LinkedIn screwed me over real good a few weeks back.
They sent me an email saying "There are 108 people you might want to connect with", so I click on view all and it shows a giant list of people with checkmarks by their names. Nice. I uncheck all of them, and scroll through checking a few folks who I want to network with (5 people in total). Click next, it takes me to a screen showing the 5 people and the banner clearly says "Send connection requests to these 5 people?". I click next.
The next screen says "Congratulations, we've sent connection requests to 300 people.". What the flying fuck? Ok, well that's a bummer but oh well, probably just a bug in their system. Then my inbox starts getting spammed with "I'm out of the office right now blah blah blah" from people who I don't even know who they are.
The assholes sent 300 people linkedin connection requests through my own personal gmail account. With zero warning whatsoever. That really pisses me off.
I like LinkedIn, it's a great networking tool, but they really need to stop doing this shit. Something similar happened a few years ago, but they only spammed people in my address book who were already members and the emails were sent by LinkedIn, not through my gmail account.
I've revoked LinkedIn's access to my gmail account. I regret ever enabling it in the first place. I recommend you do the same.
I can't understand why anyone would give any entity access to their email, it's really baffling.
I personally see LinkedIn as horrible, and deleted my account long ago. They don't let you restrict who can view your profile, and they allow people to remain anonymous. For anyone who cares about Privacy, this should be a huge no-no.
I thought LinkedIn has always marketed itself as a professional networking service and thus perceived it as public area open to corporate scrutiny... it's not healthy to mix "social" with "professional" in situtations dealing with corporate employers.
Agreed, it's incredible, and utterly dumbfounding, that people would simply turn over access to their email like that. The only explanation I can imagine is that other (younger?) people just don't take email as seriously.
Isn't it more likely that they just sent the emails themselves but used his email as the "Reply To" address? A lot of software systems (SalesForce, Hubspot, etc.) do that too.
Errm no, a reply-to header is not the same as a sender envelope. Spam filters will flag emails that are faking the sender envelope. Spf is also only checking sender envelope. A reply-to can generally be what ever you want, same for from header... So linked sends email with from and reply-to headers set with your email, but sender envelop is from their server. So email appears to come from you, but was sent from linked in server, which is setup to pass spf test so does not get flagged by spam filter. Check the headers in the emails raw source, and you will see what i mean
It appears the parent comment I was replying to got edited after I posted this. Thanks TylerJay for completely changing the meaning of your comment without any notice.
The original commented suggested that they sent the email themselves as if it had come from the user, not merely setting Reply-To.
That would only be true for only some recipients (by far not "everybody") only if Google's SPF record forbade other SMTP servers with -all. It doesn't, it uses ~all soft-fail.
Why? Precisely because of this: there are lots of perfectly legitimate situations when a third party sends email on your behalf.
Moreover, if LinkedIn signs their outgoing emails with DKIM, that would be a positive signal for a spam filter (and e.g. Gmail would show such mail as "sent via LinkedIn" or something to that effect).
Sounds like you know more about this than I do. I will defer to your greater knowledge.
Although "there are lots of perfectly legitimate situations when a third party sends email on your behalf" strikes me as being rather wrong. I cannot think of a single reason why anyone else should be sending email that claims to be coming from my email address. Sending email that lists me as a reply-to, sure. But as the sender? Not a chance.
It's common in enterprise products where the user's first action is in a non-email.
Like I've uploaded version 1 of the plans, added some notes and the system needs to send out an email to everyone, I did the action, it's coming from me, not the system.
You did the action, but that does not ever justify sending the email with an envelope claiming it came from you. Because you did not send the email. It could certainly put you as a Reply-To on the email, and it might possibly justify putting your name on the From line, but actually claiming to have been sent from your email address is wrong.
The pizza boy doesn't ask for your home keys it EVERY TIME he brings you a pizza.
Yet LinkedIn goes far beyond that. LinkedIn is clearly engaging in "dark ui patterns", hoping to trick you into giving those keys (and using them too!) when you are not mindfull.
Yeah, I'm always weary of allowing any app to send emails on my behalf, unless it's something I've put together myself (eg email alerts for internal stuff breaking, etc).
I don't understand how Gmail allows it. I assume they've gotten enough complaints about it being abused to prohibit or strictly limit access with at least warnings before actions can be taken.
I tried searching Google for "has facebook ever asked for email account logins and passwords?" and couldn't find any proof. Does anyone have a source for this?
I don't think I ever granted them access, but somehow they got a list of random email contacts. So every once in a while I'll get an email that says, "Connect with Joe?" Looks like a normal inbound connection request, but it's actually a trap to get YOU to initiate a request. Awkward for contacts you might accept a request from, but not reach out to.
This makes total sense. I have also been very careful to not let LinkedIn get access to my email or contacts - precisely cause I don't trust what they will do with that data on my behalf. But they still manage to suggest all these random contacts that look like they're coming from my address book. A few times I have panicked and made sure I hadn't accidentally given them access. But it makes sense that the other side gave them access and they are trying to get a match.
I do like LinkedIn as a professional network. It's helpful when going into meetings, I can check out the people's backgrounds and use that as added context / something to relate with. It's helpful when trying to figure out whether someone could be a good sales/biz dev opportunity based on their background and experience. If I trusted them more, I may consider integrating them more tightly with some of my sales funnel workflows - but for now, I will continue using them as a standalone tool.
