GDPR regulations are set to come into force in the UK on 25th May 2018 and will be enforced by The Information Commissioner's Office. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal all social media networks are currently rightly in a panic. LinkedIn took the decision to purge their network last month and their knee jerk reaction is threatening to put many companies out of business and costing some young people their jobs.
LinkedIn, during April, undertook an exercise to attempt to remove all fake accounts from their network (many users were asked to secure privacy on their accounts and provide ID such as passports or driving licences). As part of the exercise LinkedIn used an algorithm to determine which accounts to request ID from and hence suspended tens of thousands of accounts – their support channel on Twitter went into meltdown with many users waiting more than 10 days without access to their accounts. Many genuine users had their accounts terminated without recourse.
It is completely understandable that Linkedin would want to remove all the fake accounts from their network, they too have suffered like Facebook with data being scraped (something that continues today) it’s only time until the next big scandal occurs. New GDPR regulations mean that LinkedIn have recently been forced to change their terms of use and put the onus for connecting with people firmly on the shoulders of their users. What is interesting is what happens when an account is fake, does LinkedIn become liable for the data breach?
Another criteria for LinkedIn suspending peoples accounts looked at how many connections people had build up and how quickly, so active members who were building their networks for lead generation were suspended, in many cases they had their accounts ‘permanently terminated’. The most frustrating part of the process being that LinkedIn refused to enter into any sort of dialogue with these accounts. With many business owners relying on LinkedIn for marketing & lead generation it is surprising that the worlds largest B2B network cannot get customer service right.
One such victim of the ‘LinkedIn Purge’ is Simon Young, Managing Director of marketing agency Limitless Digital Ltd. Having built up a substantial network of over 28,000 connections over the last 5 years the initial reason given for his account being ‘terminated’ was “multiple violations of the user agreement”. Simon is a Sales Navigator user and paid LinkedIn for their premium service for the last 2 years and openly said, “I built my entire business off the back of LinkedIn and use it daily, well I did anyway until last month”. LinkedIn refused to enter into any further correspondence, so Simon sent a legal letter from his solicitors to LinkedIn’s head office in Dublin requesting reinstatement of his account and those of his customers (many of whom were also suspended), LinkedIn having had 3 weeks at the time of writing has failed to reply.
Having introduced more than 100 paying Sales Navigator customers to LinkedIn Simon regularly trains clients how best to make the most of the network and create new business opportunities, without access to the network Simon is worried about the survival of his business. Limitless Digital Limited is based in Doncaster, UK, and employs more than 10 young people. Simon went on, “Over 30 of our customers had their accounts suspended, some of them still cannot get back onto the network. This has reflected badly on our business, customers are losing confidence in LinkedIn as a tool. It’s as if LinkedIn just doesn’t care about the little guys. This has really hurt our company’s reputation – lots of customers have cancelled their training packages and monthly retainers. I’ve had to let 4 staff go, three of them were young apprentices and it’s all down to LinkedIn. It’s frankly a joke that Microsoft doesn’t answer a letter before action, I even offered to fly over to Dublin and meet them! Microsoft valued a connection at a notional $50 when they bought LinkedIn – does that make my network worth over £1M? It’s probably going to cost my business more than that in the long run that’s for sure.”
There have always been suspensions of accounts on the LinkedIn network for people who aggressively gone after new connections, the network is infected with thousands upon thousands of bots and automated accounts, perhaps 10% of the network is fake, who really knows, not even LinkedIn. On one hand LinkedIn says “You should not connect with people you don’t know” but then allows its members to have up to 30,000 connections which seems to be a little bit of a contradiction. Equally LinkedIn will say that no account should use any automated processes to build their network, it is of course in LinkedIn’s interest to let people build their connections as it grows the network and perpetuates the platforms user base and usage. LinkedIn therefore turns a blind eye to automation tools such as Dux Soup and Linked Helper (both Chrome plugins that can be used to automate LinkedIn connection building).
The end game for Microsoft is of course to get more paying customers both for its premium packages and paid promotion – but aggressively removing people from the network is now clearly costing people jobs and business opportunities. What are users rights to their networks they build up when a contract exists? LinkedIn would say it has the right to terminate any account at any time – so should you rely on any social media network who can potentially put your company on its knees and with no right to reply or even enter into a discussion? I’d be interested to hear from any other users of LinkedIn that have had their accounts suspended or terminated.