9 ms·

LinkedIn dark patterns, or why your friends keep spamming you to sign up for it

211 points by wfunction 11y ago

austinjp 11y ago
Another "dark pattern" I recently noticed: One page (member homepage perhaps) displays a list with the standard "add these people to your network" and in an absent-minded moment I clicked a few. Too late, I realised it was a mixed list of LinkedIn members and non-members extracted from my address book. Existing members, fine, they get an invite to connect. But non-members no doubt receive a message "from austinjp". I texted one friend a pre-emptive apology and logged out. I very rarely bother with LinkedIn, and this is another reason they leave me cold.
- dspillett 11y ago
  > extracted from my address book This is why nothing like linked-in gets anywhere near my address book, and therefore nowhere near my portable devices because the only way to install the phone app is to agree to that permission and the site itself is terrible on mobile. If you let an app install that asks for permission to read your address book assume it will one day it will spam everyone in it and if someone in your address book also uses the app assume that the linking information will be used for profiling purposes (which means more advertising by one of many means). And any who gives a web app their email address & password to access their mail account to look for contacts (seriously, I know people who have done this and damn well should know better) they need a good smack up the back of the head with the security clue stick.
  - austinjp 11y ago
    Indeed. I don't recall uploading data to LinkedIn, but it's possible I gave it permission to access my email at some point. If I did so, it would have been years ago. Problematically, that data has now been stored on LI servers, so I can't revoke access.
    - dspillett 11y ago
      It may not be directly from your address book: if you know enough people who have linked-in accounts, are linked to you, and have fallen for one of the access routes, then a lot can no doubt be inferred about you from them.
  - redwood 11y ago
    I agree with you and this is a reminder of how critical it is to use a different password for these accounts and for your email address. Because LinkedIn put what is essentially a fishing screen in front of you where they ask you for your email address and password. Now you can very easily have used your email address to log in to LinkedIn and therefore you can easily assume this is linked in asking you to relogin. What you don't realize is you're giving up your email address and email password if they have a good match what you think you're typing in to login to LinkedIn
    - acjohnson55 11y ago
      I fell for this years ago. It's super creepy. I only recently figured out where to go to delete that data, but I still get creepy suggestions.
      - JBReefer 11y ago
        Where do you go? I've hunted around a lot - it's really uncomfortable that they tell you "nothing is connected" and then recommend people you've dated...
- rpgmaker 11y ago
  Why do people keep using linkedin? They are the biggest spammers around and have no shame. All email providers should filter their emails as spam automatically. I periodically receive linkedin invitations from people that wrote to my dev email account looking for technical support, which just goes to show that they just don't go after your 'friends' but just about anyone you have ever contacted via email.
- chinathrow 11y ago
  "and non-members extracted from my address book" There, we have a winner!
- jrowley 11y ago
  Yeah linkedin suggested I add my deceased grandfather using this method the other day. Obnoxious feature.
- austinjp 11y ago
  A couple of people have pointed out my phrase "non-members extracted from my address book"... Perhaps this should more accurately have been "possibly" extracted from my address book. I'm a friend of Tom, Jerry, and Spike. We all have each others' email addresses in our address books. We're all LinkedIn members apart from Spike. Tom and Jerry both upload their address books to LinkedIn, but I don't. LinkedIn doesn't require a wizard to work out that austinjp may know non-member Spike. They simply have to display Spike in a mixed-list of members and non-members and wait for me to click him. They even differentiate non-members from members, but too subtly, and all it takes is one mistaken click.
0x0 11y ago
Here's another: Trying to browse slideshare while you are cookied on linkedin.com will create a public slideshare profile in your name without you ever signing on for that, and with no UI to remove the profile. I had to mail customer support (which got back to me a few days later and removed the unwanted auto-profile).
anilgulecha 11y ago
Here's a question to HN: if we were to design an alternative to linkedin (for IT/technical folks), what would be the features you'd want? I'll start: 1) The ability to go no-opportunities. When you're not looking for work, you turn this on, and you will not turn up on any search result. 2) Simple export API, with a guarantee of you having complete say over your data. You may export as a json anytime, and import into another service. 3) Non-profit is possible. A resume directory can be run by a few people with a small revenue. Trying to make a unicorn is what leads to linked-in level shit. Others?
- charlieegan3 11y ago