LinkedIn had a dark pattern, which they've made slightly less dark recently, of asking you to "log in" by typing in your email address and then your email address password. Of course, you are already logged in to LinkedIn at that point.
The current version shows up when you click "Add Connections" but it used to be much more in-your-face.
Hmm, that's a great point. I've always tried to be careful. I use LinkedIn frankly more than any other social network because it allows me to keep up with my friends' professional lives, not vacation photos or snarky tweets. I haven't found a job through LinkedIn, though have made some connections. I do not trust LinkedIn to do the right thing with my data, and the fact that they're "tricking" users into actions they wouldn't otherwise take just smells like a rat.
Yes, I agree. I never give a site like LinkedIn access to any of my accounts, but I have noticed that it will suggest a connection with someone whom I've ever had one email interaction.
At first, I was bewildered, then I realized it must be because theotherparty granted access to their contacts.
Is it? A lot of free services manage to survive without so-called dark patterns. Frankly, I'd be more likely to pay for a subscription if I trusted them.
Are you using an Android phone? I noticed this too with LinkedIn and it happened immediately after installing LinkedIn on Android. Never happened in previous years while using iOS.
The really messed up part is that the app has basically every permission turned on AND ships with some on-contract phones. So although I had never once opened the app, it was running in the background on an old POS HTC I had. Pretty sure that's where they got every contact ever.
Many, many, people have been burned by this same thing.
I think we need more advertisement of this terrible practice -- and or try to get google to aggressively block their access to do this sort of thing from your gmail, as what it is -- essentially a phishing/malware attack.
I never let them have my email credentials (address, ok, linked account or credentials, no).
But, the thing they do that really bothers me, is to ask people endorse me for things, in a way that suggests I asked to be endorsed for those things. But I didn't. It just found words related to those in my profile. And people who like me or want to be helpful click OK to endorse me for shit that I have nothing to do with. Like ASP.net.
I just don't like that it makes people think I asked to be endorsed. For stuff I don't know and don't do.
GIGO. Which makes me think that the actual functionality/utility in LinkedIn (of which I am not a member) lies elsewhere.
Years ago, recruiting advice was insisting that a LinkedIn profile had become necessary. But even back then, the configuration / data sharing they insisted upon, and worse, the reporting on some of their bad (from my perspective, and also others') behaviour was just too much for me, and I stayed away.
I imagine much of what one gets through LinkedIn is akin to much of what one gets in the rest of the corporate world. A lot of BS, and you left at your own discretion to discern the truth -- such as it is and is reflected in that environment -- amidst all this.
P.S. I'll add that LinkedIn seems to have become a poster child -- albeit a lame-assed corporate one -- for "dark patterns".
Not all entries in your address book are "people" either. Are any of them mailing lists? (Like open source projects or whatnot?) They will get this spam also.
Why the holy flying fuck would anyone give someone they met on the Internet the ability to impersonate them? That's like online safety 101, right after not giving out your home address and vacation schedule.
Especially when that someone already has a bad reputation like linkedin has.
Just the address book would have been enough to allow most of the shenanigans described in this thread? Now LI know a bunch of other people that might recognize your name, and that's really all they need.
This is my problem with social-network-based SSO solutions. Why would I sign into your service with Twitter when you request the right to post on my behalf? (I've been burned by that. Never again.)
I heartily recommend everyone with a Google account follow that link and double-check your security and allowed app settings. (Also take some time to go through your app-specific passwords and revoke any that aren't relevant anymore.)
In addition to being good practice in and of itself, Google is currently doing a promotion where they'll increase your Google Drive space by 2 GB if you go through their security checklist (see link below):
But if you refuse to give them your phone no. - for much the same reasons you should be hesitant about giving LinkedIn your email address - then it is impossible to complete the check. No 2GB for me, then!
LinkedIn, like Twitter, is limiting API usage to specific use cases that dovetail with LinkedIn's own apps, instead of competing with them. The restrictions were imposed yesterday. The authors of this manifesto think that's a bad thing, but they don't give me, the reader, any more information.
Why is it a bad thing?
What cool stuff am I missing by using LinkedIn and its restrictive API?
Making potentially baseless claims and not explaining their impact beyond "they're bad!" is the kind of rhetoric a middle schooler uses before he or she learns to write proper persuasive prose.
While I agree that data should be as freely available as possible--so long as the person to whom the data belongs approves--I really can't get on board with this histrionic garbage.
Make an assertion. Back it up with evidence. Explain the consequences.
What did you tweak? I'm not a technical person so don't understand why those specific use-cases are bad. If you want the majority of Linkedin users to care about the cause, you ought to put it in language that the vast, non-technical majority will understand.
ResearchGate as a replacement for LinkedIn, on account of LinkedIn's spammy tactics? I can only hope this was meant in jest; if so: well-played, friend, well-played indeed. ResearchGate has taken dark marketing into the realm of high art.
I actually couldn't tell if it was intended to be a joke, a trolling, or perhaps the rantings of a lunatic. Putting in stuff like "federated bodies of the internet" and the "empire of LinkedIn" makes it seem like it's supposed to be a gag.
If this site is supposed to be serious, they should perhaps remove the superfluous text and add some actual information about what LinkedIn is doing (aside from just linking to the image of the terms of service notification).
--EDIT-- I see that this is a re-wording of FDR's infamy speech which explains the text. I still can't tell if it's a joke or not though.
