I love this forum because I find I can engage in meaningful discussion and actually get thought out replies, but it seems like any mention of LinkedIn, degrades into a cesspool of "LinkedIn only spams me!" (Uh... have you heard of email settings?) "LinkedIn is totally irrelevant, I don't understand why people still use it!" (Uh... okay, not everyone has a well paying, highly demanded tech job) "LinkedIn is literally satan. (Uh... okay no argument).
I'm all for constructive discussion about the engineering mistakes or product decisions behind this, but it just seems like its repeatedly the same inane comments about how "useless" LinkedIn is. It seems like stuff like this is always spun into a story about how evil or incompetent a corporation is, but I feel like we tend to forget that at the end of the day, behind these products are simply engineers trying their best to create tools and products that they think add value. (FYI: This email comes from a startup LinkedIn acquired called Newsle.)
Way to defend dark patterns. "Uh... have you heard of e-mail settings?" is particularly tone-deaf when it comes to the terribleness of LinkedIn's e-mail settings.
If the best argument for your product is that people literally have to use it to get by, that's not something to be proud of.
I'm not responsible for the email settings, but could you point out exactly what is terrible about LinkedIn's email settings? I'll link it to you directly: https://www.linkedin.com/psettings/email-controls.
I've had no problem unsubscribing (even as an employee, I'll admit a lot of these emails are not useful to me). The volume of email I receive from LinkedIn, even before I unsubscribed, was much less compared to what I get from Hipmunk or Airbnb. But I don't complain about that in a public forum, because I realize I can unsubscribe, and it's a minor nuisance. (Also, not to bash Airbnb, but I'm a host and I really want to unsubscribe from receiving emails when a guest messsages me, but I can't find the option anywhere!)
It's not my job to convince you to like LinkedIn, but I want to make it clear that our engineers are not in the market of "dark patterns" or whatever you want to spin it as. I will eagerly forward any feedback you have to the engineers who work on email/privacy settings.
Here's the hilarious thing about that page. I've been there before in an attempt to opt-out of LinkedIn e-mails. It has a lot of categories of e-mails it wants me to opt-out of separately, and I know I opted out of all of them that I possibly could last time I was there. (I believe there were other well-hidden pages I also had to go to.)
Since then, you've added one called "Jobs and Opportunities", and it's switched on. This has happened before. Of course your company is aware it's doing this, but it would be bad for business if you never sent e-mail to people just because they unsubscribed, wouldn't it.
It's great that you had me check because now I have solid evidence of the "adding new categories that are automatically opted-in" behavior.
How often do you expect me to log in to LinkedIn, a service that I hate, and remind it that I really don't want its spam?
Well... I'm sorry that you truly hate LinkedIn, and you're definitely free to use whatever services you like. I think you bring up a valid point about emails being default opt-in. Honestly, I'm just a junior engineer so I don't have much sway, but you can take my word that I'll try to find the owners of the email service and bring your issue up.
Because of this article, I decided to review my settings.
To avoid LinkedIn from sending out these dreadful 'In the news' emails, I had to mouse over 'account', then click 'Manage Privacy Settings'. Then you don't actually get privacy settings, but you get 'Account' (go figure.) So you have to click on 'Privacy' again. Then you get 16 different privacy related options. You need to click on 'Change' on "Notifying connections when you're in the news" and click on 'Yes'.
And then you need to review all other 15 settings to make sure they don't do anything nefarious as well, if you're lucky.
> behind these products are simply engineers trying their best to create tools and products that they think add value
Nothing LinkedIn does adds any value to anything. It's like the buzzfeed of social networks. If a constant barrage of clueless recruiters doesn't drive people away, it's the insane "recommendation" engine that gets people who have never touched a line of code to recommend me for Ruby on Rails (I don't even know Ruby).
No matter how many times I told LinkedIn to stop emailing me, they always thought up new features to notify me for (and, of course, enabled them by default).
The entire app is a toxic spamfest. I closed my account long ago and I have NEVER looked back.
I love this forum because I find I can engage in meaningful discussion and actually get thought out replies, but it seems like any mention of LinkedIn, degrades into a cesspool of "LinkedIn only spams me!" (Uh... have you heard of email settings?) "LinkedIn is totally irrelevant, I don't understand why people still use it!" (Uh... okay, not everyone has a well paying, highly demanded tech job) "LinkedIn is literally satan. (Uh... okay no argument).
I'm all for constructive discussion about the engineering mistakes or product decisions behind this, but it just seems like its repeatedly the same inane comments about how "useless" LinkedIn is. It seems like stuff like this is always spun into a story about how evil or incompetent a corporation is, but I feel like we tend to forget that at the end of the day, behind these products are simply engineers trying their best to create tools and products that they think add value. (FYI: This email comes from a startup LinkedIn acquired called Newsle.)
(disclaimer: I work for LinkedIn)