  Not doing 'creepy' things with your data (http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-network/? http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-netwo...) Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9045677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9045677 and archived page: https://web.archive.org/web/20150812004139/http://www.stopusinglinkedin.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150812004139/http://www.stopus...
  - anilgulecha 11y ago
    It's hard to convert this to technical requirement -- this is largely a moral requirement on someone running the service. That's the second best option -- first would be this being technicall not possible. The only way I can think of to deter this is cost per action. So accounts start with some virtual (or real) currency which spends on actions like connecting or adding to the graph. This will at-least minimize if not stop the behavior. Any other ways of implementing non-creepiness?
    - mannykannot 11y ago
      I don't think a basic social network starts out creepy, and quite a lot of effort goes in to implementing the features that enable it to become creepy. Non-creepiness is not a requirement, it is a constraint, such as 'no retroactive default boundary-weakening' and 'do not send email that dishonestly misrepresents the intentions and views of your members, and particularly not of specific members by name.' It is not that hard.
biot 11y ago
There was a good discussion on this as part of the LinkedIn stock price 40% drop: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11042278#up_11042899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11042278#up_11042899 Many of the comments for the article discussed LinkedIn's dark patterns.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kennydude 11y ago
It makes it feel as though they're terrible desperate to get more people using the thing. Is there actually anything at all positive to using LinkedIn?
- jk563 11y ago
  It led me to 3 different jobs. All three started through LinkedIn communication. During the resume portion of the processes I used LinkedIn Labs to generate a resume from my profile (laziness). In some unfortunate happenstance, it seems the Labs were killed off just yesterday [1]. So, positives are there for me so far. [1] http://techcabal.com/2016/02/08/linkedin-has-quietly-killed-off-labs/ http://techcabal.com/2016/02/08/linkedin-has-quietly-killed-...
mojuba 11y ago
Here is where you go when in doubt: https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions
llamataboot 11y ago
If you want to skip directly to removing your address back integrations from LinkedIn, you can do so at this page: https://www.linkedin.com/contacts/manage_sources/ https://www.linkedin.com/contacts/manage_sources/
sherifmansour 11y ago
LinkedIn: what happens to when you build product by growth hacking everything. I can just picture hundreds of engineers deploying experiments, looking at data and concluding all things that move numbers up are a success... Regardless of how deceiving or confusing the UX might be.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  Engineers or Managers? The engineer are probably only looking at the data to confirm to the MANAGERS that the numbers are moving up.
mwagstaff 11y ago
Fully agree with the article. Got caught out by the same nasty trick. Unfortunately, LinkedIn serves a niche in the market for keeping in touch with ex work colleagues who you don't necessarily know well enough to connect with on Facebook. And to be fair, it's also a good way of getting a job nowadays. If someone built a better intentioned, less spammy alternative, I think it would stand a good chance of succeeding.
vletmixutechre 11y ago
It took half a dozen or so emails to every possible email address I could find on linkedin's site, but I managed to finally have my personal email address added to some global do-not-contact list. I have since stopped receiving any invitations from friends to join. It's really disgusting that they have such functionality, but do not allow people to be added to such a list on their own.
anonymousguy 11y ago
He quit Linked In but not Facebook because of UI, email messaging, and privacy.... seriously? I quit Facebook years ago and haven't missed a thing, while on the other hand my past 3 jobs have all come from (at least indirectly) Linked In.
swalsh 11y ago
It seems like there's a lot of momentum towards people wanting a "replacement" for linkedin... kind of makes me think of the transition from SourceForge (has always been a spammy hole) to github.
chinathrow 11y ago
LinkedIn is so nice to tell me what idiots of my connections gave them their mail password to spam me. Can't believe it sometimes.
- shitgoose 11y ago
  if you are so smart, do not keep idiots in your connections.
CrimsnBlade 11y ago
I read this article, which was very enlightening by the way, and the first thing I did was go to check and see if I had fallen prey to the dark patterns of LinkedIn. The first thing I see when I log on is that they're asking, "Add an extra layer of security to your profile, add your phone number" Really?? This made me even more uneasy than before. Why would that add additional security to my profile? Has anyone else seen this on their home page yet?
- lordCarbonFiber 11y ago
  Do you really have to ask why 2-factor authentication would add security to your profile? (If so, http://lmgtfy.com/?q=2+Factor+Authentication+ http://lmgtfy.com/?q=2+Factor+Authentication+) Im all for jumping on the bash LinkedIn train, but let's be reasonable here.