I've dealt with vendors in other situations who felt they had a right to free and open access to the Mother Ship, even when they were competing with it. You can't get around that mindset. The only reason to be angry is when the Mothership makes explicit promises that it backs away from. And given how many platforms bring things in to control the user experience (even AirBnB is taking more ownership of the total experience) this shouldn't come as a surprise to the small players.
I wonder if it has to do with the MASSIVE amount of head hunter spam that we may get from LinkedIn. Maybe they actually restrict its access for the Greater Good?
That spam IS the LinkedIn business model and it's not coming from 3rd party apps that have access to the API - it's coming from LinkedIn's main site and the (premium) features they offer.
I think the other question is: Will all of the alternatives presented guarantee they won't pull the same stunt? Is there legalese to this affect? Or are the suggestions basically "use these guys and hope they don't do the same thing" in which case, you are in the same boat as before.
Hmm. Interesting if this decision was ultimately responsible for Twitter's declining traffic. Perhaps the same will happen to Linkedin? Of course even if it does we won't have evidence of causation, but it's something to keep in the back of our minds.
You had me until "Quora" as a suggested alternative. If any site approaches the annoyance level of LinkedIn for me, it's Quora. Both have a habit of spamming me; their unsubscribe stuff is kinda dark pattern-y, in that it's easy to end up still getting mail from them even after clicking through to unsubscribe.
That said, I haven't used LinkedIn in years. Have no interest in it, for anything. If I needed work, I might consider going back, but I doubt it. I certainly wouldn't hire someone based on a LinkedIn profile, and I probably wouldn't want to work for someone who did.
API issues aside, I recently deleted my LinkedIn account and my life has been better off for it. My recruiter spam volume dropped from daily emails to maybe two or three times a month. I'm not sure if LinkedIn provides any value, I've never gotten a job that way.
I think stalking people on social networks is also a net negative experience. I realized I should spend less time worrying about what other people are doing with their lives and focus more on my own.
There was also a recent NY Times article about how employers use LinkedIn candidates contacts to disqualify them for employment[1]. So LinkedIn can actually be detrimental to your career.
I just don't think LinkedIn adds anything. Businesses and recruiters use it to get your email to target you for spam. But what do you get out of it and think, if there wasn't a LinkedIn would you be out of a job right now?
Agreed with all of your points, but I'd like to add that your employment history is very personal and can quite often be used against you in ways you wouldn't imagine ahead of time.
Just like any personal information, its best to keep it as private as possible and default to a "need to know" basis. The era of naively optimistic voluntary sharing of sensitive personal information ended when we saw the potential consequences.
Potential employers want to know where you worked? They can ask you themselves. I'd also like to know who the board members are playing golf with, what their future capitalization plans are and if/when they plan on jumping ship. Too bad none of that will ever be shared with me. So why should I share intimate details of my past?
Information asymmetry is power in the modern world. It is foolish to relinquish it voluntarily.
It appears to me that LinkedIn is splitting their API into separate categories (Profile API, Company API, etc)
Going forward everyone will have to register and be approved in only 1 of the categories, meaning that if you are in the Company API, you won't be able to utilize features of the Profile API.
I don't know exactly what that means as far as specific features, but my guess is that if you're a company you won't be able to access personal profiles and feeds. I could be totally wrong about this but that's what it looks like.
But I wonder, is LinkedIn really "the" way to connect professionally? My personal bit of anecdotal experience is that it isn't for me. I was on LinkedIn for maybe 15 years? I accepted everyone on LinkedIn (I was not discriminating at all). And in that 15 years, I never found one job through it. Right now in Seattle (where I've been for 10 years), I go through my "people I drink beer with" network.
What I'd love to see is a network that would introduce me to people in other cities. I want to move to NYC, but I know no one there. So I don't know the good vs. bad neighborhoods, companies to stay away from (you know there is a list), etc.
I'm a Linux Sysadmin/Automation Engineer/"devops guru". My last 3 jobs (each better than the last) all came from recruiters finding me on LinkedIn.
2 years ago I was trying to move upwards in my career path. I had a good job, but boring and I could go weeks with doing almost no work. I was simultaneously considered a valuable employee while actually operating as fluff. I decided to move into the world of configuration management and "devops". I spent a few months implementing puppet in our lab and in a few places. Then I updated my Linked with puppet experience. A few months later, I got an offer at a local university that was implementing Puppet. I figured I would work there a year and get really solid Puppet Experience. I worked there about 3 months, got much better with puppet, but hated the place. I updated my LinkedIn resume again with my additional Puppet experience (all my responsibilities at the new job were puppet/automation related). I instantly started getting calls. Then I landed an awesome job with a large service company. I loved that job, hated the commute. I wasn't even looking but as I updated my resume, I started getting recruiters from Facebook, Netflix, Google, and finally a work-from-home one from EMC that I jumped on.
Similarly, I've been using it for 15 years. While I don't get jobs from recruiters either, I use it to keep connected to former colleagues even as they change jobs, email addresses, marriages and inter-state moves. This network gets me work.
Ditto. LinkedIn is a self-updating Rolodex for me and it's useful for that. Plaxo sure wasn't any better and I do like having a service of this basic type.
I basically don't use it for anything else and generally ignore emails that they send me. (And only accept connection requests from those who I--within 5 seconds or so--see some reason to connect with. If I don't recognize your name or your company doesn't imply some good reason to connect, I'm ignoring you if you send me a canned request.)
