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Here’s a fun thing that happened to me on LinkedIn: A few years back, I was job hunting, using LinkedIn at bit to find leads. During this ongoing process, my f
by srswtf123 6y ago
Here’s a fun thing that happened to me on LinkedIn:
A few years back, I was job hunting, using LinkedIn at bit to find leads. During this ongoing process, my father, who’d been receiving chemotherapy treatments passed away.
Being the “technical one” it fell to me to manage his various accounts. I logged into his gmail from the same browser I’d used LinkedIn, and started to contact people he knew but was out of touch with.
The next day, I started receiving email, from my dead father, from LinkedIn. Claiming he’d just joined the service and wanted to connect to me.
I still don’t have the words for this, years later.
What exactly is wrong with these folks at LinkedIn? They seem like caricatures of actual humans to me now, and I no longer even bother to visit the site.
If anything positive comes from cancel-culture, canceling LinkedIn would be my preference.
- kube-system 6y agoThey were hit with a class action lawsuit for that
- MaanuAir 6y agoThat probably explains why there is a process to declare someone has passed away. I used it in a similar circumstance, years ago.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwaway2037 6y agoI was unaware! I found a couple of stories via Google: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-linkedin-lawsuit/linkedin-must-face-customer-lawsuit-over-email-addresses-idUSKBN0EO1N620140613 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-linkedin-lawsuit/linkedin... https://richardharrislaw.com/linkedin-pay-13-million-lawsuit-regarding-unwanted-emails/ https://richardharrislaw.com/linkedin-pay-13-million-lawsuit... Not a huge settlement, but setting precedent is important. :)
- leephillips 6y agoCancelling LinkedIn is super easy. I have a procmail entry that cans any mail from LinkedIn; I don’t have an account with them; and I have an entry in my hosts file that removes them from the internet for me. But your story is disturbing. How might it have happened, technically speaking?
- srswtf123 6y agoI don’t know the technical details; I simply walked away in disgust. But: I imagine since I had valid login credentials, and they were likely cached in a cookie, well, seems like they harvested cookies and went hog wild? Tbh, its things like this that Have prompted me to leave the industry entirely. My personal take is that there are very few ethical people in C-level positions, and hence most companies are entirely unethical. YMMV
- _underfl0w_ 6y agoSurvival of the fittest != survival of the friendliest. If it takes a lack of empathy to get ahead, those without empathy will be ahead where possible. Won't win you many friends, but why fraternize when you can delegate and enjoy the credit?
- srswtf123 6y agoI agree with you. I’m poorly adapted to our society — which I suppose is ok because I think our society is deeply ill.
- ljm 6y agoLinkedIn did some really dodgy shit before MS took over and started cleaning it up. Slowly. They tricked you into giving them access to your email. They used endorsements to trick you into logging back in (and hitting the previous trick login...). The marketing bods who came up with that shit will occupy a special place in hell along with every other growth hacker. The content is about as low value as on any other social network but compared to the toxic waste Twitter and FB spew out, the worst you'll see on LinkedIn is an annoying writing style where everyone seems to be drafting a motivational seminar or self help book.
- nthnclrk 6y agoThose changes started happening years before Microsoft and have nothing to do with the acquisition.
- konjin 6y agoI joined it way back when, somehow they send out mass emails to everyone on my gmail list about how I wanted them to join. Needless to say I have not used linkedin since.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y agoWasn’t downloading contacts from gmail standard for bootstrapping social networks? I know Facebook did that and I’m fairly certain Snapchat and Twitter did too. This doesn’t excuse it, but I generally recall this as being sort of a standard onboarding process in ‘07 or so.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago> If anything positive comes from cancel-culture This is just a strange word to describe customer's choice.
- nicbou 6y agoA loud subset of the customers
- eeZah7Ux 6y agoLabelled "loud" for stopping using a service? Again, a strange definition of "loud"...
- knighthack 6y ago"Customer's choice" is a strange word to use for people who are not purchasing anything. The loud, insane voices on Twitter and other social media demanding cancellations are rarely purchasers of products/speeches/people they attempt to cancel. Ideological mobs are not customers, they are censors.
- dmode 6y agoI have another fun story. I have a contact at LinkedIn whose name matches a famous Bollywood star. One day I get a notification from LinkedIn "You contact xxx is in the news". I enthusiastically click the link, only to find out that the person in the news is the famous Bollywood celebrity. Who is writing these algorithms in LinkedIn ?
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoIt's so disappointing because staying in touch with former work colleagues would be a really valuable service. Somehow it seems impossible to offer just that.
- znpy 6y agoI almost fell for a similar trap when I installed their app and it was about to pull ALL the contacts from my phone. By default. I killed the app instantly and uninstalled it, never to touch it ever again. I cannot trust the app not to send unrequested connection requests, really. I've kept the same mobile number since I was 12-13 (and I'll be 29 in some months). I have no idea about the number of people that got my phone number over the course of the years but surely I do not want to connect on LinkedIn with all of them.
- justsid 6y agoSimilar story, my mother passed away 4 years ago and she was already on LinkedIn, but we weren’t connected. Without fail, LinkedIn sends me a bi-weekly email telling me that my mother is on LinkedIn and I should totally connect with her. It’s always the same, never any other suggestions. Haven’t figured out how to stop those emails.