- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
LinkedIn locked me out of my own account. The only way back is through Persona — a third-party service that wants a photo of my passport, a scan of my face, and a recording of my movements (liveness detection: turn your head, follow the dot, so a still photo can’t stand in for me). The stated reason: “unusual activity.” The real reason, of course, is big tech spearheading a movement toward absolute control over people.
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you can close your social media accounts before or after you get locked out
Why would anyone want back in? Linkedin is a data harvesting tool disguised as a business site that acts like Facebook.
As awful and shit as it is, it’s still what you gotta put up with if you want to get hired…
The job postings don’t work anymore, and sending applications is a waste of time, but the last 2-3 jobs I’ve gotten were because a recruiter found me on LinkedIn and messaged me…
I wouldn’t do it. When I hire I will score someone negatively if they put linked in on a resume.
I care about my personal information and my businesses. The candidate obviously does not.
They did the same shit to me. I refused and pestered them with numerous e-mails demanding them to just delete my account instead of reopening it. Finding a link to their contact form was a nightmare (it’s hidden all the way at the bottom of their privacy policy). I also emailed legal@linkedin.com, dpo@linkedin.com, helpdesk@linkedin.com, support@linkedin.com and a number of other generic addresses just to be sure they would receive something.
I got three LLM sounding replies where they asked me to follow a link to verify my identity with a government issued identity document, but after a couple more e-mails where I wrote that providing Persona or LinkedIn with my identity documents is against my personal security policy, they just caved and reopened my account calling it a “temporary measure to protect my account”. Set a new password, logged in and deleted my account immediately. Good riddance.
TBH I’m impressed you got that far. I’d have thought they would 100% stonewall you.
Good riddance for sure. That co has a long history of being sleazeweasels.
Conclusion: Linkedin is malware.
Always has been.
And nothing of value was lost.
I guess I can understand some people rely on it for work (I have yet to meet anyone who actually got a job through it tho).
But aside from that, what are you missing out on?
A bunch of people pretending to be edgy by bending over for corporate life. “Please steal more of my private time mister capitalism sir”. (Not to mention the data mining)
You don’t wanna be part of that. Have a job and excell at it, but don’t do the whole “can I have another lemon please?” thing. That’s disgusting.
I got my current job through Linkedin, pretty nice one even
Edit: just saying it can work. I hate the garbage on that site otherwise and never logged in anymore until i need to search for a job again
Linked In is extremely useful for open source intelligence.
Keep getting hung up on or sent in loops by the automated phone system? Find the engineer at the company on linked in and email them directly
I got several jobs through it. It’s good place for its core goal, which is to be found and to look for posted openings.
All the other crap is pointless: posts, discussions, trivia, games etc.
The identity verification is a mixed bag.
It’s mostly pointless in the EU because each country has a government body that tracks each ongoing employment contract for the purpose of tax, insurance, credit, work laws, regulations etc. So you really cannot misrepresent yourself.
But there are shenanigans like fake profiles made by bots, or someone putting up a profile pretending to be someone else who may or may not be already on LinkedIn etc. Not sure how you can weed those out without some sort of identity check.
There are however better ways to go about it. For example the EU countries have been (slowly) coming up with benign forms of identity checks.
My country has an online identity platform ran by the government directly, where citizens can enroll voluntarily and use it to perform federated login to other government platforms, and can also see and approve what personal details are shared with those platforms when they do. It’s a completely voluntary alternative to the good ol’ way of making a different account with every government website. (I’m still floored they had the insight to make something so nice.)
So anyway it hasn’t been opened to commercial entities but I could see it be safely used in the future to confirm to a company like LinkedIn that you are indeed a live citizen and nothing else. Just a live API “yes” response with a hash of the citizen ID number; no pics, no data to store.
Its core goal is data harvesting.
Everything else is just what is used to draw people to it so it can achieve that goal.
Which country should I change my location to, which provides the best consumer protection and doesn’t allow companies to demand my KYC documents?
Unironically, North Korea
FWIW. I have defeated live cam with subtle random movement with an AI generated face video looking straight ahead with slight movement, blinking, slightly wider shot (wider shot mean angles aren’t as obvious and a little random movement was sufficient).
