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LinkedIn Prevents You from Deplatforming

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31–40 of 48 posts

Re: LinkedIn Prevents You from Deplatforming

#31

It seems they don't care about false positives when looking for "automation" because their real goal is to prevent you from getting too much data regardless of the method. It happened to me on a different site once, my solution was to cancel my subscription and stop using it after their customer service wouldn't help me.

I think you are right. My intuition makes me think they are wanting to prevent you from getting too much of your own information where you can be independent. They want to keep you dependent.

Re: LinkedIn Prevents You from Deplatforming

#32

Are you going to reach out to 200 people? I imagine only 1-2 of them can actually significantly advance your career in any meaningful way. Wouldn't your time be better spent cultivating relationships with those 1-2 peole rather than collecting data on 200 people who you're realistically not going to see any return from?

You would hope so, but it doesn't seem so in today's job market. Have you seen how many applicants are on open SWE job postings these days?

Re: LinkedIn Prevents You from Deplatforming

#33

you can upload a csv of linkedin connections to a Clay table then use a data provider like FullEnrich to get emails and other profile info. Could also use a tool like n8n instead of Clay or build your own system to read the csv and make api calls to enrichment service

This is interesting! What would you recommend first?

Re: LinkedIn Prevents You from Deplatforming

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's a different setting. Consent for Linkedin to show you my email does not imply consent for my email to be exported into a third party list. Again, I think you'd benefit from researching the Cambridge Analytica scandal to understand what's going on here. There was a time when social media worked according to the intuition you're describing, where you should be able to export from the platform any information…

I understand the problem with building a caricature of other people, but when it comes to your own contact email list on a platform, you should be able to access that. Essentially, not being able to download that is away for them to prevent you from de-platforming. I argue, that they aren't truly trying to safeguard against automation, that's a disguise for trying to prevent you from de-platforming because then they…

Did you confirm with each of your contacts that they want to be on your direct outreach list? If not, why should you be able to de-platform with their emails?

Re: LinkedIn Prevents You from Deplatforming

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the problem with building a caricature of other people, but when it comes to your own contact email list on a platform, you should be able to access that. Essentially, not being able to download that is away for them to prevent you from de-platforming. I argue, that they aren't truly trying to safeguard against automation, that's a disguise for trying to prevent you from de-platforming because then they…

Did you confirm with each of your contacts that they want to be on your direct outreach list? If not, why should you be able to de-platform with their emails?

I don’t think this is about ignoring consent. It’s about who controls relationships. These are mutual, first-degree connections, and the emails are intentionally visible to me.

LinkedIn isn’t protecting people from misuse here; it’s preventing portability. If the concern were outreach consent, that could be handled with clearer user controls. Blocking access entirely keeps relationships dependent on the platform, which conveniently aligns with their business incentives.

Re: LinkedIn Prevents You from Deplatforming

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong is that you're trying to violate their email privacy settings. The 5% of emails you did get are from the contacts who shared their email with you and enabled the "Allow connection to export emails" setting; the other 95% did not choose to let you export their email address, as is their right since it belongs to them.

Originally I was the one who put all the email addresses into linkedin to begin with (in fact back when I started using linkedin, you needed their valid address to link up with them). So it's my own contact info list, or was. Since I couldn't get the info back out, I ultimately deleted my linkedin account.

I think this is the point that most people miss in the first place!

LinkedIn harvested peoples contacts under the guise that they were going to help you find connections, but instead they spammed your entire contact list through their outlook plugin and now when you try to get your lists and contacts out they make it extremely painful.

Re: LinkedIn Prevents You from Deplatforming

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you confirm with each of your contacts that they want to be on your direct outreach list? If not, why should you be able to de-platform with their emails?

I don’t think this is about ignoring consent. It’s about who controls relationships. These are mutual, first-degree connections, and the emails are intentionally visible to me. LinkedIn isn’t protecting people from misuse here; it’s preventing portability. If the concern were outreach consent, that could be handled with clearer user controls. Blocking access entirely keeps relationships dependent on the platform, whi…

Again, there's a very clear user control. On the email visibility settings page, there's a toggle named "Allow connection to export emails". The 5% of contacts who had an email in your data dump are the 5% of people who've chosen to let you export their email by enabling this toggle.

Re: LinkedIn Prevents You from Deplatforming

#39
For the record, I totally agree that you should have this ability.

But they are likely orienting themselves with GDPR and similar laws around the world, under which data exports and portability only include your own data, and specifically exclude that of other "data subjects".

This is one of the few areas where I think that GDPR may be too strict.

Re: LinkedIn Prevents You from Deplatforming

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear: there is no legal requirement for LinkedIn to restore service. They reserve the right to deny service to anyone for any or no reason. But they might restore service even though the courts won’t “make” them.

Aren't you fairly likely to get a default judgement because they're unlikely to show up to court?

Perhaps! But then you'd get to file a lien on Microsoft, and what a glorious day that would be. Frame it for the office wall!

The point here is that, if we don't exercise the tools available to us to have a human being judge whether Microsoft's behavior is unjust, then we'll never know if a human being would have judged Microsoft's behavior (and terms of service) as unjust. Is LinkedIn summarily destroying one's 'Rolodex' an unlawful act, regardless of whether their boilerplate permits it? One could easily speculate that LinkedIn's terms are a one-sided contract with intolerable terms that exclusively benefit themselves to the harm of the other party, and a judge might well agree if presented such an argument. We'll never know unless people try, though :)

ps. Not particularly relevant, but it came up in research, so:

> Jaffe was asked by defense counsel, "Did you care how he obtained it?" and he answered, "I don't recall thinking that at the time, no sir." Defense counsel then asked, "... all you wanted was the information, and you did not care how it was obtained?" To which Jaffe responded, "Well, I certainly didn't expect him to murder anybody for it." TRM 161. Casper testified that when he handed Jaffe the rolodex file stolen from Wolstencroft's desk Jaffe "was rather elated."

— United States v. Payner, 434 F. Supp. 113 (N.D. Ohio 1977) footnote 34

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