LinkedIn dark patterns, or why your friends keep spamming you to sign up for it
1–10 of 71 posts
Re: LinkedIn dark patterns, or why your friends keep spamming you to sign up for it
#2Another "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.
Re: LinkedIn dark patterns, or why your friends keep spamming you to sign up for it
#3Another "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…
> 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.
Re: LinkedIn dark patterns, or why your friends keep spamming you to sign up for it
#4Here'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).
Re: LinkedIn dark patterns, or why your friends keep spamming you to sign up for it
#5Here'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?
Re: LinkedIn dark patterns, or why your friends keep spamming you to sign up for it
#6Here'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…
Not doing 'creepy' things with your data (http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-netwo...)
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9045677 and archived page: https://web.archive.org/web/20150812004139/http://www.stopus...
Re: LinkedIn dark patterns, or why your friends keep spamming you to sign up for it
#7There was a good discussion on this as part of the LinkedIn stock price 40% drop: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11042278#up_11042899 Many of the comments for the article discussed LinkedIn's dark patterns.
Re: LinkedIn dark patterns, or why your friends keep spamming you to sign up for it
#8[deleted]
Re: LinkedIn dark patterns, or why your friends keep spamming you to sign up for it
#9It 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?
Re: LinkedIn dark patterns, or why your friends keep spamming you to sign up for it
#10Here'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…
Generally I'd be reluctant to trust any free service in exchange for my data. LinkedIn is even worse than that because even I pay they constantly overstep and gradually tear down any external APIs (until total user lock-in which is the current state of affair). I can no longer export my own connections, ... or query the interface for basic BI (e.g. which companies in Paris are working on BigData technologies etc).
Further there is a huge problem with companies being shit when it comes to providing feedback to candidates (which to be fair this problem LinkedIn never offered to solve). An issue that Glassdoor initially because they positioned themselves as some kind of review platform. But unfortunately glassdoor did a u-turn and now copy/paste LinkedIn's subscription/recruitment model 1:1 and even spams me more often than LinkedIn asking me to buy their job-posting packages.
The problem is that there is no way of holding companies accountable to their recruitment practices. If you apply for a job you have no idea why you get no feedback or what happened with your data that you supplied. How many other applicants have also never heard again or been left waiting for 3 months without an answer from the company. One of my companies is in recruitment so I know a thing or 2 about how recruiters often are stuck in the middle if the client doesn't provide proper feedback of why a candidate gets rejected.
Pushing for transparency here would be a killer service. Though I'm totally disillusioned with another walled garden where I have to take some founders word for it. I want to see something anonymous that does not put the candidate at risk if they give bad feedback about an employer. Also it should be decentralized and without a possibility to be killed (e.g. no censorship or EU data protection law or "right to be forgotten" should allow an employer to remove a bad review/comment from the web). I think the blockchain would lend itself to such a concept.