  - ferentchak 11y ago
    Until someone clicks the "Add people you know from your contacts" feature that most of these viral products end up implementing. At which point they have an extra dimension to help their social graph or whatever they want to call they set of marketing information they sell.
  - vcarl 11y ago
    Adding a phone number to your account and enabling two factor auth aren't the same thing in my mind. It might be that I'm paranoid about giving LinkedIn my info plus bad copy on the prompt, but I had the same reaction as the grandparent.
  - CrimsnBlade 11y ago
    I realize what 2 factor authentication is, and perhaps I jumped too soon before considering it, but with everything else happening I can't help but think they would want my number for more than just my added security.
notlisted 11y ago
They tricked me too, despite being very careful on the desktop, one wrong click on mobile and boom. They're not the only ones either. Does anyone remember how FB ensured growth? "Import your yahoo/google contacts to see who is on FB". What they didn't mention is that they would hold on to the email addresses to notify anyone who signed up that they had friends already, and exporting your contacts was disabled soon. Despite being officially dismissed, the "shadow profiles" claim rang true to me too. Before FB, MySpace was built on spamming the bejesus out of people [1]. [1] http://gawker.com/199924/myspace-the-business-of-spam-20-exhaustive-edition http://gawker.com/199924/myspace-the-business-of-spam-20-exh...
cpeterso 11y ago
Linked In asks for your email account's password, but I wouldn't be surprised if they secretly attempt to log into your email account using your linkedin.com password, hoping you reuse the same password.
- ginko 11y ago
  How isn't this blatantly illegal?
  - albemuth 11y ago
    It was hypothetical
- wfunction 11y ago
  If you're already logged into e.g. Gmail, it doesn't even matter if you don't use the same password, because Google will still pop up a dialog box asking you to allow permission.
micwawa 11y ago
Last night I applied for a job, and there was a link that you can click to allow the website to access your LinkedIn information. I clicked on this. I usually breeze through this because all these applications just want to access your basic information. I entered my password and hit enter when I looked at the screen and realized that I agreed to the following: iCIMS would like to access some of your LinkedIn info: YOUR PROFILE OVERVIEW YOUR FULL PROFILE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS YOUR CONNECTIONS YOUR CONTACT INFO NETWORK UPDATES GROUP DISCUSSIONS INVITATIONS AND MESSAGES So I looked up what this meant : Network Updates - Retrieves and posts updates as you. Group Discussions - Retrieves and posts group discussions as you. Invitations and Messages - Sends messages and invitations to connect as you. So it seems I gave them access to pretty much every feature except the ability to close my account and/or change the password (which I promptly did.) Woops. This is a category of dark patterns: have the user click on something that has been benign the last 20 times they've seen something similar, but this time isn't.
- leejo 11y ago
  > This is a category of dark patterns: have the user click on something that has been benign the last 20 times they've seen something similar, but this time isn't. This is the nature of OAuth, in which the scopes can be different for many different clients. Not that this makes it any better, you just need to be aware of it. Slideshare do the same thing when you click download - if you verify using linkedin they want access to everything on your linked in profile just so you can download the slides. Ridiculous (even if they're essentially the same company). Changing your password here is no good, you need to go to linkedin and then your account settings, then third party apps and delete whatever it was you allowed to connect. Despite all the failings of OAuth that's one of the good features about it, you can actually control the access. Tip: if you're logging in using OAuth (generally when you get redirected to another site to confirm) always check the requested scopes and always remove all the scopes but those essential to the functioning of the calling app/site, which is usually just access to your e-mail address.If you can't disallow certain scopes then try logging in using something else, github, facebook, whatever, and rinse and repeat. If you're still not happy then just signup with a throw away email.
  - 11y ago
cpeterso 11y ago
I don't like the term "dark patterns" because it's not something that non-technical users will recognize. Especially in conjunction with user interfaces, dark pattern sounds like a graphic design term. Something like "deceptive user interface" is clearer and actually expresses the sliminess of the intended design. Is there catchy name for "deceptive user interface"? Also, who are the sociopaths designing and coding these deceptive user interfaces? Have they no empathy for their users?
joesmo 11y ago
LinkedIn has become such a joke now, even literally with comedians making fun of all these LinkedIn invites. Plenty of people who don't know the phrase 'dark pattern' have experienced it and know they've experienced something truly messed up. I have no doubt this has been reflected in their recent stock price--rightfully so. I hope this is a lesson to other purveyors of dark patterns, but I doubt it.

