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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

#31

Post by redwood »

dspillett wrote: post #3
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…

> 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 you…

I agree with you and this is a reminder of how critical it is to use a different password for these accounts and for your email address. Because LinkedIn put what is essentially a fishing screen in front of you where they ask you for your email address and password. Now you can very easily have used your email address to log in to LinkedIn and therefore you can easily assume this is linked in asking you to relogin. What you don't realize is you're giving up your email address and email password if they have a good match what you think you're typing in to login to LinkedIn

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

#32

Post by acjohnson55 »

redwood wrote: post #31
dspillett wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 you…

I agree with you and this is a reminder of how critical it is to use a different password for these accounts and for your email address. Because LinkedIn put what is essentially a fishing screen in front of you where they ask you for your email address and password. Now you can very easily have used your email address to log in to LinkedIn and therefore you can easily assume this is linked in asking you to relogin. W…

I fell for this years ago. It's super creepy. I only recently figured out where to go to delete that data, but I still get creepy suggestions.

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

#33

Post by dspillett »

austinjp wrote: post #29
dspillett wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 you…

Indeed. I don't recall uploading data to LinkedIn, but it's possible I gave it permission to access my email at some point. If I did so, it would have been years ago. Problematically, that data has now been stored on LI servers, so I can't revoke access.

It may not be directly from your address book: if you know enough people who have linked-in accounts, are linked to you, and have fallen for one of the access routes, then a lot can no doubt be inferred about you from them.

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

#34

Post by pjc50 »

anilgulecha wrote: post #19
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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). Fu…

Blockchain would also help with the issue in the sibling comment worried about creepiness, where I suggested that actions be paid for. Is it possible for the value of a node in a blockchain to grow with time, and cardinality. Because that would be killer. No one may create spam nodes, and a pgp like trust develops over time.

You can't delete information from blockchains, which makes them problematic from a data protection or simple error point of view.

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

#36

Post by rpgmaker »

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…

Why do people keep using linkedin? They are the biggest spammers around and have no shame. All email providers should filter their emails as spam automatically. I periodically receive linkedin invitations from people that wrote to my dev email account looking for technical support, which just goes to show that they just don't go after your 'friends' but just about anyone you have ever contacted via email.

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

#38

Post by pinaceae »

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…

Don't.

The target group of LinkedIn is mid-level managers of any kind plus the people who want to join that group. Individual contributors such as programmers will not get any value of such a network - no job to be done.

GitHub is way better suited, but won't capture the purely professional programmer who never works on public stuff.

Leaves StackOverflow, maybe expand the user profiles into a full profile (maybe already done, not using SO myself as I am said mid-level mgr).

Basically - you need a hook. Something useful on top of the networking aspect to attract ICs.

Career-focused people are on LI and use it, no matter what. Very hard to beat them by now, similar issue with FB - to compete you'd need at least equivalent data. And yes, LI built their dataset with very slimey tactics.

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

#39

Post by chinathrow »

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…

"and non-members extracted from my address book"

There, we have a winner!

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

#40

Post by zamalek »

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…

> 1)

Linked-in actually has this but I still get messages from recruiters. I'm not sure if the Linked-in flag affects search results but I can think of ways to circumvent "search ghosting." For example, I could be found without search by looking at the company profile or the connections of people in my company.

I'm sure there are ways to fix this but the only one I can think of involves penalizing the recruiter and at the end of the day these people are just trying to do their job.

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