Articulate your anger more clearly. And if you're making a historical reference, make sure people get the gist of it even if they don't get the reference
That was clear enough, and it was kind of sad; this is for many users a non-issue, so parodying the response to a surprise act of war seems a bit grandiose.
As a user, I'm not terribly concerned about whether you (et al.) can build an application against some other site more easily, and your argument
> only works if that platform is open and your data portable
is undermined by your own link to their article on exporting data. ("Full name, email address, current employer, and position are exported") Can you help me understand why this is such a problem?
I know Linkedin isn't perfect, but it does have one single use case fulfilled for me - the ability to have just enough of a connection to ex-coworkers, so that in the future if our paths ever do have reason to cross again, it is easy to make that happen.
These aren't people I want to be on other social media with - they are purely coworkers who might be worth contacting again. And there are other ways to keep in touch... but for this particular use, Linkedin is a good option.
And because that is my primary purpose for having an account, I have no problems with API usage that is more restricted. I don't want an ecosystem built up around linkedin's data. I don't see any potential for that to improve my life.
I think one of the most frustrating things is hearing how many people seem to dislike LinkedIn, but use it because it's the best thing out there. Most only use it as their online resume, but between recruiter spam messages and constant annoyances from emails and to "keep up to date", they tolerate it at best.
Facebook had similar rumblings (people saying they'd switch off as soon as possible if something better came along), but Google Plus showed us the social costs of switching was higher than the frustration most people felt.
Does LinkedIn have that same social cost of switching to another service? I'm not so sure -- and I think it means they might be more susceptible to falling flat on their face if they push users too far.[1]
[1] This may just be my own hope and bias, since I built a job website of my own.
LinkedIn creeps me the hell out with their connection suggestions, that are way too accurate for for anyone to make through honest means, especially given that I've intentionally been very restrictive with what I've added to my profile. I've even been very uneasy about accepting connection requests, since this isn't something I really want to contribute to.
Of course, that means the cost of deleting my account is very low given that I hardly use it in the first place. Something to think about.
Yes I'm always surprised by who shows up as suggested contacts. Often it's people who I've interacted with online maybe once. My best guess is that those people are providing LinkedIn their contact lists.
If you supplied your email, you have given LinkedIn everything needed for honest, accurate suggestions. They used the suggested contacts' address books.
I have a problem where I lived in a building with a bunch of people who turned out to be fairly dishonest. We all have each others email addresses because we had to communicate about the home-owners' association. I moved out, and now LinkedIn regularly suggests that I connect with these douchebags because I'm still in their address books.
LinkedIn once suggested I connect with a neighbor in my apartment building. All we ever did was say hi to each other, we didn't know each other's names. The only reason I knew the connection suggestion was about this person was because of the photo. That was a WTF moment.
I'm guessing if they don't get enough hits by matching email addresses and address books they go one level deeper in the graph. That would explain some of mine.
As someone who is looking for work and finds nearly all of it through LinkedIn, canceling my account is not something I can afford to do at this time. As much as I empathize with the Open Web mission, opting out of LI is the privilege of happily employed developers.
Guessing that someone isn't happy that their lead generation app just lost its data input?
This website is nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction that tries to rally readers by crafting a context that makes it sound as if LinkedIn's changes are not in the interest of the user.
Yes, I would like open access to the API, but I'd gladly trade that if it helps reduce the volume of spam sales/recruitment inquiries I receive.
The partnership integration route may have extra hoops to jump through, but it doesn't concern someone like myself who's anticipating LinkedIn integration with our product; our intent is not what LinkedIn is trying to curb.
Better integration doesn't mean spam (LinkedIn already has that feature in spades). It means allowing apps to leverage your work connections to provide better tools for you to use.
Not sure where you're going with that, have you read the official post from LinkedIn or the Wired Article? That will help give better context to my comment.
One of the more disturbing issues with linkedin goes almost unnoticed:
For what possible reason does linkedin effectively mandate a photo? Because while I can not think of any reason this could possibly be necessary for any profession except super model, I can certainly see how it can be used in a very negative way.
One of LinkedIn strength is related to accessing your network though. Being able to have a sense of who does what and when is the only reason why I'm sill on their site. Any plan to have something similar?
How would you validate the resumes? The power of LinkedIn is in the trust it establishes. Granted I still have a lot of validation to do before hiring/doing business with someone, but Linkedin is a great first filter. I know for software engineers, Github could be a better filter, but it's just a very small segment in the world of business.
"The power of LinkedIn is in the trust it establishes."
I feel the complete opposite way. I've had people claim I know PHP on my profile when I've never used PHP in my life. That's endorse stuff is major baloney. How can you trust that when anybody can just click Endorse for whatever they want?
> I know for software engineers, Github could be a better filter
For some engineers. There are many, many excellent developers who don't spend much time on Github. John Carmack doesn't even have an account, for example...
I've never seen this done. I'd love examples for companies. Social media often augments folks, but I've never seen someone rejected for not having a LinkedIn.
A company I worked for started outsourcing a lot of its work to a certain Asian country last year. One of the issues we had when trying to recruit people is that they will just blatantly lie about their experience on their CV. Asking for a GitHub profile was an easy way to backup their claims, with minimal time wasted on my side - at least until they cotton on and start putting fake projects there.