211 points by wfunction 11y ago

Another "dark pattern" I recently noticed: One page (member homepage perhaps) displays a list with the standard "add these people to your network" and in an absent-minded moment I clicked a few. Too late, I realised it was a mixed list of LinkedIn members and non-members extracted from my address book. Existing members, fine, they get an invite to connect. But non-members no doubt receive a message "from austinjp". I texted one friend a pre-emptive apology and logged out. I very rarely bother with LinkedIn, and this is another reason they leave me cold.

dspillett 11y ago
> extracted from my address book This is why nothing like linked-in gets anywhere near my address book, and therefore nowhere near my portable devices because the only way to install the phone app is to agree to that permission and the site itself is terrible on mobile. If you let an app install that asks for permission to read your address book assume it will one day it will spam everyone in it and if someone in your address book also uses the app assume that the linking information will be used for profiling purposes (which means more advertising by one of many means). And any who gives a web app their email address & password to access their mail account to look for contacts (seriously, I know people who have done this and damn well should know better) they need a good smack up the back of the head with the security clue stick.
- austinjp 11y ago
  Indeed. I don't recall uploading data to LinkedIn, but it's possible I gave it permission to access my email at some point. If I did so, it would have been years ago. Problematically, that data has now been stored on LI servers, so I can't revoke access.
  - dspillett 11y ago
    It may not be directly from your address book: if you know enough people who have linked-in accounts, are linked to you, and have fallen for one of the access routes, then a lot can no doubt be inferred about you from them.
- redwood 11y ago
  I agree with you and this is a reminder of how critical it is to use a different password for these accounts and for your email address. Because LinkedIn put what is essentially a fishing screen in front of you where they ask you for your email address and password. Now you can very easily have used your email address to log in to LinkedIn and therefore you can easily assume this is linked in asking you to relogin. What you don't realize is you're giving up your email address and email password if they have a good match what you think you're typing in to login to LinkedIn
  - acjohnson55 11y ago
    I fell for this years ago. It's super creepy. I only recently figured out where to go to delete that data, but I still get creepy suggestions.
    - JBReefer 11y ago
      Where do you go? I've hunted around a lot - it's really uncomfortable that they tell you "nothing is connected" and then recommend people you've dated...
rpgmaker 11y ago
Why do people keep using linkedin? They are the biggest spammers around and have no shame. All email providers should filter their emails as spam automatically. I periodically receive linkedin invitations from people that wrote to my dev email account looking for technical support, which just goes to show that they just don't go after your 'friends' but just about anyone you have ever contacted via email.
chinathrow 11y ago
"and non-members extracted from my address book" There, we have a winner!
jrowley 11y ago
Yeah linkedin suggested I add my deceased grandfather using this method the other day. Obnoxious feature.
austinjp 11y ago
A couple of people have pointed out my phrase "non-members extracted from my address book"... Perhaps this should more accurately have been "possibly" extracted from my address book. I'm a friend of Tom, Jerry, and Spike. We all have each others' email addresses in our address books. We're all LinkedIn members apart from Spike. Tom and Jerry both upload their address books to LinkedIn, but I don't. LinkedIn doesn't require a wizard to work out that austinjp may know non-member Spike. They simply have to display Spike in a mixed-list of members and non-members and wait for me to click him. They even differentiate non-members from members, but too subtly, and all it takes is one mistaken click.

0x0 11y ago

Here's another: Trying to browse slideshare while you are cookied on linkedin.com will create a public slideshare profile in your name without you ever signing on for that, and with no UI to remove the profile. I had to mail customer support (which got back to me a few days later and removed the unwanted auto-profile).

anilgulecha 11y ago

Here's a question to HN: if we were to design an alternative to linkedin (for IT/technical folks), what would be the features you'd want? I'll start: 1) The ability to go no-opportunities. When you're not looking for work, you turn this on, and you will not turn up on any search result. 2) Simple export API, with a guarantee of you having complete say over your data. You may export as a json anytime, and import into another service. 3) Non-profit is possible. A resume directory can be run by a few people with a small revenue. Trying to make a unicorn is what leads to linked-in level shit. Others?

