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LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

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Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#41

Post by waterfowl »

larrys wrote: post #35
waterfowl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty early career(graduated in 2012) and even I get harassed on the regular. Maybe they bother younger people more because they think we're less expensive(which is generally true) but the only "legit" linkedin recruiters I ever heard from seemed like Google/FB/Palantir/etc"spam every graduating CS kid in x region" as an invitation to apply rather than a normal "recruiting for a specific opening" type thing. May…

You probably should develop a different attitude for you own benefit. You are just starting out and the shit recruiter today may very well progress in their career (perhaps they are even a newbie to recruiting) and you may need them down the road. Even if annoying, no sense to burn bridges. You can always be polite and keep the door open. Your job prospects may be good today but not in 5 or 10 years. As far as "haras…

This is definitely true. I don't think I burn bridges(and the statement on linkedin isn't "no recruiters pls" it's more like "I am happily employed"). I don't angrily reply or anything.

Also sure I wouldn't like it if people said I was harassing them with my resume, but I wouldn't be. These people send the same posts over and over to the same people(who, by their linkedin are clearly employed).

I have no idea if they're good at recruiting, I just don't want another job.

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#42

Post by Zelphyr »

MichaelGG wrote: post #36
Zelphyr wrote: post #22

LinkedIn is a classic example of how a company must shift from serving their customer to serving their investors after they go public. They used to be a very useful service.[1] But the closer they got to their IPO the more the started doing things that were clearly in the best interest of generating more page views regardless of how valuable those things were to their users. To my mind this lawsuit was brought about…

Presumably they try to drive up page views in order to make more revenue. Are you saying that they wouldn't do the same if they were still privately held? Maybe after their IPO the thought is that they're no longer going to get magical money raining down on them, so they actually have to try to generate more profit? Although it must be hard for people with option grants when there's a P/E approaching 1000 and you nee…

I'm saying they drive up page views in ways that are independent of the value those things provide to their users.

I'm not against increasing revenue. I'm against scanning my contacts list without my permission so they can invite my friends. What value does this provide to me? None. What value does it provide to them? A ton because if even a small percentage of my contacts signs up then LinkedIn has just increased page views and thus, revenue.

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#44

Post by BSousa »

smtddr wrote: post #24
BSousa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to create a rule in gmail. Marking them as spam didn't seem to work too well and still a lot slipped through. Now anything that has linkedin.com in subject, from, to, and body is automatically deleted.

That's going to cause problems for you one day. Some people put their LinkedIn in their signatures.

Maybe, but to be honest, haven't had one complain of not replying to emails yet (Except from recruiters).

Maybe I'm just not involved in a lot of circles with folks that do that (looking at signatures of most of my emails, most just have name, email and phone)

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#45

Post by 1___1 »

I logged into Linkedin recently for the first time in a while, and I was APPALLED to find that they had suggested the psychiatrist I saw during college for depression as a contact. They must have mined out her contacts info. This stuff is extremely sensitive and should be confidential, but Linkedin totally disregards that.

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#46

Post by sillysaurus3 »

waterfowl wrote: post #41
larrys wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably should develop a different attitude for you own benefit. You are just starting out and the shit recruiter today may very well progress in their career (perhaps they are even a newbie to recruiting) and you may need them down the road. Even if annoying, no sense to burn bridges. You can always be polite and keep the door open. Your job prospects may be good today but not in 5 or 10 years. As far as "haras…

This is definitely true. I don't think I burn bridges(and the statement on linkedin isn't "no recruiters pls" it's more like "I am happily employed"). I don't angrily reply or anything. Also sure I wouldn't like it if people said I was harassing them with my resume, but I wouldn't be. These people send the same posts over and over to the same people(who, by their linkedin are clearly employed). I have no idea if they…

(and the statement on linkedin isn't "no recruiters pls" it's more like "I am happily employed")

I have no idea if they're good at recruiting, I just don't want another job.

Right now. Ten years is a long time, though. There's also a good chance you'll be a completely different person in five. And since your employer has no loyalty to you whatsoever, you may be looking for a new job in even less time.

There's no possible downside in letting recruiters email you.

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#47

Post by Kequc »

For anyone talking about receiving too much LinkedIn spam it was revealed to me on HN that they actually have a do not contact list. I sent them an email listing off my email addresses a little while ago and they've honoured it.

https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426/

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#48

Post by a3n »

waterfowl wrote: post #5

Ugh definitely. The awful thing is that they harvest your email from someone's address book and then bombard you with "people you may know" on your actual legitimate Linkedin account(tied into that email). LinkedIn is a ghetto of recruiters looking for no benefit contract employees("Oh we see you are an EXTREME CUTTING EDGE WEB2.0 NINJA, would you like to take a $50k contract job?"). Does this work on anyone? I can't…

I got my current job, which is pretty good, from an agency cold-calling me via linkedin.

But I'm not a superstar.

That said, it's been infuriating trying to figure out why or where I might know all those "you may knows." And I never contact anyone who contacts me via linkedin, unless they write something non-robotic in the message, because I assume it's a linkedin bot sending messages to an uploaded contact list.

Re: LinkedIn Ordered to Face Customer E-Mail Contacts Lawsuit

#50

Post by jval »

waterfowl wrote: post #5

Ugh definitely. The awful thing is that they harvest your email from someone's address book and then bombard you with "people you may know" on your actual legitimate Linkedin account(tied into that email). LinkedIn is a ghetto of recruiters looking for no benefit contract employees("Oh we see you are an EXTREME CUTTING EDGE WEB2.0 NINJA, would you like to take a $50k contract job?"). Does this work on anyone? I can't…

I've always been puzzled by people who hate on recruiters contacting them through LinkedIn.

If you dislike it so much, why don't you delete your LinkedIn profile? It's obviously there to facilitate exactly this kind of behaviour, so I don't see why there's any issue around it.

To the contrary, I see these kinds of complaints as being a common form of humblebragging in the developer community. It comes across as: 'Gosh, isn't it tough being contacted by these recruiters all the time because my skills are under such high demand in the labor marketplace. Deleting that one email every few weeks sure does some serious damage to my psychological well-being.'

The substance of this article is about email spam generated by LinkedIn itself. I think we should focus on that, and on the broader issue of where the limits are for email invitations in web applications. The issue this has highlighted (for me at least) is that it is easy to do damage to the reputations for others by putting their names on emails they didn't ask to be sent. This doesn't just mean losing users, it actually means souring and sometimes ruining the valuable relationships that users have with their colleagues and friends. There's a lot of trust and power inherent when someone else's name is put on an email and that isn't something to be sneezed at.

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