4 ms·

LinkedIn Prevents You from Deplatforming

45 points by jeffkumar 9mo ago

So I realized, I have a good set of contacts on LinkedIn that I want to be able to segment and reach out to this year. When I tried to download all my data, I realized that 95% of all the contacts did not have emails. So I then decided to go through each profile sequentially and look at the contact info and get the email and fill out my spreadsheet. After I spend an hour and got about 200 contacts, I got a warning that I was using an automation tool and that I needed to click to comply to not use an automation tool anymore. However, I never used an automation tool in the first place for this. I manually was extracting the emails available to me through my own contact list Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a solution?

FistfulOfHaws 9mo ago
Similar thing happened to me. Randomly one of my LinkedIn posts got a ton of likes, so I figured I would look through the list of people who liked and try to figure out where they were coming from/if they would be interesting to reach out to. After viewing a 100 or so profiles, I was logged out of LinkedIn and when I tried to log back in my account was suspended. I was in LinkedIn jail for like a week, and when I was finally able to login again I got the automatic tool warning and had to agree that I wouldn’t use one again (even though I never had used one).
- convolvatron 9mo ago
  they did the same to me just by going through the job listings and x-ing out the ones that I wasn't interested in. of course for some reason that doesn't really work, the keep coming back, but wth, might as well try to keep down the noise. you have been suspended for the use of automation
  - jmye 9mo ago
    An aside, but… > of course for some reason that doesn't really work, the keep coming back What the heck is that about? It’s deeply frustrating.
Grimblewald 9mo ago
Not using linked in is the solution. It's a cess pool and terrible at offering what it advertises. I have a profile where my bio starts with the fact you wont reach me on linked in and to email me instead. This works for me, but mileage my vary.
- muzani 9mo ago
  What does it offer? It's bad at jobs. But it's an alternative to business cards and Facebook.
  - Peroni 9mo ago
    Like it or not, LinkedIn is still by far the most used platform by recruiters (agency and internal) looking to hire. I despise the platform but it's undeniably valuable as your career progresses and the probability of being approached by a recruiter increases. Ultimately, if you're not looking for work, there's zero value in LinkedIn. Realistically, most people choose or need to look for a new job eventually and in that scenario, LinkedIn is by far the most effective platform to increase your odds on finding a new job.
    - santa_boy 9mo ago
      To add, I'm a year into starting my product-dev agency and trying with figure out a stable lead gen model. Tons of courses and posts say that LinkedIn is their most effective Lead gen model. I'm yet to make it work for me, but it seems like it works for them.
    - bitfilped 9mo ago
      I've never needed LinkedIn in a 20 year career. I think you're way over estimating the so called "value" you get from this platform.
      - jmye 9mo ago
        Because of an anecdote/data point of one? Odd take. Networking is wildly better, but you know what makes it easier? Having a Rolodex of people I’ve worked with that shows where they’re currently at.
add-sub-mul-div 9mo ago
It seems they don't care about false positives when looking for "automation" because their real goal is to prevent you from getting too much data regardless of the method. It happened to me on a different site once, my solution was to cancel my subscription and stop using it after their customer service wouldn't help me.
- jeffkumar 9mo ago
  I think you are right. My intuition makes me think they are wanting to prevent you from getting too much of your own information where you can be independent. They want to keep you dependent.
CodingJeebus 9mo ago
Interesting. As a lurker, LI tries to keep me logged in all the time/reduces friction to authenticating more so than most other platforms I use.
altairprime 9mo ago
Record a video of yourself manually doing this, and then file a small claims lawsuit demanding they restore your access with the video submitted as proof, once they eventually lock you out. You don’t have to claim for money, you can simply claim for restoration of service, or you can indicate that if they fail to provide access to your data, that you seek damages equal to the business and personal value of your “Rolodex file” that they misappropriated from you. (If you’re not familiar, look it up, and be sure to use that term so that the court understands the gravity of the situation.) (I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
- nerdsniper 9mo ago
  To be clear: there is no legal requirement for LinkedIn to restore service. They reserve the right to deny service to anyone for any or no reason. But they might restore service even though the courts won’t “make” them.
  - altairprime 9mo ago
    Precisely :)
  - kelseyfrog 9mo ago
    Aren't you fairly likely to get a default judgement because they're unlikely to show up to court?
    - altairprime 9mo ago