(Admitidely trying to outsource work just to save money was dumb, but it wasn't my decision, so I had to make do)
I've built a small tool to aggregate profiles together and I use it for my hiring. It builds a profile that is a bit more useful than LI. http://ars.io
Something is really fucked with their UI. It's very deceptive and deceitful. The other day, I thought I was accepting connection requests people had sent me. Found out that I was sending connection requests to people LinkedIn thought I knew! I can see how that could be considered useful, but it was not my intent to contribute to the noise and the spam that is LinkedIn.
If your digital life is portable from the outset, then smear-campaign sites like this don't need to happen. LinkedIN data silos are purely symptomatic of people choosing services where the data is not portable in the first place.
Choose services where you can export, and migrate data before the fact, not after it.
I have been wondering when someone will step up and make a decent alternative to LinkedIn for a while. It's a truly awful site, the sole reason I have not yet deleted it is I have no other easy way of keeping track of professional relationships.. there are no other redeeming features though, everything else seems very poorly implemented, uninteresting, or exploitative.
So I should stop using LinkedIn because they're restricting the amount of access that third parties have to my data?
As I see it, the only thing worse than LinkedIn spamming me based on my employment history is other companies spamming me based on my LinkedIn employment history.
There's many reasons to stop using LinkedIn, but this doesn't seem like one.
The only thing I use LI for is to hang my name and summary somewhere.
Occasionally I get a recruiter contact. My current job of three years came from that.
I never endorse anyone. I never respond to endorsements, as most of them are well meaning people endorsing me for something I've never done; I contact them personally by email to say "I don't do endorse, but thanks, still love ya."
I never respond to connect requests. They're increasing in number, and lately sound like 419 scams.
I'm virtually never logged in. They don't have my email access or adddress book.
If they die, or charge me, or something egregiously slimy ... so what. They aren't the only way to connect with people. I actually expect them to go the way of GroupOn (are they still around?).
Just minimize your LinkedIn exposure surface and interaction and you'll be fine.
I hate LinkedIn, and wish it was not a de facto requirement for getting a job in certain industries/areas.
To make it not so, _users_ need to stop using Linked In.
This OP is very developer-focused in it's audience, it will not be clear to the non-developer user (or even to many developers) what they are talking about at all, or why it matters. It is written assuming you already know what they're talking about and already agree with them about it.
There are plenty of things that might matter to users and help convince users that Linked In is an untrustworthy company -- like, their email spamming/address-book-stealing practices. I was hoping the OP would be more user-focused in it's intended audience and more intentional in making a case.
Developers are a huge resource for LinkedIn. The only reason they can sell their spammy products to recruiters is because those recruiters count on LinkedIn having quality people on their network to send it to.
If everyone who didn't need a LinkedIn profile to get a job shut off their profile, LinkedIn's revenue would collapse quickly.
> If everyone who didn't need a LinkedIn profile to get a job shut off their profile...
Right. And clearly someone that actually _needs_ a LinkedIn profile to get a job is not going to shut off their profile, which is the hard part.
But either way, I think this OP is not written/structured as well as it could be to convince people to shut off their profiles and/or stop recruiting on it, it seems to be targetted more at people who write software for linked in API, and doens't do a great job of making the argument even there.
* get connection request
* reset password
* log in
* accept connection
* log out
* do not think about linkedin again until the next connection request.
* get connection request
* open mobile browser
* switch to "request desktop page" mode
* log in
* accept connection
* log out
* do not think about linkedin again until the next connection request.
can't understand why do they block the browser from using the remembered password on mobile!
I'm actually partially responsible for this. I actually designed that product at LinkedIn.
There are some people who need to stay anonymous for various reasons including lawyers, M&A people, etc. The setting for how you show up in other people's who viewed your profile is controlled by the individual user. It is a privacy thing.
The messaging when upgrading used to be much more clear - you would get to see more people who viewed you as opposed to just the last few - not de-anonymize people. They seem to have made it more ambiguous since I left.
I have the "anonymous" mode enabled on Linkedin. I do this for the same reason I am using a throwaway HN account, and - if I may presume - for the same reason you didn't put full name in your HN profile:
When I'm casually browsing around I don't want to think and worry about what the reaction might be to my name popping up everywhere.
The default setting is that when you view someone's profile, it tells them who you are. I turned this off, as I would love to be able to browse without notifying every profile I go to.
If you think you can subvert the business or sociological aspects of hiring and working, you are sadly mistaken. While people still use it, I'll keep a profile up, otherwise bear the mistake of being the 'inept' person without a LinkedIn.
LinkedIn, as used by the majority of resources ( not recruiters ), is free for what is needed.
Why is it assumed that it is "unfair" for a company providing a free service to hoard the data you give to them?
If you don't like LinkedIn, don't use it. If you don't like LinkedIn because they won't let you steal their data, then I'm sure they will be happy that you ignore them. Trying to convince people who don't care to stop using LinkedIn is pointless.
> Why is it assumed that it is "unfair" for a company providing a free service to hoard the data you give to them?
It's unfair because LinkedIn had built a precedent of openness and made no indication that this was a temporary or limited offer (at least not a straightforward "hey this might shut off someday..." notice).
Also from purely a market perspective, this is unethical as it's about providing a business platform to others and then closing it once your in-house solutions begin to compete with those you've opened the platform to.
> If you don't like LinkedIn, don't use it.
Problem is, LinkedIn is not just a tool, it's also a network. You can change it as you would a tool, but you'll leave behind the network. Now, get enough supporters to change with you, well then you may have done it! Similarly, the node.js/io.js tussle was/is about getting a better tool but required getting the network to come with (and this was probably what woke up Joyent).