charlieegan3 11y ago
Not doing 'creepy' things with your data (http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-network/? http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-netwo...) Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9045677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9045677 and archived page: https://web.archive.org/web/20150812004139/http://www.stopusinglinkedin.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150812004139/http://www.stopus...
- anilgulecha 11y ago
  It's hard to convert this to technical requirement -- this is largely a moral requirement on someone running the service. That's the second best option -- first would be this being technicall not possible. The only way I can think of to deter this is cost per action. So accounts start with some virtual (or real) currency which spends on actions like connecting or adding to the graph. This will at-least minimize if not stop the behavior. Any other ways of implementing non-creepiness?
  - mannykannot 11y ago
    I don't think a basic social network starts out creepy, and quite a lot of effort goes in to implementing the features that enable it to become creepy. Non-creepiness is not a requirement, it is a constraint, such as 'no retroactive default boundary-weakening' and 'do not send email that dishonestly misrepresents the intentions and views of your members, and particularly not of specific members by name.' It is not that hard.

biot 11y ago

There was a good discussion on this as part of the LinkedIn stock price 40% drop: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11042278#up_11042899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11042278#up_11042899 Many of the comments for the article discussed LinkedIn's dark patterns.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

kennydude 11y ago

It makes it feel as though they're terrible desperate to get more people using the thing. Is there actually anything at all positive to using LinkedIn?

jk563 11y ago
It led me to 3 different jobs. All three started through LinkedIn communication. During the resume portion of the processes I used LinkedIn Labs to generate a resume from my profile (laziness). In some unfortunate happenstance, it seems the Labs were killed off just yesterday [1]. So, positives are there for me so far. [1] http://techcabal.com/2016/02/08/linkedin-has-quietly-killed-off-labs/ http://techcabal.com/2016/02/08/linkedin-has-quietly-killed-...

mojuba 11y ago

Here is where you go when in doubt: https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions

llamataboot 11y ago

If you want to skip directly to removing your address back integrations from LinkedIn, you can do so at this page: https://www.linkedin.com/contacts/manage_sources/ https://www.linkedin.com/contacts/manage_sources/

sherifmansour 11y ago

LinkedIn: what happens to when you build product by growth hacking everything. I can just picture hundreds of engineers deploying experiments, looking at data and concluding all things that move numbers up are a success... Regardless of how deceiving or confusing the UX might be.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Engineers or Managers? The engineer are probably only looking at the data to confirm to the MANAGERS that the numbers are moving up.

mwagstaff 11y ago

Fully agree with the article. Got caught out by the same nasty trick. Unfortunately, LinkedIn serves a niche in the market for keeping in touch with ex work colleagues who you don't necessarily know well enough to connect with on Facebook. And to be fair, it's also a good way of getting a job nowadays. If someone built a better intentioned, less spammy alternative, I think it would stand a good chance of succeeding.

vletmixutechre 11y ago

It took half a dozen or so emails to every possible email address I could find on linkedin's site, but I managed to finally have my personal email address added to some global do-not-contact list. I have since stopped receiving any invitations from friends to join. It's really disgusting that they have such functionality, but do not allow people to be added to such a list on their own.

anonymousguy 11y ago

He quit Linked In but not Facebook because of UI, email messaging, and privacy.... seriously? I quit Facebook years ago and haven't missed a thing, while on the other hand my past 3 jobs have all come from (at least indirectly) Linked In.

swalsh 11y ago

It seems like there's a lot of momentum towards people wanting a "replacement" for linkedin... kind of makes me think of the transition from SourceForge (has always been a spammy hole) to github.

chinathrow 11y ago

LinkedIn is so nice to tell me what idiots of my connections gave them their mail password to spam me. Can't believe it sometimes.

shitgoose 11y ago
if you are so smart, do not keep idiots in your connections.

CrimsnBlade 11y ago

I read this article, which was very enlightening by the way, and the first thing I did was go to check and see if I had fallen prey to the dark patterns of LinkedIn. The first thing I see when I log on is that they're asking, "Add an extra layer of security to your profile, add your phone number" Really?? This made me even more uneasy than before. Why would that add additional security to my profile? Has anyone else seen this on their home page yet?