      Perhaps! But then you'd get to file a lien on Microsoft, and what a glorious day that would be. Frame it for the office wall! The point here is that, if we don't exercise the tools available to us to have a human being judge whether Microsoft's behavior is unjust, then we'll never know if a human being would have judged Microsoft's behavior (and terms of service) as unjust. Is LinkedIn summarily destroying one's 'Rolodex' an unlawful act, regardless of whether their boilerplate permits it? One could easily speculate that LinkedIn's terms are a one-sided contract with intolerable terms that exclusively benefit themselves to the harm of the other party, and a judge might well agree if presented such an argument. We'll never know unless people try, though :) ps. Not particularly relevant, but it came up in research, so: > Jaffe was asked by defense counsel, "Did you care how he obtained it?" and he answered, "I don't recall thinking that at the time, no sir." Defense counsel then asked, "... all you wanted was the information, and you did not care how it was obtained?" To which Jaffe responded, "Well, I certainly didn't expect him to murder anybody for it." TRM 161. Casper testified that when he handed Jaffe the rolodex file stolen from Wolstencroft's desk Jaffe "was rather elated." — United States v. Payner, 434 F. Supp. 113 (N.D. Ohio 1977) footnote 34
connor11528 9mo ago
you can upload a csv of linkedin connections to a Clay table then use a data provider like FullEnrich to get emails and other profile info. Could also use a tool like n8n instead of Clay or build your own system to read the csv and make api calls to enrichment service
- jeffkumar 9mo ago
  This is interesting! What would you recommend first?
- nusl 9mo ago
  What's Clay? Can't find the service you're referencing with a few quick searches
snihalani 9mo ago
I think they want you to use their linkedin recruiter product instead
SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
Are you familiar with Cambridge Analytica? After a well-known 2018 scandal, we've decided as a society that we don't want social media platforms to allow this kind of large-scale extraction of other people's information. I'm sure you mean well, but you shouldn't build this list and Linkedin is right to prevent you from doing it.
- jeffkumar 9mo ago
  These are my first degree connections. I don't see what's wrong with getting a list of my own connections.
  - SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
    What's wrong is that you're trying to violate their email privacy settings. The 5% of emails you did get are from the contacts who shared their email with you and enabled the "Allow connection to export emails" setting; the other 95% did not choose to let you export their email address, as is their right since it belongs to them.
    - jeffkumar 9mo ago
      It's on their contact page and they are a first degree connection. I can view it by going to their page.
      - SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
        But that's a different setting. Consent for Linkedin to show you my email does not imply consent for my email to be exported into a third party list. Again, I think you'd benefit from researching the Cambridge Analytica scandal to understand what's going on here. There was a time when social media worked according to the intuition you're describing, where you should be able to export from the platform any information you can see on the platform, and it led to results that the public and regulators really did not like. Companies like Cambridge Analytica were able to build detailed profiles on Person X, without Person X's consent or knowledge, simply because Person Y who happened to be friends with them agreed to share data with a Facebook quiz. So now that's not how things are done.
bitfilped 9mo ago
Are you going to reach out to 200 people? I imagine only 1-2 of them can actually significantly advance your career in any meaningful way. Wouldn't your time be better spent cultivating relationships with those 1-2 peole rather than collecting data on 200 people who you're realistically not going to see any return from?
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  I can just put “Open To Work” as my status on LinkedIn and my entire network of former coworkers abs recruiters know I’m looking.
- jeffkumar 9mo ago
  You would hope so, but it doesn't seem so in today's job market. Have you seen how many applicants are on open SWE job postings these days?
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    Anecdotely, I’m in the interview pool at my mid size company. Our offer to application ratio is 0.4% with over 7000 applications. We are a fully remote company. I have personally referred 6 people who I know are qualified. Only two got interviews and no offers. Hell my offer to referral ratio was 50% at AWS. The job market really sucks right now
nacozarina 9mo ago
You can delete a LI profile, create a new one, and ppl who are still relevant will find you again (and vice versa). True. Your real colleague list is well under 100 ppl, stop adding mere acquaintances.
- NVHacker 9mo ago
  My real colleague list is well over 100ppl.
Quarondeau 9mo ago
For the record, I totally agree that you should have this ability. But they are likely orienting themselves with GDPR and similar laws around the world, under which data exports and portability only include your own data, and specifically exclude that of other "data subjects". This is one of the few areas where I think that GDPR may be too strict.

