All platforms become bad as soon as you allow average Joe speak his mind.
The only ones that somewhat save themselves are the likes of HN and Reddit where it's all about discussing, but users are mostly anonymous and not trying to promote their brand.
To clarify: OpenSpot doesn’t have a feed, followers, or any social mechanics. There’s no algorithm pushing content or encouraging endless posting. When we say “create content,” we mean things like a short video intro, showcasing past work, or writing a quick blurb about what makes you unique — all on your profile, not for public engagement farming.
The spammers, the SEO farmers, the porn merchants won't care.
A link is a link.
I've been tackling spam for 15+ years and you will get hit. I wish it were not the case, but it is. Expect it.
Spam is not machine-generated content?
If it is so, I don't see the problem with that. Sure, you'll have the fake-happy and fake-positive content, but they'll not be force fed to you.
Most links are nofollow these days. Those still provide SEO value. Google will find your site very suspicious if your dofollow to nofollow ratio is too high.
For implicit algorithms, outside of the issues/misincentives of time-sorted feeds, there's also game theory and behavioral economics.
Hard disagree on that one. Average Joe is perfectly fine.
But I strongly agree on professional platforms allowing users to create content being an incredibly bad idea.
A possibility turns into an obligation for success real quick. I have just about 0 interest in creating 10 posts per day to game some algorithm into promoting me. And neither would I like hiring someone who spends 80% of his time awake trying to game some algorithm into enlongating his job title.
Openspot has no algorithm, no feed, and no pressure to post daily. It’s not about creating content for engagement — it’s about helping people show their real value in a more human way than a PDF resume or a keyword-stuffed LinkedIn profile.
You don’t need to “game” anything — a short video intro, a demo of your work, or just a few lines about what you’re great at is often enough to stand out. That’s the whole point: quality signals over content farming.
[1] I accomplished that for the first time by writing a news article about an event a few months before it happened.
I do not think that is the big problem. The problem is what platforms promote: content that creates engagement.
It's a site for prospective employees/contractors. How do you expect someone to advertise themselves w/o creating any content? LinkedIn certainly allows user-created content.
Perhaps not right when, but it becomes bad when you decide by yourself (or take advice from someone to pays you money) to show it to me.