lordCarbonFiber 11y ago
Do you really have to ask why 2-factor authentication would add security to your profile? (If so, http://lmgtfy.com/?q=2+Factor+Authentication+ http://lmgtfy.com/?q=2+Factor+Authentication+) Im all for jumping on the bash LinkedIn train, but let's be reasonable here.
- ferentchak 11y ago
  Until someone clicks the "Add people you know from your contacts" feature that most of these viral products end up implementing. At which point they have an extra dimension to help their social graph or whatever they want to call they set of marketing information they sell.
- vcarl 11y ago
  Adding a phone number to your account and enabling two factor auth aren't the same thing in my mind. It might be that I'm paranoid about giving LinkedIn my info plus bad copy on the prompt, but I had the same reaction as the grandparent.
- CrimsnBlade 11y ago
  I realize what 2 factor authentication is, and perhaps I jumped too soon before considering it, but with everything else happening I can't help but think they would want my number for more than just my added security.

notlisted 11y ago

They tricked me too, despite being very careful on the desktop, one wrong click on mobile and boom. They're not the only ones either. Does anyone remember how FB ensured growth? "Import your yahoo/google contacts to see who is on FB". What they didn't mention is that they would hold on to the email addresses to notify anyone who signed up that they had friends already, and exporting your contacts was disabled soon. Despite being officially dismissed, the "shadow profiles" claim rang true to me too. Before FB, MySpace was built on spamming the bejesus out of people [1]. [1] http://gawker.com/199924/myspace-the-business-of-spam-20-exhaustive-edition http://gawker.com/199924/myspace-the-business-of-spam-20-exh...

cpeterso 11y ago

Linked In asks for your email account's password, but I wouldn't be surprised if they secretly attempt to log into your email account using your linkedin.com password, hoping you reuse the same password.

ginko 11y ago
How isn't this blatantly illegal?
- albemuth 11y ago
  It was hypothetical
wfunction 11y ago
If you're already logged into e.g. Gmail, it doesn't even matter if you don't use the same password, because Google will still pop up a dialog box asking you to allow permission.

micwawa 11y ago

Last night I applied for a job, and there was a link that you can click to allow the website to access your LinkedIn information. I clicked on this. I usually breeze through this because all these applications just want to access your basic information. I entered my password and hit enter when I looked at the screen and realized that I agreed to the following: iCIMS would like to access some of your LinkedIn info: YOUR PROFILE OVERVIEW YOUR FULL PROFILE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS YOUR CONNECTIONS YOUR CONTACT INFO NETWORK UPDATES GROUP DISCUSSIONS INVITATIONS AND MESSAGES So I looked up what this meant : Network Updates - Retrieves and posts updates as you. Group Discussions - Retrieves and posts group discussions as you. Invitations and Messages - Sends messages and invitations to connect as you. So it seems I gave them access to pretty much every feature except the ability to close my account and/or change the password (which I promptly did.) Woops. This is a category of dark patterns: have the user click on something that has been benign the last 20 times they've seen something similar, but this time isn't.

leejo 11y ago
> This is a category of dark patterns: have the user click on something that has been benign the last 20 times they've seen something similar, but this time isn't. This is the nature of OAuth, in which the scopes can be different for many different clients. Not that this makes it any better, you just need to be aware of it. Slideshare do the same thing when you click download - if you verify using linkedin they want access to everything on your linked in profile just so you can download the slides. Ridiculous (even if they're essentially the same company). Changing your password here is no good, you need to go to linkedin and then your account settings, then third party apps and delete whatever it was you allowed to connect. Despite all the failings of OAuth that's one of the good features about it, you can actually control the access. Tip: if you're logging in using OAuth (generally when you get redirected to another site to confirm) always check the requested scopes and always remove all the scopes but those essential to the functioning of the calling app/site, which is usually just access to your e-mail address.If you can't disallow certain scopes then try logging in using something else, github, facebook, whatever, and rinse and repeat. If you're still not happy then just signup with a throw away email.
- 11y ago

cpeterso 11y ago

I don't like the term "dark patterns" because it's not something that non-technical users will recognize. Especially in conjunction with user interfaces, dark pattern sounds like a graphic design term. Something like "deceptive user interface" is clearer and actually expresses the sliminess of the intended design. Is there catchy name for "deceptive user interface"? Also, who are the sociopaths designing and coding these deceptive user interfaces? Have they no empathy for their users?

joesmo 11y ago

LinkedIn has become such a joke now, even literally with comedians making fun of all these LinkedIn invites. Plenty of people who don't know the phrase 'dark pattern' have experienced it and know they've experienced something truly messed up. I have no doubt this has been reflected in their recent stock price--rightfully so. I hope this is a lesson to other purveyors of dark patterns, but I doubt it.