Written by Patrick Whelan, Great Reach Communications Inc.
What Happened
In late July 2026, LinkedIn added a new button. When you’re looking at a post, you can click the three dot menu and select “seems like AI slop” if you think it was written by AI instead of a real person.
Here’s what happens when someone clicks it. LinkedIn uses that flag to train its systems to spot AI content better. It also can limit how far that post travels outside your network. And the person who posted it gets a quiet note in their dashboard saying their content seems inauthentic. They don’t find out who flagged them or how many people did it.
LinkedIn also got rid of its own “enhance your post” tool, which used AI to rewrite what you wrote. Now they have a simple proofreading tool instead, one that just fixes typos and grammar without changing your voice. Basically, LinkedIn is admitting their own AI tool was part of the problem.
Why You Should Care About This
If you post on LinkedIn for your business, or if you have an agency posting for you, this is a big deal. LinkedIn used to reward posts that got likes and comments, no matter how they were made. Now, even a post that’s doing well can get its reach cut if enough people think it sounds fake or AI generated.
So if you have been leaning on AI to pump out posts, that’s riskier now than it used to be. It’s not just that people might side-eye it. LinkedIn itself might quietly stop showing it to as many people.
The Downsides
It could hurt your reach and traffic. If your posts get flagged, even if they’re true and well written, fewer people outside your network will see them. That matters a lot if you’re trying to get new eyes on your business through LinkedIn, since that’s usually where new traffic comes from. And you might not even notice it’s happening. You’d just see your numbers slowly drop with no clear reason why.
People could use it unfairly. Since nobody knows who flagged them, there’s nothing stopping someone from clicking that button just because they don’t like you, your company, or what you said, not because it’s actually AI-written. LinkedIn hasn’t said how many flags it takes before your post gets buried, or whether it can tell the difference between someone reporting in good faith and someone just trying to mess with you. So a competitor, an unhappy former employee, or even a group of people who disagree with you could tank your visibility, and you’d have no way of knowing that’s what happened. Seems unfair.
Nobody really knows where the line is. Even LinkedIn’s own team has said “slop” is hard to define and that definition keeps changing. So something that’s fine to post today might get flagged more in a few months, and there’s no rulebook telling you exactly what counts.
Bottom line: The pushback against AI Slop marches on. Sounding like a real person matters more than ever now. It’s not just about being genuine anymore, it’s about protecting your reach on an algorithm that nobody outside LinkedIn fully understands.
