8 ms·

LinkedIn has a history of acting like a cretin: multiple data breaches, dark patterns where they don't fix their buggy mobile site and just put up a disclaimer

LinkedIn has a history of acting like a cretin: multiple data breaches, dark patterns where they don't fix their buggy mobile site and just put up a disclaimer "problems with the mobile site - download our app" (just so that they can harvest a wider range of data). I managed many marketing campaigns on Linkedin over the years and spent thousands each month on the platform as a corporate user. If you think that paying for the service you'd be excluded from their shitty ads and get more granular opt-out features than under a free-subscription model - but nope. they have literally done nothing to deserve any trust from their users. People still use it because they tell themselves "I might need it one day when I look for a job". That's also wrong - if you're doing it right you build good social connections in the real world because most (if not the only things) you get from LinkedIn is scams. The only upside where I find LinkedIn useful is for OSINT purposes. It's very easy to find all types of people there and get a rough picture how companies are run (what their employees are working on and what security problems that might imply) and build what the recruiting industry calls talent-maps (competiter analysis) which can be useful in infosec for threat & counter-intel. But it has 0 value for any legitimate purposes (that they advertise the service for).

cheez 6y ago
This is true. I've often used it to price services/software once I figure out how big the company is.
slezyr 6y ago
> they don't fix their buggy mobile site and just put up a disclaimer "problems with the mobile site - download our app" I would agree with this one most of the time, but even their desktop web is horrible in Firefox. It wouldn't load the pages/header with buttons, wouldn't show new messages from time to time.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Desktop LinkedIn is terrible too, it's absolutely unusable in Safari, lags and stutters constantly and seems to have a memory leak or similar where the page will get even slower (as if it wasn't already slow) proportional with the amount of content you have loaded. It pretty much instantly triggers the "page uses too much energy" warning.
sneak 6y ago
Based on the amount of ads and spyware embedded in modern Windows, I don’t think this problem is exclusive to LinkedIn. It seems to be par for the course for most things Microsoft runs.
_jal 6y ago
Ugh, I won't use their phone app, they're way too slimy to live there. They conveniently forget your mail settings periodically, too, forcing you to opt-out of various garbage again, or to just trash all the mail. They're at least as scummy as FB, if not worse. My (related) new rule: if your site demands a phone number for an account, I will not create an account on your site.
- Moto7451 6y ago
  I’m not a fan of giving phone numbers out either. When I have to I give one to sites I hold suspect I use a number from the safe fictitious range allowed for use on TV and in movies. It’s like example.org but for phone numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_(telephone_number) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_(telephone_number)
  - livre 6y ago
    Unfortunately many times that's not an option because they won't let you create or use the account until you verify the number (Google, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, most of the big social networks).
  - coded 6y ago
    TIL. Cool trick.
  - rootbear 6y ago
    I used to do something similar when a site I visited demanded an email address. I just used "mm@disney.com" (Mickey Mouse). Eventually, sites started verifying the given email address so that didn't work anymore. Now I just have a "burner" email address for such cases.
  - meshaneian 6y ago
    Truly disposable burner emails are the best, though many larger corps block the more popular ones or require an email at specific providers. https://www.mailinator.com/ https://www.mailinator.com/
rxhernandez 6y ago
I mean I've definitely been contacted by FAANG companies out of no where and got interviews through that.
- throwanem 6y ago
  Same.
- brandall10 6y ago
  I interviewed with all the FAANGs except Netflix over the last 5 months through internal recruiter contacts on LI. Probably half the interviews I’ve had over the past decade have come from LI, and I think at least 4 or so jobs (including my last and most recent) started there. It was largely useless in the aughts for me, but not lately.
- herewulf 6y ago