I served this back through OBS (Open Broadcast Studio).
But it’s fucked that we need to resort to tricks.
That’s the worst part, their justification for more information to make one safer doesn’t even work. For-profit security theater.
You have the option to stop using LinkedIn altogether.
There was a time when it was useful, then it started harvesting data and accessing your contacts without your permission, then Microsoft bought it, then it became an influencer swamp, then it demanded that you turn off 50+ individual permissions hidden away in a deep preferences hierarchy, then it opted you in to feed the Assumed Intelligence black hole, which is where I opted out and stopped using it.
Job search has always been a joke, recommendations absurd, direct applications ignored and non-existent filters to make job search relevant.
In other words, do yourself a favour and leave.
I wish you were righr, as I fully agree with your sentiment, however:
Employmemt agencies in multiple European countries will force you to maintain a LinkedIn account or they will cut your unemployment benefits.
Sounds like an anti-trust case waiting to happen
That’s outrageous!
Can I ask you which countries? I can see mandating an active job search, but picking which website you have to use seems like the kind of stuff that could be taken to court.
And LinkedIn is just about the worst possible pick…
I’ve experienced it myself in Switzerland and when I complained about it on reddit multiple people from the Netherlands and Nordic countries had similar experiences. Not sure about Germany anymore, but I believe people there sucessfully fought against it.
I wonder how popular the idea is now to require all your details and personal information given to one of the fascist US regimes largest companies.
But then what’s the solution? How do you find jobs without LinkedIn? The corporation hell prefers “efficiency”, they’ll always prefer these centralized solutions to find workers.
I have no evidence that LinkedIn provides work, I attempted to use it for several years to find work and was entirely unsuccessful.
Among the quagmire I left, all I saw was Assumed Intelligence slop and bots attempting to harvest contacts.
There was a time when LinkedIn was useful as a tool to grow and interact with your network, these days it’s Xitter with more characters.
I found my job at LinkedIn. And a few interviews as well. I’m not working now, but in the past I found it there.
It’s unbearable for sure, but I don’t see any other option.
All the same jobs get posted on the various job boards like indeed, dice, career builder, etc
I hear you, but leave to where? Are we being expelled from society for not accepting this bullyish control.
And we are leaving behind the masses, the society that cannot find alternatives and will continue there and give them their information, if just 50% of the people do that, it is a huge success for them.
We have to think how to reclaim these spaces, otherwise we are going to lose
Are we being expelled from society for not accepting this bullyish control.
TBH I feel that is a really important point.
OK, fine, Linkedin, most ppl can just leave it. We managed before it existed, we’ll manage without it. But your point is bigger than Linkedin. It’s like a cancer. It spreads everywhere. It comes for things we all want or need to do. For the basic elements of living in the modern world.
I feel your pain man. But IDK what to do. Except keep fighting the good fight. It feels like trying to hold back the tide.
I don’t think it’s possible to reclaim LinkedIn. It’s not exactly a democratic platform and I doubt user outrage will change anything unless their user attrition rate goes through the roof. They can just tweak their algorithms, mute or limit the reach of users to hide discontent from others too. Better to just leave and try to get #fedihired instead.
this spaces should be public, with twitter also, it is like making the village square private.
a public linkedin should be next, same as a public twitter, in the direction of Mastodon, but it needs to increase in legitimacy
While I understand your point, before I left LinkedIn I spent several years looking for work, nothing changed after leaving, other than not having to deal with the “offers” from “agents” who didn’t reply, let alone look at my experience before making a stupid “job offer” in exchange for my contacts.
Leaving LinkedIn increased my quality of life significantly, even though I’m still looking for work.
They did you a favor. Stop using that crap.
I’m running into the ID verification problem too! I uninstalled the app and when I reinstalled, I couldn’t find my 2FA code in Microsoft Authenticator. Now I need to submit my government ID and do the face scan stuff.
I’m very much against all the ID verification stuff as of late, for the same reason you state… I asked a friend to give me a PDF export of my profile and I’ll maybe come back when the ID verification requirement changes.
