LinkedIn comment sections. Public posts from people who did exactly what they were asked to do and got absolutely nothing in return. Weeks of unpaid work under the guise of evaluation. Roles that never materialize. Endless hoops with no transparency, no feedback, and no accountability.
It’s not illegal in the technical sense. It is, however, deceptive recruiting, and LinkedIn’s own policies claim to prohibit just that. So, what are these companies actually doing?
Crossing Hurdles presents itself as a bridge between employers and journalist job candidates, but repeatedly inserts unpaid labor into the process. Writing assignments. Strategy documents. Mock reporting. All without a clearly identified client and with virtually no likelihood of being hired.
Mercor wraps similar slimy behavior in sleek language about talent matching and AI-driven vetting, while job seekers report being farmed for free work or data under the promise of opportunities that never seem to materialize. Journalists have been dealing with versions of this scam for decades, but the difference is scale. Platforms like LinkedIn allow it to be automated, branded, and endlessly replicated, all while collecting their cut through job posting fees, promoted listings, and engagement metrics.
Here’s the part LinkedIn doesn’t get to dodge. They’ve been warned about this scam over and over again. I’ve personally reported these postings through LinkedIn’s own report job feature, and a slew of others have done the same. These complaints are not vague. They explicitly allege misrepresentation, unpaid labor, and exploitative practices, yet the listings remain. The companies remain. The cycle remains.
LinkedIn will tell you, if it deigns to tell you anything at all, that it takes trust and safety seriously. That it relies on reporting. That it investigates claims. That it balances enforcement with opportunity. But none of that rings true when the same actors continue to brazenly operate out in the open, drawing in people who are already desperate and vulnerable.
Make no mistake, journalists are more vulnerable and desperate than ever. Layoffs have become routine. Freelance rates have collapsed. Entire local news ecosystems have disintegrated. These people are not looking for shortcuts or get rich quick schemes. They’re looking for work. And LinkedIn knows exactly who is being targeted and why.
Then, just for good measure, job seekers get hit with sophisticated malware when they attempt to apply for those jobs and LinkedIn know this too because PC Magazine has repeatedly reported it.
This is what makes the platform’s inaction so damning. LinkedIn is not a passive bulletin board. It actively promotes jobs. It nudges users. It optimizes for engagement. It sells itself as a trusted professional space. So, when it allows deceptive recruiting to flourish, it’s not neutral. They’re complicit at the highest levels.
I’m not arguing that LinkedIn needs to be the perfect referee, but I am arguing that they need to enforce their own rules. If a company’s hiring model relies on unpaid labor disguised as evaluation, they should be tossed off the site faster than Donald Trump would be asked to leave Greenland. If hundreds of complaints describe the same pattern—and they do—that should trigger an internal review.
If journalists are being systematically exploited under the banner of opportunity, that should matter to LinkedIn, but it doesn’t, because all we get is silence.
Social media platforms love to talk about protecting users. They love to talk about community standards and trust. But those words mean nothing when they’re not backed by action, particularly when the people being harmed are already on their knees.
LinkedIn could stop these deceptive practices tomorrow if they chose to. It can demand transparency. It can remove listings that function as unpaid labor funnels. It can stop profiting from desperation. But what fun would that be?
The fact that they’ve done nothing tells you everything you need to know about the company.