  I was contacted by Google and interviewed based on my profile page on the crufty, tag soup website of my employer at the time. shrug
MereInterest 6y ago
My first interaction with LinkedIn happened when they spammed me using my roommate's name, after getting "permission" through a dark pattern. After such a fantastic first impression, I have no intention of ever using LinkedIn.
gnicholas 6y ago
I've recently found that they're really pushing people toward the paid tier. I connected with someone a few weeks ago, and when I look at his contacts, I can only see people who are contacts to him AND other contacts of mine. Why won't LinkedIn let me see contacts that are 2nd-degree contacts via only him? I have no idea. But this mentor specifically asked me to go through his contacts and look for people I'd like to be introduced to, and I literally can't see a single new person as a result of connecting to him.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  You'd think that the paid tier would at least make the platform respect you and not waste your time. But no, LinkedIn will still waste your time with ads and dark patterns all over the place regardless of whether you pay or not.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Not LinkedIn; Microsoft. We should blame the real owner. Maybe they'll pay more attention if these practices become tied to their overall brand.
- vosper 6y ago
  The acquisition was 4 years ago, almost to the day: you're right, it's time to blame the real owner.
  - EGreg 6y ago
    Skype used to rock before they were acquired
    - dungdang 6y ago
      yeah, definitely used to rock when it killed your laptop battery in an hour while running in the background routing other people's calls through you. skype rocked after ms acquired it, fixed these types of problems by providing infrastructure, and it rocked for a decade. it stopped rocking only when they replaced it with the app-looking cut down app, and years later killed the desktop mode program.
      - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        I remember as soon as MS switched away from P2P, the latency of my calls went up. Actually, as far as I can tell every mainstream† voip product right now has more latency than Skype used to. This sucks; it causes conversations to flow less naturally. † aka not Mumble, which I will never convince friends to use.
        godzillabrennus 6y ago
        How else can you government record you? Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
      - 6y ago
blinding-streak 6y ago
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. The more people see this user-hostile practice in action, the faster we'll be rid of it.
rcurry 6y ago
I finally gave up - I deleted my existing LinkedIn account and replaced it with one that says “I do not use LinkedIn and will not accept your invites or read any message you send to me. If you’d like to learn more about me or get in touch, please see my personal website at (me).com” I’ve been off social media for years, but for some reason I still maintained a LinkedIn site which never actually delivered any value.
ridgeguy 6y ago
I got my current (very well-paid) gig from a cold call from my LinkedIn account. That said, I agree with your view. I feel like taking a shower after each monthly login.
ironman1478 6y ago
I've actually gotten my current job and just received an offer from a FAANG due to LinkedIn cold calls. I can't speak to dark patterns, but saying the service has no value is disingenuous.
- ianlevesque 6y ago
  Indeed. In dollar terms it’s provided the most value of any service I’ve ever used.
  - achow 6y ago
    This puts things in correct perspective. Same with me, my life savings are because of LinkedIn perhaps.
- hijef 6y ago
  Unfortunately I have to agree. I also had something very similar happen to me. I guess it is a price to pay.
- allthecybers 6y ago
  I also started my FAANG career with someone contacting me on LinkedIn. I hate LinkedIn, but have trouble letting go of being ‘discoverable’ should I need another job.
- NalNezumi 6y ago
  Have to agree to this as well, and add another point of view. I moved country about 1 year ago. Although I speak the language of the destination country I had trouble finding "where to look" for dev(robotics) jobs. My first job was through recruiter page but my current job I got through a recruiter contacting me on LinkedIn. He even bumped my salary up by 15% from initial offer (because his cut was based on the salary and I also had another offer on the table). It is a pretty valuable tool for a person moving countries for sure. Although I'm in Asia atm, I even got connected to a startup in SV while I were looking for jobs.
- rexarex 6y ago