> Trying to convince people who don't care to stop using LinkedIn is pointless.
You may not care but it certainly is a stretch to claim that others don't care (though at face-value, your statement is actually a truism). I would argue that the majority would/will care as long as a strong enough effort is made to show them why. (Also, this link has 200+ points and 100+ comments...)
I don't know why people make these kinds of comments. "If you don't like X, don't use it." You can't know if you like it until after you've used it, and by then it is too late. It seems to me like you'd have to be really out of touch with how the world works to say such a thing.
The problem with a lot of these sites (facebook/linkedin) etc is their business is built on data you provided, which they then get to control.
The problem is additional data gets built up, and they gain a monopoly on the information. It results in an unfair market. For me to build a competitor to facebook or linkedin would be very difficult. Even if its better!
I'd like to see a law about user obtained data, that requires it always be programatically accessible.
It's called fair use but people have this idea that Robots.txt was a bill passed by Congress. But yes, I totally agree, and sites like Stack Overflow are doing this very well. It's a shame that Archive.org was not allowed to crawl my profile before I left last year but that they allowed Google/Bing/etc to crawl it.
Sorry for my shameless plug here but we are developing a LinkedIn alternative for Developer, it's called devolio.net[1] and we will launch open beta in March. We will support the open jsonresume.org formats and unrestricted profile viewing experience (no sign in walls) . Plus we are just focusing on developers, so it has no annoying fake business people.
>Stop using Linkedin
>Here is a list of 16 sites where you need to be registered at teh same time to have an access to the same audience as on linkedin
I deleted my LinkedIn account a while ago. Their UI is full of dark patterns and the only thing I ever got out of their service was recruitment spam from people that hadn't actually read my profile.
Since deleting my account, I get much less spam from recruiters. If I still get some, it's easy to get rid of them with a simple reply or a click on an unsubscribe link.
A lot of interesting arguments for and against in the comments over the past two days.
The restriction of API is the same that Twitter did when they became more keen on controlling aspects of the app community. Whether or not that has led to decline in the traffic can be debated, or whether it was just 'time'. It is of course LI's prerogative, but a short sighted view of the world, when over the last 10+ years LinkedIn has shown little ability to innovate and evolve the service - third parties could - and they should find ways to encourage (and monetize) that
The proliferation of alternatives as suggested on stopusinglinkedin indicates there are better ways of connecting with professionals. Professionals who understand your space and less spammy/generalist ways to find permanent and freelance work - if that is your objective. There is most certainly room in the world for a more niche approach to something as important in our lives as that which generates our income.
We have been building www.somewhere.com for a bit now, trying to have quality conversations about work. Sort of by accident people are now using it to find each other for projects.
That puts us in the same category as Dribbble and Behance (without the behemoths behind the scenes), yet we are different in that we want to talk about how the sausage is made and not just show the end product. Will that be a 'winning' strategy? Time will tell, we are curious about work, how we do it, when and where and most importantly why - something others have not decided to focus on, but which we believe should be at the core when trying to find people with whom to work.
Anyway - API or not, LinkedIn is not the only game in town, perhaps they have gotten too big for their own good, perhaps they will do just fine with their 300M+ users and corporates willing to spend good money for volume...either way - we can all build and support alternatives that work better.
This feature is enough to avoid Linkedin. I am scared to click on any profile in linkedin just because of this feature. I always use incognito mode to look up folks in Linkedin. It is a creepy site.
Wait till your connections can submit hidden reviews about you and potential employers can view it for a small fee, like Carfax.
In theory all this stop using X campaigns sound amazing as in this era value and revenue of X is often determined by its active users. Vote with your wallet! Practically, only a subset of all active users will actually care and permanently stop using X until the situation has improved. In the end, cost of living without X is often bigger than the association you feel with the campaign its values. If there were solid alternatives straight away and everyone would switch, that cost would decrease but until then "stop using linkedin", " drop dropbox", "don't buy Nike" are just drops in the ocean.
Which is a bummer because if you would be able to actually manoeuvre a big enough user base, those campaigns would certainly be effective due to the "adapt or run out of business" effect it has.
One of the "alternative" services these folks recommend is academia.edu - does anyone else find it really weird that a for-profit-not-even-remotely-degree-granting company is squatting in the .edu namespace?
I wish there were some way to tell companies like LinkedIn not to create a shadow profile on you. I've never trusted LinkedIn enough to create an account - their email practices are too shady, and I'm totally happy with StackOverflow Careers - but I periodically get emails saying "Bill Former Coworker wants to connect with you!" (And then of course I get follow-up emails for several weeks.) I'm sure my shadow profile is quite accurate. For all I know, they're emailing people on my behalf saying "ksenzee wants to connect with you!"
Among the alternatives listed is Behance -last time I checked this network was owned and operated by Adobe.
btw, the stopusinglinkedin.com site links to behance.com which does not exist. It's behance.net
Dribbble (the other design resource listed) I understand was co-founded by designer Dan Cederholm, but oddly if you visit his current Wikipedia page there's no mention of his involvement with Dribbble -only on his SimpleBits bio page: http://simplebits.com/about/
It would be helpful to have real-world examples of who is losing out due to this and why...beyond the entire free peoples of the internet (some of whom I'm sure do not use linked in).
I'd feel better about helping you if I knew who you were. For all I know, you represent a shady company who tried to make bank by scraping LinkedIn data and creating customized phishing profiles.
