LinkedIn Stop The SPAM – DEVelopers HUT

In recent months, I have noticed completely irrelevant posts, for promotional purposes, in certain groups I was part of, SPAM.

So we are all on the same page, what is the definition of SPAM exactly:

The short version:

Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages.Wikipedia

The more complete version:

Spamming is the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, for the purpose of non-commercial proselytizing, for any prohibited purpose (especially the fraudulent purpose of phishing), or simply sending the same message over and over to the same user. While the most widely recognized form of spam is email spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social spam, spam mobile apps,^[1] television advertising and file sharing spam.Wikipedia

What Am I Qualifying As SPAM?

So a series, and there are continuously more of them (I can post a dozen more without even trying), of SEO, Google, emarsity posts in Access developer forums, in this case ‘Access and VBA for Access’.

Let’s be clear here, there is 0% link between SEO and Access, VBA programming, database development, … NONE!

Nothing like going in a group and seeing more SPAM than actual relevant content, seeing 4+ such posts in a row! Now that’s a great user experience. The following was taken from the same group

Let’s also be clear, had I seen 1 post, who really cares, but this isn’t the case, there are countless posts like this one, back to back. It becomes aggressive when done in this manner. This is/was pure and simply commercial SPAMming.

So Why Am I Calling Out LinkedIn/Microsoft?

I thought no big deal, they have a nice ‘Report this post’ option. So I did just that.

So this is LinkedIn’s own definition of SPAM:

Sharing irrelevant or repeated content to boost visibility or for monetary gain

Our policies prohibit:

untargeted, irrelevant, obviously unwanted, unauthorized, inappropriately commercial or promotional, or gratuitously repetitive messages or other similar content
material to artificially increase the number of views, re-shares, likes, or commentsLinkedIn

Now, these posts clearly violate aspects such as: irrelevant or repeated content to boost visibility, irrelevant, unwanted, inappropriately commercial or promotional, repetitive messages, … So this was a no-brainer, right. WRONG!

This was the response I received back:

Thanks for reporting …’s post. A member of our Trust & Safety Team reviewed the post and found it does not go against our Professional Community Policies. .

We understand this is not the outcome you expected and want to share some additional options that can help ensure a safer experience on LinkedIn.

If you don’t want to see updates from … in your feed, you can unfollow or mute them.

If you’re connected to …, you can remove them as a connection.

If you want to eliminate all interaction with …, you can block them. Blocking means they won’t be able to connect with you, view your profile, or see your updates.

We don’t notify members when you unfollow, mute, remove a connection, or block them. Thanks again for reporting. Wikipedia

First off, what I found hilarious with their reply, beyond not recognizing SPAM, was the fact that options to mute, unfollow and/or block are not available! I have no such options with these posts.

Secondly, my best guess is that these are paid for marketing via LinkedIn and of course they won’t block their on bread and butter advertising. So it is probably a clear conflict of interest here would be my best guess.

Come on Microsoft/LinkedIn you always talk about fighting phishing scams, SPAM, abuse. Yet, when we report it on your own systems we are ignored because it profits you!

Might as well get rid of the reporting altogether if you don’t actually do anything when people report content. When will you respect your own definition of SPAM!

When are you going to Lead again?

When are you going to show some respect for your users again?

What Am I Qualifying As SPAM?

So Why Am I Calling Out LinkedIn/Microsoft?

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