  I also have had a lot of luck with LinkedIn. I suppose if you went to Stanford for SE then yeah you already have a good network!
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
When I added phone number for OTP(2FA) couple of years back(No TOTP support then) it got automatically added to my profile and guess what? When mobile number is added to the LinkedIn profile it is made visible to all your contacts. I didn't know it was the case until some random person started messaging me on WhatsApp and told me he saw my number on LinkedIn. Now, they have support for TOTP apps which we can use without giving LinkedIn our phone number and they claim 'Mobile phone numbers added here won't be displayed on your LinkedIn profile.'; But I'm not willing to test it, not entering my phone number in LinkedIn ever.
NoPicklez 6y ago
If you build good relationships with people in the real world this can actually help you on LinkedIn. I have had many job discussions/offers come through my LinkedIn mailbox from competitor companies.
wanderer2323 6y ago
what a one-sided POV. I kept "in touch" with multiple recruiters who "discovered" me via the Linkedin and when the time came I leveraged these connections to land multiple interview loop invites. It also is a great place to add the colleagues when they or you depart with the same idea to "keep in touch".
ericd 6y ago
Their UX dark patterns are incredibly scummy, but I’ve actually found it really useful for quickly reaching the right person for biz dev deals/partnerships.
cookiengineer 6y ago
We were trying to recruit via LinkedIn for our startup but soon realized what a shitty business model LinkedIn has. We had to pay around ~5,00EUR for each and every click on "Apply" to our job posting, which doesn't mean they even filled out the form. And now, where LinkedIn is full of Indian scammers (not meant in a racist way, but it is definitely perceived that way) we had costs for a "Local Area" limited job posting for hundreds of people from India because they seem to use LinkedIn via proxy. When we had costs of over 2800EUR for an ad that was displayed less than 8 days, where literally 100% of people were not even from Europe, we decided to fuck this shit and move on to other platforms. LinkedIn is absolutely useless. Use University job sites, local meetups (during non COVID times, of course), or open source projects to identify devs that actually care about code. Also, stackoverflow talents is useless. Their "special startup package" of getting access to the platform for 2500EUR is only for one user, limited per email and phone number, not allowed to login in parallel. Every job posting costs additional 400EUR even if nobody applies for it. You get nothing, as over 90% of people we have actively talked to are not even looking for a job and never clicked that on any stackexchange platform. I didn't realize how fucked recruiting is. Srsly, somebody needs to fix this.
- flir 6y ago
  > Srsly, somebody needs to fix this I've lost count of the number of devs I've spoken to, over multiple decades, who are convinced recruitment is ripe for disruption. I'm sure everyone else has the same experience. And yet, recruitment's still here, more or less unchanged. At this point I'm pretty sure recruitment has always been terrible, and will always be terrible. There's some perverse incentive buried deep in the process that can't be shaken out. Or something.
  - brtkdotse 6y ago
    > And yet, recruitment's still here, more or less unchanged. At this point I'm pretty sure recruitment has always been terrible, and will always be terrible. There's some perverse incentive buried deep in the process that can't be shaken out. Or something. It probably won’t be solved by tech folk as it’s a squishy people problem that’s hard to quantify (case in point: threads on HN bemoaning robotic HR processes att FAANG)
yvrev 6y ago
"I might need it one day when I look for a job" is not accurate at all for me, it finds jobs for me without me even having to interact with it beyond messaging recruiters back if I'm interested. I wouldn't be at my current employment if not for a recruiter finding me on Linkedin.
lmilcin 6y ago
I got my current job that I am happy with through LinkedIn. I might dislike the platform but it helps me keep contact with my past coworkers and keeps valuable offers come to me for basically no cost. This is likely why LinkedIn thinks they can be shitty to their users, because their users are motivated to stay.
Traubenfuchs 6y ago
Half assed mobile sites for "big providers" is a growing issue. It can also be observed with reddit. Web technologies are at a point where apps often times don't increase the user experience for technical reasons, so companies deliberately castrate their online offers.