I stopped using LinkedIn right after I heard that it harvests contact details from emails. Thankfully, being "paranoid", I've never allowed it to access that data. After that I deleted my account. Two years later, I received the "these are the people you might know!" email...
LinkedIn's APIs have historically been very restrictive. I can sort of understand that LinkedIn feels/knows it's sitting on extremely valuable data except that on further inspection it's almost all public data that just happens to be decently organized.
Aside from startups trying to find their customer base and integrating with LinkedIn, do we have any SMBs/mid-stage Startups (Proven Business Models) on HN who have lost their livelihood now given where LinkedIn is going?
Dear programmers, if you are using linkedin you are doing it wrong. Use github, careers.stackoverflow, a plain html resume page, the ladders, and basically anything else that is not linkedin to showcase your skillset.
Oh I don't know... how about keeping track of former co-workers, people you meet at networking events, and other professional connections? How about finding useful interesting industry or topic specific news and discussion via groups? Or if you are job-hunting, for finding a path to somebody who works at the company you're targeting, so you can try to get an inside testimonial? Or getting a warm intro when trying to contact VC's or Angel investors? Or perhaps for looking up an individual before meeting them in a professional setting, so you have some background on their experience / interests / etc? I mean, really, there are a million ways that LinkedIn is useful. The fact that they suck in so many other ways is pretty much orthogonal.
Yeah, I think we'd all prefer a site like LinkedIn that somehow manages to avoid "recruiter spam" and all that, but for me personally, I can tolerate a little recruiter spam... and hell, every once in a while I get something like that, that is actually interesting enough to pursue.
I don't think you're a programmer or maybe you were but are now at a higher level. My advice was more for practicing programmers than others. I personally get zero value out of linkedin. All the people I consider professional equals can be found on mailing lists, blogs, weekly digests, stackoverflow, meetups, etc. Keeping track of them is quite easy and I don't need a third party in that process that just spams me.
Oh I'm definitely a programmer... but I do more than just program, yes. I have a startup I've been working on for a while, and I consider networking an essential activity... and LinkedIn has been a valuable resource in that regard.
That said, I think LI has value even if you're not interested in founding a startup or whatever. I mean, I'd rather keep a (more or less) master "rolodex" of people I know and have some connection to, on LinkedIn, than have to spend all sorts of time trawling through old email lists, Quora, Meetup, SO, etc., just to find somebody's info. But that's just me.
It indeed is just you. I don't know how you're going to find anyone worthwhile if all you do is keep everything restricted to linkedin. I've met plenty of awesome people at meetups, conferences, etc. that don't have a linkedin profile and maintain control of their own web presence. A simple bookmark and an email contact list is not much of a burden to keep track of such people in my opinion.
Now you are projecting otherness to people who do things differently than you. "Being a programmer" is not some weird club where everyone needs to behave exactly the same. Bytes and algorithms have zero tribal affinity, you know.
And you are misinterpreting everything I say and not even trying to address any of the points that are made in the original post and my subsequent comments.
To get things back on track here are the points. Cultivating a professional network does not require mediating parties like linkedin and can be accomplished by more decentralized and democratic means that lets each professional maintain control over their own digital presence. Linkedin does not do that and in fact diminishes everyones' ability to do so and therefore it is a bad trade-off to make in the long term since I've already outlined several other ways of cultivating professional connections that are just as easy as keeping everything in linkedin.
Just because you get no value out of LinkedIn, doesn't mean other programmers don't.
I get useful information about available jobs in my segment of the industry because LinkedIn knows what kind of work I do as opposed to just "he's a programmer." The recruiters who contact me from LinkedIn are looking for people in a specific domain, as opposed to "knows language X and framework Y." I consider that to be a hell of a lot more useful than the usual email job spam.
I also get to see if I know someone who knows someone else that I might want to be introduced to. It's a lot harder to do this on your own without a stack of cross referenced rolodexes.
"All the people I consider professional equals can be found on mailing lists, blogs, weekly digests, stackoverflow, meetups,"
You have cultivated other networking channels. Great! But I would like to point out to you that now you make the basic cognitive fallacy thinking that anyone who is not doing it "your way" is doing it wrong.
They are indeed doing it wrong if the outcome is a company like linkedin. As technology professionals we can and should be doing much better but instead we are cultivating digital silos that add very little value.
I have opted out and nothing about my professional career has diminished so there is an alternative approach that requires nothing like linkedin. Since I'm a counter-example to all the claims your making and my way obviously leads to a more decentralized and democratic approach to professional development I don't really understand the continued support of digital silos like linkedin from people like you.
The claim that they are a digital rolodex is a very weak one since an email contact list serves that purpose just as easily. I'm starting to suspect you are PR spokesperson for linkedin.
Sorry, we are getting off track here. I apologize for my tone if it aggrieves you. It is obvious we have different values and considerations. No-one is a true scotsman I suppose :)
As I stated the main value proposition of LinkedIn for me is that most of my connections are there.
Replacing the said connections would require work and time, which I would rather spend on other things. The problem with an email list is that there is no automatic update if the email address changes. Therefore, changing to a email list would lead to a poorer result for me.
I prefer introversion to extroversion. Going out to meetings would therefore be a) mentally exhausting b) take time. The former is doable but the latter is really hard to come by with a 9-5 job and kids.
