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

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

#51

Post by mcculley »

selectout wrote: post #50
mcculley wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LinkedIn formerly had a very handy link to export the contact details in vCard format. This allowed me to easily add those details to my personal address book, which I carefully curate. They removed this presumably to keep one in the walled garden of using LinkedIn as the address book.

This page? https://www.linkedin.com/people/export-settings

No, that exports the whole address book. LinkedIn formerly had a link on each contact page that allowed you to download the vCard for that person. This was handy when trying to ensure you have the latest information for a particular person. If I use the export page you pointed to, I'd have to resolve conflicts for every entry at once.

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

#52

Post by CrimsnBlade »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #46
CrimsnBlade wrote: post #43

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…

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+ ) Im all for jumping on the bash LinkedIn train, but let's be reasonable here.

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.

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

#54

Post by ginko »

cpeterso wrote: post #53

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.

How isn't this blatantly illegal?

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

#55

Post by nimblegorilla »

vletmixutechre wrote: post #21
anilgulecha wrote: post #5

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…

This entire notion of a professional social network I believe is flawed in that it is built upon the notion that it would be better to hire someone who has a smaller degree of separation from you, which makes no sense. I do a fair amount of interviewing of programmers, and not a single person I work with could give a damn about anyone's linkedin profile; it's meaningless. I just find the whole idea to be very shallow…

Linkedin profiles are one way for you to get feedback from people that actually worked with someone.

You might find the guy who seemed awkward and nervous in the interview was always very helpful to the rest of his teammates. You might learn that the guy who seemed to know your entire tech stack is actually notoriously slow in delivering working code.

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

#56

Post by austinjp »

austinjp wrote: post #2

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…

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.

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

#57

Post by wfunction »

cpeterso wrote: post #53

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.

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.

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

#58

Post by micwawa »

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.

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

#59

Post by albemuth »

ginko wrote: post #54
cpeterso wrote: post #53

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.

How isn't this blatantly illegal?

It was hypothetical

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

#60

Post by soared »

vyrotek wrote: post #47
anilgulecha wrote: post #5

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…

I think I'd prefer a very generic connection network. Simply, a directory of connections where I can define my relationship with another individual. Something that people won't hesitate to connect on after even a brief meeting. Additionally, I want to control individually what contact information they have access to. There might be some room to tailor it with options which control the visibility of that connection by…

You're describing G+
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