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LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

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Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#91

Post by blhack »

I finally joined linkedin about a week ago, and it just feels...scammy.

It's interesting to me (or frightening) that some of the smartest people I know have the fewest endorsements. People I know doing [1]actual real work on things like "microcontrollers" have...3-4 endorsements with them, but people who I know have only maybe installed Linux, have 20 or so endorsements for "linux".

There are people I know who are post-graduate level experts on certain fields, and those fields are either not listed at all, or they have maybe 1 or 2 endorsements for it.

Stupid.

I'll keep just linking people to my github, and showing them projects I've built.

[1]: Actual real work as in: writing libraries that other people use. Contributing to the community in ways that effect the entire community.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#92

Post by jlgreco »

nthj wrote: post #44
vidarh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I set up a test Facebook account while doing a Facebook app that uses an e-mail address that has never been used for anything else. Yet it keeps suggesting people I actually know. The second account also does not have my full name (if it had my full name it'd be less weird, as my name to my knowledge is globally unique - there's only a few hundred people with my last name worldwide) The account has not been used for…

> The only thing connecting the two is that the "fake" e-mail address is a "real-user-part+something@gmail.com" address, and that I've logged in to them from the same machine. So, to summarize, a simple regular expression matching emails against /\+[^@]+/ and replacing with '' is some 1984-level creepiness? Come on.

The ability to do that is not creepy. Doing it is.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#93

Post by tloudon »

probably worth pointing out that LI doesn't have ads and makes its money from subscribers, most of whom i'm guessing are sales/recruiting.

from a pure-business-no-ethics perspective, why would you care what anyone else thought? w/ that point of view: every connection or link, however creepy, makes the system as whole more valuable to subscribers.

personally, the feature doesn't have enough churn, so i always see the same 5 faces, 99% of the time it's background...otherwise it would probably creep me out slash annoy more.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#94

Post by Aloisius »

rayiner wrote: post #78
jere wrote: post #18

Here are some things I find more creepy about LinkedIn: -It tells people when I view their profile. So now I never view people's profiles because I don't want to look like a stalker. Imagine if Facebook worked this way. -An andecdote, but maybe you've experienced it: a guy I worked with about 3 years ago (and only for 2 weeks) has "endorsed" me several times recently. I don't know if this is some kind of quid pro quo…

The "who has viewed your profile" feature leads to epic lulz. There is this forum on the internet that is full or racists, misogynists, and homophobes (and is tangentially useful for getting legal industry gossip). A major troll posted a link to a fake Linked-In page (under his control) with a comment along the lines of: "how did this person get this job with such a shitty resume" (or something like that). When peopl…

Hrm. That shouldn't work unless they are within three degrees of the person. Or at least, it didn't work when I was there. Views to people's public profiles weren't recorded and there is no automatic redirect to their private profile.

Links to people's private profiles have an auth token in it that is good only for the account that generated it, so unless you're relatively closely connected, you can't actually view links to random private profiles posted by people on the internet.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#95

Post by dgallagher »

blhack wrote: post #91

I finally joined linkedin about a week ago, and it just feels...scammy. It's interesting to me (or frightening) that some of the smartest people I know have the fewest endorsements. People I know doing [1] actual real work on things like "microcontrollers" have...3-4 endorsements with them, but people who I know have only maybe installed Linux, have 20 or so endorsements for "linux". There are people I know who are p…

Speculating: Perhaps people who have lesser skills make up for it by networking, asking others to endorse them to fluff up their profile? Those with valuable skill sets might have little need for that, and can promote themselves more optimally.

Example: "So-and-So endorses me for Programming" vs. "github.com/myrepo/"

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#96

Post by Aloisius »

edwardunknown wrote: post #86
jtbigwoo wrote: post #40

There's a more benign answer to the creepy connection suggestions. LOTS of people import their email address books into linkedin. It's not a stretch to think that his girlfriend's mother (or some other relative) imported her address book that contained the names of both the OP and the girlfriend's stepfather. As far as the creepier name mismatches go, my oldest email address list has tons of maiden names and unused/d…

I didn't import anything to LinkedIn. One person showed up on mine who could only have come from either my Twitter account or G+ account, both of which have been deleted. Yes, it was a hot chick I was creepily cyber stalking. Like you haven't ever.

So you and the person it suggested to you don't know anyone in common that might have uploaded their address book?

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#97

Post by smsm42 »

onemorepassword wrote: post #83
michaelochurch wrote: post #72

Y'all know that I worked for Google. On this topic, I can only say good things about the place. When it comes to privacy and PII, Google holds itself to an extremely high standard. Many of these "social" innovations that are popping up on the market place were rejected out-of-hand at Google because it holds itself to an extremely high ethical standard regarding user data, as it actually respects them. I was shocked,…

> When it comes to privacy and PII, Google holds itself to an extremely high standard. With all due respect, but you've gotta joking. Google doesn't even hold itself to the standards set by the laws in countries it operates in. Laws that are for now still full of loopholes Google happily exploits with zero restraint, despite knowing full well (not in the last place because they've been warned on a regular basis) that…

Not all laws in all countries are worth holding oneself to. For example, Russia has official internet censorship, does it mean Google should now support censorship too because some country has laws about that?

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#98

Post by samstokes »

michaelochurch wrote: post #72

Y'all know that I worked for Google. On this topic, I can only say good things about the place. When it comes to privacy and PII, Google holds itself to an extremely high standard. Many of these "social" innovations that are popping up on the market place were rejected out-of-hand at Google because it holds itself to an extremely high ethical standard regarding user data, as it actually respects them. I was shocked,…

a certain social network gives universal profile access to employees as a perk

This is a rather insidious thing to say without naming the network, particularly in a comment on a post about a particular network. Which is it?

I know that both Facebook and LinkedIn have similarly strict rules about what user data you can look at.

Re: LinkedIn: The Creepiest Social Network

#100

Post by jtbigwoo »

edwardunknown wrote: post #86
jtbigwoo wrote: post #40

There's a more benign answer to the creepy connection suggestions. LOTS of people import their email address books into linkedin. It's not a stretch to think that his girlfriend's mother (or some other relative) imported her address book that contained the names of both the OP and the girlfriend's stepfather. As far as the creepier name mismatches go, my oldest email address list has tons of maiden names and unused/d…

I didn't import anything to LinkedIn. One person showed up on mine who could only have come from either my Twitter account or G+ account, both of which have been deleted. Yes, it was a hot chick I was creepily cyber stalking. Like you haven't ever.

I'm saying that I think the other person may have uploaded their contacts and then chosen not to send you a friend request or there's someone follows both you and the other person on twitter. In order to build long lists of suggestions, LinkedIn probably has to make some pretty big leaps of logic.

But, other posters have done some anonymous experiments that suggest there's something else going on, perhaps with cookies from other sites or IP addresses. I'm not sure how we'd figure it out, though.

>> Yes, it was a hot chick I was creepily cyber stalking. Like you haven't ever.

I'm not judging, I promise. :)

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