Mourning for Meta? Platform obsolescence and the professionalization of loss

What does the mourning of a work-related platform look like? This article examines how the end of professional digital platforms is experienced and articulated by users. While research on platform decline has focused on social media tied to personal life, less attention has been paid to workplace platforms. We address this gap through a case study of the sunsetting of Workplace, Meta's enterprise social media platform, and a content analysis of 362 LinkedIn comments responding to the news. We identify a patterned response in which users only minimally express dissatisfaction but otherwise mainly both nostalgically reconstruct Workplace as exceptional and reframe its loss as an opportunity for growth. We conceptualize this as professionalized mourning: a communicative process through which loss is translated into narratives of resilience, adaptability, and future value. We argue that platform obsolescence puts a burden of disruption onto workers, who are normatively encouraged to narrate infrastructural instability into a professional competence. In doing so, the article contributes to debates on platform death and platformized work.