45 points by jeffkumar 9mo ago

FistfulOfHaws 9mo ago

Similar thing happened to me. Randomly one of my LinkedIn posts got a ton of likes, so I figured I would look through the list of people who liked and try to figure out where they were coming from/if they would be interesting to reach out to. After viewing a 100 or so profiles, I was logged out of LinkedIn and when I tried to log back in my account was suspended. I was in LinkedIn jail for like a week, and when I was finally able to login again I got the automatic tool warning and had to agree that I wouldn’t use one again (even though I never had used one).

convolvatron 9mo ago
they did the same to me just by going through the job listings and x-ing out the ones that I wasn't interested in. of course for some reason that doesn't really work, the keep coming back, but wth, might as well try to keep down the noise. you have been suspended for the use of automation
- jmye 9mo ago
  An aside, but… > of course for some reason that doesn't really work, the keep coming back What the heck is that about? It’s deeply frustrating.

Grimblewald 9mo ago

Not using linked in is the solution. It's a cess pool and terrible at offering what it advertises. I have a profile where my bio starts with the fact you wont reach me on linked in and to email me instead. This works for me, but mileage my vary.

muzani 9mo ago
What does it offer? It's bad at jobs. But it's an alternative to business cards and Facebook.
- Peroni 9mo ago
  Like it or not, LinkedIn is still by far the most used platform by recruiters (agency and internal) looking to hire. I despise the platform but it's undeniably valuable as your career progresses and the probability of being approached by a recruiter increases. Ultimately, if you're not looking for work, there's zero value in LinkedIn. Realistically, most people choose or need to look for a new job eventually and in that scenario, LinkedIn is by far the most effective platform to increase your odds on finding a new job.
  - santa_boy 9mo ago
    To add, I'm a year into starting my product-dev agency and trying with figure out a stable lead gen model. Tons of courses and posts say that LinkedIn is their most effective Lead gen model. I'm yet to make it work for me, but it seems like it works for them.
  - bitfilped 9mo ago
    I've never needed LinkedIn in a 20 year career. I think you're way over estimating the so called "value" you get from this platform.
    - jmye 9mo ago
      Because of an anecdote/data point of one? Odd take. Networking is wildly better, but you know what makes it easier? Having a Rolodex of people I’ve worked with that shows where they’re currently at.

add-sub-mul-div 9mo ago

It seems they don't care about false positives when looking for "automation" because their real goal is to prevent you from getting too much data regardless of the method. It happened to me on a different site once, my solution was to cancel my subscription and stop using it after their customer service wouldn't help me.

jeffkumar 9mo ago
I think you are right. My intuition makes me think they are wanting to prevent you from getting too much of your own information where you can be independent. They want to keep you dependent.

CodingJeebus 9mo ago

Interesting. As a lurker, LI tries to keep me logged in all the time/reduces friction to authenticating more so than most other platforms I use.

altairprime 9mo ago

Record a video of yourself manually doing this, and then file a small claims lawsuit demanding they restore your access with the video submitted as proof, once they eventually lock you out. You don’t have to claim for money, you can simply claim for restoration of service, or you can indicate that if they fail to provide access to your data, that you seek damages equal to the business and personal value of your “Rolodex file” that they misappropriated from you. (If you’re not familiar, look it up, and be sure to use that term so that the court understands the gravity of the situation.) (I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice.)