Now, as to the proposition of spending my energies trying to invent an open competitor to LinkedIn... Building communities takes a huge effort and seems to happen mostly by chance. Also, while being a technology professional my core skillset is in CAD and maths and I'm clueless when it comes to web technologies.
So, in order to do a fancy LinkedIn replacement would require a) time to improve on my web skills, which is really wasteful considering lots of people are good at it already, b) create the product c) move all my dear colleagues to the new network.
The last parts are actually the hardest, I have no idea how to build social sites or how to motivate people.
So, to rephrase why I use LinkedIn: It currently provides me value, and I do not see sufficient benefit to spend time changing mine and my colleagues habits when it comes to networking. Most things in life are morally ambiguous and all one can do is to try to do more good than harm within ones limits. Sometimes all an individual can do is go with the flow.
People have different internal motivations. Mine run completely against social things. I prefer to twiddle on algorithms, draw, play the guitar and play with my kids. I use the social frameworks that exist because I see the value they provide but have no energy to change them nor am I motivated to design alternatives to them.
Yeah, middle age, definetly :)
Most peoples are not motivated by ambiguous "this is evil because..." arguments. Most behavioural changes are best driven by positive motivators - one cannot drive people away from anything by saying "the thing is evil". Eating meat is evil and still people do it, including me. What needs to be done is to provide better alternatives that wean people away from option a) (the evil) to option b) over time.
Like I said: the main feature of LinkedIn is a contact list of known people who I can approach easily.
To rephrase:
LinkedIn is a professional tool. The revenue model which makes Facebook a bit creepy (sell the contact info of the users to the world) is actually, in professional context a feature. LinkedIn helps its users maintain a professional brand and market it to other professionals. The difference is between an olde phonebook that would also contain info on all the personal details and the yellow pages.
Typically, professional indices have charged for inclusion. Linkedin provides the minimum feature set for free.
If one does not have any contacts in LinkedIn then the value of the service of course drops to near zero for the individual professional user.
I think we're talking past each other here. There are many programmers that I could connect to on linkedin but there is no value that linkedin is adding since I also can get in touch with them through email and through friends or friends of friends that I know from other settings like meetups and conferences. The fact that I can do this and that it doesn't even require that much effort means there is some kind of disconnect between how you see linkedin and how I see it.
To me linkedin is just another digital silo capitalizing on the fact that it is de facto middle man between professionals because of network effects. Defending their actions in my opinion is also a very weak position to hold when even someone like me that tends to be on the anti-social side of spectrum has managed to build up a network of professional friends without linkedin's help.
I just find it incredibly creepy that LinkedIn seems to know that I am connected to certain people - I cannot imagine they worked out that I do in fact know that person - not by any obvious means.
It was posited that your email in their contact list might trigger it, but I've seen it happen after I viewed someone's profile. It appears to guess that X days after viewing the profile, you may now know them.
Linkedin has been known to shut down competing services prior to this. At hired.com, our API access was revoked (a long while ago), and many of our users were no longer able to login.
you guys rejected me as a customer even though my team is building data science stuff on open source technologies, because my employer does translation which is "a competing staffing service".
Likewise with us. Hypocritical to claim that Linkedin takes anti-competitive practices when Hired.com employs similar tactics. At least Linkedin still allows competitors to have Linkedin profiles.
Twitter should be on the list of alternatives. I have found twitter to be a more valuable professional tool than LinkedIn (though I doubt my experience is like others).
Is anyone really surprised? Ideologically upset? Sure, but we learned this with Twitter and tons of other companies. The APIs are there's to support or pull
I feel like LinkedIn is an evil necessity. It's so bloated and I never feel comfortable navigating or viewing anything on LinkedIn due to their nature of trying to connect or send emails without your approval.
I'd really like if there was an alternative that can be just as popular, with simple resume hosting/networking capabilities. No bloat or shady practices.
it has turned into a publishing platform which is what they have done right compared to their competition (Xing, Viadeo). useful or not they manage to keep people engaged and coming back.
My beef with LinkedIn is that the user interface sux.
I used to be a LION so I still have days when I have to filter 20 connection requests. I still accept connections if (1) you seem to be a person and (2) you use your real name (not the name of a business)
The interface for accepting connection requests is painful and slow and so are the interfaces for doing other things on LinkedIn. I find myself using it less and less because it just takes too long to do things.
By restricting the API they just make it harder to improve the UI.
They sent me an email saying "There are 108 people you might want to connect with", so I click on view all and it shows a giant list of people with checkmarks by their names. Nice. I uncheck all of them, and scroll through checking a few folks who I want to network with (5 people in total). Click next, it takes me to a screen showing the 5 people and the banner clearly says "Send connection requests to these 5 people?". I click next.
The next screen says "Congratulations, we've sent connection requests to 300 people.". What the flying fuck? Ok, well that's a bummer but oh well, probably just a bug in their system. Then my inbox starts getting spammed with "I'm out of the office right now blah blah blah" from people who I don't even know who they are.
The assholes sent 300 people linkedin connection requests through my own personal gmail account. With zero warning whatsoever. That really pisses me off.
I like LinkedIn, it's a great networking tool, but they really need to stop doing this shit. Something similar happened a few years ago, but they only spammed people in my address book who were already members and the emails were sent by LinkedIn, not through my gmail account.
I've revoked LinkedIn's access to my gmail account. I regret ever enabling it in the first place. I recommend you do the same.
For those who don't know how: https://www.google.com/settings/security (click the view all button next to Apps and Websites).