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Do your LinkedIn followers recognizing you as a thought leader? Do numerous commenters praising your insights on expanding your business? Are headhunters making contact to explore opportunities?

Should that not be the case, the reason might be that you're not male.

The Experiment: Modifying Gender Identity to achieve Better Visibility

Dozens of women joined a collective LinkedIn experiment this week following viral posts suggested that switching their gender to "man" enhanced their platform visibility.

Some participants rewrote their profiles to include what they called "bro-coded" language - adding action-focused professional jargon like "propel", "transform" and "accelerate". Based on reports, their visibility similarly increased.

Systemic Preference Questions Brought Up

The engagement increase has caused some to wonder whether a built-in gender bias in the platform's system prioritizes male users who use online business jargon.

Similar to most major social media platforms, LinkedIn employs an algorithm to decide which posts are shown to which members - promoting some while reducing others.

Company Statement

Through a blog post, LinkedIn acknowledged the phenomenon but claimed it does not factor in "personal characteristics" when deciding content distribution. Rather, the company mentioned that "hundreds of signals" influence how content perform.

Modifying profile gender on your profile does not affect how your content shows up in search or feed.

Personal Experiences

A social media consultant, who changed her gender identifiers to "male pronouns" and her name to "a masculine version", described remarkable results.

"The numbers I'm seeing show a sixteen-fold rise in visitor traffic and a thirteen-fold jump in content views," she noted.

Another professional, a communications strategist, started testing after noticing her audience decline substantially.

The Method

• First, she modified her gender to "male"
• Then, she used artificial intelligence to rephrase her professional summary using "male-coded" language
• Finally, she recycled old posts with comparable "agentic" language

The outcome was immediate: a 415% increase in reach within seven days.

The Downside

Although the success, Cornish voiced dissatisfaction with the method.

"Previously, my content were more personal - concise and clever, but also warm and relatable," she explained. "Currently, the bro-coded version was assertive and confident - similar to a white male swaggering around."

She abandoned the experiment after seven days, saying "Each day I continued, and outcomes improved, I became angrier."

Varying Outcomes

Not all participants experienced positive outcomes. Cass Cooper who changed both her profile gender to "male" and her ethnicity to "Caucasian" described a decrease in reach and engagement.

"We understand there's systemic preference, but it's extremely difficult to understand how it operates in specific cases or why," she remarked.

Broader Implications

These tests coincide with ongoing conversations about LinkedIn's distinctive position as both a professional network and social space.

Recent changes in recent months have reportedly caused female creators experiencing significantly reduced visibility, leading to unofficial tests where the same content by male and female users received vastly different audience engagement.

Technical Explanation

According to LinkedIn, the network uses artificial intelligence to classify and distribute posts based on multiple factors, including what's shared and the member's career profile.

The company claims it frequently assesses its algorithms, including "checks for inequalities based on gender."

Company representative proposed that recent declines in some users' reach might originate from higher volume due to more content on the platform.

Changing Landscape

According to a tester noted, "masculine-oriented language" appears to be growing on the network.

"People often view LinkedIn as more businesslike and polished," she remarked. "This is evolving. It's turning into increasingly aggressive and unpredictable."