nerdsniper 9mo ago
To be clear: there is no legal requirement for LinkedIn to restore service. They reserve the right to deny service to anyone for any or no reason. But they might restore service even though the courts won’t “make” them.
- altairprime 9mo ago
  Precisely :)
- kelseyfrog 9mo ago
  Aren't you fairly likely to get a default judgement because they're unlikely to show up to court?
  - altairprime 9mo ago
    Perhaps! But then you'd get to file a lien on Microsoft, and what a glorious day that would be. Frame it for the office wall! The point here is that, if we don't exercise the tools available to us to have a human being judge whether Microsoft's behavior is unjust, then we'll never know if a human being would have judged Microsoft's behavior (and terms of service) as unjust. Is LinkedIn summarily destroying one's 'Rolodex' an unlawful act, regardless of whether their boilerplate permits it? One could easily speculate that LinkedIn's terms are a one-sided contract with intolerable terms that exclusively benefit themselves to the harm of the other party, and a judge might well agree if presented such an argument. We'll never know unless people try, though :) ps. Not particularly relevant, but it came up in research, so: > Jaffe was asked by defense counsel, "Did you care how he obtained it?" and he answered, "I don't recall thinking that at the time, no sir." Defense counsel then asked, "... all you wanted was the information, and you did not care how it was obtained?" To which Jaffe responded, "Well, I certainly didn't expect him to murder anybody for it." TRM 161. Casper testified that when he handed Jaffe the rolodex file stolen from Wolstencroft's desk Jaffe "was rather elated." — United States v. Payner, 434 F. Supp. 113 (N.D. Ohio 1977) footnote 34

connor11528 9mo ago

you can upload a csv of linkedin connections to a Clay table then use a data provider like FullEnrich to get emails and other profile info. Could also use a tool like n8n instead of Clay or build your own system to read the csv and make api calls to enrichment service

jeffkumar 9mo ago
This is interesting! What would you recommend first?
nusl 9mo ago
What's Clay? Can't find the service you're referencing with a few quick searches

snihalani 9mo ago

I think they want you to use their linkedin recruiter product instead

SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago

Are you familiar with Cambridge Analytica? After a well-known 2018 scandal, we've decided as a society that we don't want social media platforms to allow this kind of large-scale extraction of other people's information. I'm sure you mean well, but you shouldn't build this list and Linkedin is right to prevent you from doing it.

jeffkumar 9mo ago
These are my first degree connections. I don't see what's wrong with getting a list of my own connections.
- SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
  What's wrong is that you're trying to violate their email privacy settings. The 5% of emails you did get are from the contacts who shared their email with you and enabled the "Allow connection to export emails" setting; the other 95% did not choose to let you export their email address, as is their right since it belongs to them.
  - jeffkumar 9mo ago
    It's on their contact page and they are a first degree connection. I can view it by going to their page.
    - SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
      But that's a different setting. Consent for Linkedin to show you my email does not imply consent for my email to be exported into a third party list. Again, I think you'd benefit from researching the Cambridge Analytica scandal to understand what's going on here. There was a time when social media worked according to the intuition you're describing, where you should be able to export from the platform any information you can see on the platform, and it led to results that the public and regulators really did not like. Companies like Cambridge Analytica were able to build detailed profiles on Person X, without Person X's consent or knowledge, simply because Person Y who happened to be friends with them agreed to share data with a Facebook quiz. So now that's not how things are done.

bitfilped 9mo ago

Are you going to reach out to 200 people? I imagine only 1-2 of them can actually significantly advance your career in any meaningful way. Wouldn't your time be better spent cultivating relationships with those 1-2 peole rather than collecting data on 200 people who you're realistically not going to see any return from?

raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
I can just put “Open To Work” as my status on LinkedIn and my entire network of former coworkers abs recruiters know I’m looking.
jeffkumar 9mo ago
You would hope so, but it doesn't seem so in today's job market. Have you seen how many applicants are on open SWE job postings these days?
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  Anecdotely, I’m in the interview pool at my mid size company. Our offer to application ratio is 0.4% with over 7000 applications. We are a fully remote company. I have personally referred 6 people who I know are qualified. Only two got interviews and no offers. Hell my offer to referral ratio was 50% at AWS. The job market really sucks right now

nacozarina 9mo ago

You can delete a LI profile, create a new one, and ppl who are still relevant will find you again (and vice versa). True. Your real colleague list is well under 100 ppl, stop adding mere acquaintances.

NVHacker 9mo ago
My real colleague list is well over 100ppl.

Quarondeau 9mo ago

For the record, I totally agree that you should have this ability. But they are likely orienting themselves with GDPR and similar laws around the world, under which data exports and portability only include your own data, and specifically exclude that of other "data subjects". This is one of the few areas where I think that GDPR may be too strict.