LinkedIn is now using everyone's content to train their AI tool

For me it's because when I was actively looking for a role without Premium, LI started to block me from viewing people's profiles half way through each month, saying I was looking at too many profiles a month for the free tier, so I had to get premium to keep reading.

I had no idea; I didn't think I was reading many and I wasn't doing it systematically, just being curious.

After getting Premium, I could see who viewed my profile and how many views over time, which I felt was useful. It tells me about personalised top jobs, and it sometimes comes up with things I wouldn't have searched for that do seem interesting. Nothing ever came of those as jobs, but I've learned about companies doing interesting things which overlap my skillset as a result.

There's also the ability to send more messages a month to people I'm not connected with, but I write so rarely that's never been an issue.

I'm still on Premium by choice, but I still get the fake message ads, spammer connection requests and promoted ad posts.

In the end, my last 3 jobs were obtained via LinkedIn, the current one was via a LinkedIn social post which caused me to write to the poster, and a field I work in now (zero-knowledge proofs) is because of a conference someone talked about on LinkedIn. Many plausibly good contracts are advertised only as LI social posts, not even as LI jobs. So it's undoubtedly valuable to me for work, and valuable to have parasocial connections on it (to see those posts), even if it is a strange mixture of fake platitudes and real but self-interested posts.

Not only content, but, more importantly, also "personal data".

> When this setting is on LinkedIn and its affiliates may use your personal data and content you create on LinkedIn for that purpose.

I'm guessing that "personal data" means they're making models that (are one way) AI-based systems will have access to the huge database of personal information entrusted to LinkedIn.

And even contemporary LLMs make this much more accessible, for more casual use, by more people.

Presumably this sharing of data for training is already happening, and (of course) the new "preference" defaulted to ON, even for people who'd previously opted-out of related privacy settings (e.g., "Profile visibility outside LinkedIn" was OFF).

A ton of LinkedIn users are private individuals (not public figures). They're only on LinkedIn because they want continued employment, that's where the recruiters are, and many employers and other opportunities (including YC?) require LinkedIn profiles.

Given LinkedIn's dominant role, with many citizens required to use LinkedIn for something as basic as employment, and meaning people have to share personal information with LinkedIn, maybe it's time for US regulators to set rules on how that information may be used and shared by LinkedIn.

I missed this somehow on the HN front page yesterday, but this morning (US Eastern) it went from front page to buried before California wakes up.

> 136. LinkedIn is now using everyone's content to train their AI tool (twitter.com/racheltobac) 387 points by lopkeny12ko 17 hours ago | unvote | flag | hide | 221 comments

Sometimes I want to send a "cold" message.

So all LinkedIn posts are of the same quality then? Would you also say that all HN comments are of the same quality too? You're painting with an awfully big brush.

Look I get it, there's a lot of crap on LinkedIn for sure, and it's pretty obvious this crowd is generally against "influencers".. I also see no value in them generally speaking.

But it's reductive, and inaccurate, to say that there's zero value across the board on there and that every post is low-value influencer-spam. Not everyone is trying to build an audience or push their newsletter.

Some people just want to share their knowledge and interact with their professional peers, and for better or worse LinkedIn is the most known place to do that..

You could say the same thing about this place. Why are we all here?