cheez 6y ago

This is true. I've often used it to price services/software once I figure out how big the company is.

slezyr 6y ago

> they don't fix their buggy mobile site and just put up a disclaimer "problems with the mobile site - download our app" I would agree with this one most of the time, but even their desktop web is horrible in Firefox. It wouldn't load the pages/header with buttons, wouldn't show new messages from time to time.

Nextgrid 6y ago
Desktop LinkedIn is terrible too, it's absolutely unusable in Safari, lags and stutters constantly and seems to have a memory leak or similar where the page will get even slower (as if it wasn't already slow) proportional with the amount of content you have loaded. It pretty much instantly triggers the "page uses too much energy" warning.

sneak 6y ago

Based on the amount of ads and spyware embedded in modern Windows, I don’t think this problem is exclusive to LinkedIn. It seems to be par for the course for most things Microsoft runs.

_jal 6y ago

Ugh, I won't use their phone app, they're way too slimy to live there. They conveniently forget your mail settings periodically, too, forcing you to opt-out of various garbage again, or to just trash all the mail. They're at least as scummy as FB, if not worse. My (related) new rule: if your site demands a phone number for an account, I will not create an account on your site.

Moto7451 6y ago
I’m not a fan of giving phone numbers out either. When I have to I give one to sites I hold suspect I use a number from the safe fictitious range allowed for use on TV and in movies. It’s like example.org but for phone numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_(telephone_number) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_(telephone_number)
- livre 6y ago
  Unfortunately many times that's not an option because they won't let you create or use the account until you verify the number (Google, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, most of the big social networks).
- coded 6y ago
  TIL. Cool trick.
- rootbear 6y ago
  I used to do something similar when a site I visited demanded an email address. I just used "mm@disney.com" (Mickey Mouse). Eventually, sites started verifying the given email address so that didn't work anymore. Now I just have a "burner" email address for such cases.
- meshaneian 6y ago
  Truly disposable burner emails are the best, though many larger corps block the more popular ones or require an email at specific providers. https://www.mailinator.com/ https://www.mailinator.com/

rxhernandez 6y ago

I mean I've definitely been contacted by FAANG companies out of no where and got interviews through that.

throwanem 6y ago
Same.
brandall10 6y ago
I interviewed with all the FAANGs except Netflix over the last 5 months through internal recruiter contacts on LI. Probably half the interviews I’ve had over the past decade have come from LI, and I think at least 4 or so jobs (including my last and most recent) started there. It was largely useless in the aughts for me, but not lately.
herewulf 6y ago
I was contacted by Google and interviewed based on my profile page on the crufty, tag soup website of my employer at the time. shrug

MereInterest 6y ago

My first interaction with LinkedIn happened when they spammed me using my roommate's name, after getting "permission" through a dark pattern. After such a fantastic first impression, I have no intention of ever using LinkedIn.

gnicholas 6y ago

I've recently found that they're really pushing people toward the paid tier. I connected with someone a few weeks ago, and when I look at his contacts, I can only see people who are contacts to him AND other contacts of mine. Why won't LinkedIn let me see contacts that are 2nd-degree contacts via only him? I have no idea. But this mentor specifically asked me to go through his contacts and look for people I'd like to be introduced to, and I literally can't see a single new person as a result of connecting to him.

Nextgrid 6y ago
You'd think that the paid tier would at least make the platform respect you and not waste your time. But no, LinkedIn will still waste your time with ads and dark patterns all over the place regardless of whether you pay or not.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

Not LinkedIn; Microsoft. We should blame the real owner. Maybe they'll pay more attention if these practices become tied to their overall brand.

vosper 6y ago
The acquisition was 4 years ago, almost to the day: you're right, it's time to blame the real owner.
- EGreg 6y ago
  Skype used to rock before they were acquired
  - dungdang 6y ago
    yeah, definitely used to rock when it killed your laptop battery in an hour while running in the background routing other people's calls through you. skype rocked after ms acquired it, fixed these types of problems by providing infrastructure, and it rocked for a decade. it stopped rocking only when they replaced it with the app-looking cut down app, and years later killed the desktop mode program.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      I remember as soon as MS switched away from P2P, the latency of my calls went up. Actually, as far as I can tell every mainstream† voip product right now has more latency than Skype used to. This sucks; it causes conversations to flow less naturally. † aka not Mumble, which I will never convince friends to use.
      - godzillabrennus 6y ago
        How else can you government record you? Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
    - 6y ago

blinding-streak 6y ago

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. The more people see this user-hostile practice in action, the faster we'll be rid of it.

rcurry 6y ago

I finally gave up - I deleted my existing LinkedIn account and replaced it with one that says “I do not use LinkedIn and will not accept your invites or read any message you send to me. If you’d like to learn more about me or get in touch, please see my personal website at (me).com” I’ve been off social media for years, but for some reason I still maintained a LinkedIn site which never actually delivered any value.

ridgeguy 6y ago

I got my current (very well-paid) gig from a cold call from my LinkedIn account. That said, I agree with your view. I feel like taking a shower after each monthly login.

ironman1478 6y ago

I've actually gotten my current job and just received an offer from a FAANG due to LinkedIn cold calls. I can't speak to dark patterns, but saying the service has no value is disingenuous.

ianlevesque 6y ago
Indeed. In dollar terms it’s provided the most value of any service I’ve ever used.
- achow 6y ago
  This puts things in correct perspective. Same with me, my life savings are because of LinkedIn perhaps.
hijef 6y ago
Unfortunately I have to agree. I also had something very similar happen to me. I guess it is a price to pay.
allthecybers 6y ago
I also started my FAANG career with someone contacting me on LinkedIn. I hate LinkedIn, but have trouble letting go of being ‘discoverable’ should I need another job.
NalNezumi 6y ago
Have to agree to this as well, and add another point of view. I moved country about 1 year ago. Although I speak the language of the destination country I had trouble finding "where to look" for dev(robotics) jobs. My first job was through recruiter page but my current job I got through a recruiter contacting me on LinkedIn. He even bumped my salary up by 15% from initial offer (because his cut was based on the salary and I also had another offer on the table). It is a pretty valuable tool for a person moving countries for sure. Although I'm in Asia atm, I even got connected to a startup in SV while I were looking for jobs.
rexarex 6y ago
I also have had a lot of luck with LinkedIn. I suppose if you went to Stanford for SE then yeah you already have a good network!

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

When I added phone number for OTP(2FA) couple of years back(No TOTP support then) it got automatically added to my profile and guess what? When mobile number is added to the LinkedIn profile it is made visible to all your contacts. I didn't know it was the case until some random person started messaging me on WhatsApp and told me he saw my number on LinkedIn. Now, they have support for TOTP apps which we can use without giving LinkedIn our phone number and they claim 'Mobile phone numbers added here won't be displayed on your LinkedIn profile.'; But I'm not willing to test it, not entering my phone number in LinkedIn ever.

NoPicklez 6y ago

If you build good relationships with people in the real world this can actually help you on LinkedIn. I have had many job discussions/offers come through my LinkedIn mailbox from competitor companies.

wanderer2323 6y ago

what a one-sided POV. I kept "in touch" with multiple recruiters who "discovered" me via the Linkedin and when the time came I leveraged these connections to land multiple interview loop invites. It also is a great place to add the colleagues when they or you depart with the same idea to "keep in touch".

ericd 6y ago

Their UX dark patterns are incredibly scummy, but I’ve actually found it really useful for quickly reaching the right person for biz dev deals/partnerships.

cookiengineer 6y ago

We were trying to recruit via LinkedIn for our startup but soon realized what a shitty business model LinkedIn has. We had to pay around ~5,00EUR for each and every click on "Apply" to our job posting, which doesn't mean they even filled out the form. And now, where LinkedIn is full of Indian scammers (not meant in a racist way, but it is definitely perceived that way) we had costs for a "Local Area" limited job posting for hundreds of people from India because they seem to use LinkedIn via proxy. When we had costs of over 2800EUR for an ad that was displayed less than 8 days, where literally 100% of people were not even from Europe, we decided to fuck this shit and move on to other platforms. LinkedIn is absolutely useless. Use University job sites, local meetups (during non COVID times, of course), or open source projects to identify devs that actually care about code. Also, stackoverflow talents is useless. Their "special startup package" of getting access to the platform for 2500EUR is only for one user, limited per email and phone number, not allowed to login in parallel. Every job posting costs additional 400EUR even if nobody applies for it. You get nothing, as over 90% of people we have actively talked to are not even looking for a job and never clicked that on any stackexchange platform. I didn't realize how fucked recruiting is. Srsly, somebody needs to fix this.

flir 6y ago
> Srsly, somebody needs to fix this I've lost count of the number of devs I've spoken to, over multiple decades, who are convinced recruitment is ripe for disruption. I'm sure everyone else has the same experience. And yet, recruitment's still here, more or less unchanged. At this point I'm pretty sure recruitment has always been terrible, and will always be terrible. There's some perverse incentive buried deep in the process that can't be shaken out. Or something.
- brtkdotse 6y ago
  > And yet, recruitment's still here, more or less unchanged. At this point I'm pretty sure recruitment has always been terrible, and will always be terrible. There's some perverse incentive buried deep in the process that can't be shaken out. Or something. It probably won’t be solved by tech folk as it’s a squishy people problem that’s hard to quantify (case in point: threads on HN bemoaning robotic HR processes att FAANG)

yvrev 6y ago

"I might need it one day when I look for a job" is not accurate at all for me, it finds jobs for me without me even having to interact with it beyond messaging recruiters back if I'm interested. I wouldn't be at my current employment if not for a recruiter finding me on Linkedin.

lmilcin 6y ago

I got my current job that I am happy with through LinkedIn. I might dislike the platform but it helps me keep contact with my past coworkers and keeps valuable offers come to me for basically no cost. This is likely why LinkedIn thinks they can be shitty to their users, because their users are motivated to stay.

Traubenfuchs 6y ago

Half assed mobile sites for "big providers" is a growing issue. It can also be observed with reddit. Web technologies are at a point where apps often times don't increase the user experience for technical reasons, so companies deliberately castrate their online offers.