Responsible AI

While setting up my company’s account on LinkedIn, I recently discovered a troubling practice that I believe everyone should be aware of. LinkedIn seems to be using data from company pages to train its AI models without providing a clear opt-out mechanism. This practice raises significant concerns about data privacy and the protection of sensitive business information.

My journey into this issue began when I attempted to disable AI training for posts created via our company account. To my surprise, I found no option available. Concerned, I raised a support ticket with LinkedIn to address this issue. What happened next was unexpected and quite alarming.

Instead of providing guidance, LinkedIn responded by blocking my personal account and ceasing all communication. My requests for user data, connections, and work experience went unanswered. When I attempted to create a new account to start afresh, I was met with immediate bans, effectively locking me out of the platform entirely.

A snapshot of my interaction with LinkedIn support are captured in the following table:

This experience has highlighted several troubling aspects of LinkedIn’s practices:

Lack of Transparency: I couldn’t find any clear information or official statement from LinkedIn regarding the use of company page data for AI training.

No Opt-Out for Companies: Unlike personal accounts, company pages seem to have no option to disable data collection for AI training purposes.

Disproportionate Response: Instead of addressing my legitimate privacy concerns, LinkedIn resorted to account restriction, citing violations of user agreements without providing specific details.

Data Control Issues: The inability to retrieve my personal and professional data after account restriction raises questions about users’ rights to their own information.

I’m deeply concerned about the implications of this practice, especially for small businesses and startups like mine. When we post employee data, including names, faces, and other details, we may inadvertently be feeding this information into AI training pipelines without any means to protect our employees’ or customers’ privacy.

Moreover, this situation potentially violates data protection laws, particularly in regions like the EU where LinkedIn has agreed not to use user data for AI training. The lack of control over company-posted data creates a loophole that could compromise this agreement.

What can you do?

As a company, it’s crucial to take proactive steps to protect your business and employee data
Raise a support ticket with LinkedIn requesting to opt out of generative AI training for data on your company page. Here’s a suggested template for the ticket:

Requesting that our company page be opted out of data collection for generative AI training purposes. As a business, we are deeply concerned about the privacy implications of using our company data, including employee information and customer details, for AI model training without our explicit consent.

As a user or employee, protect your personal data

• Request that your company refrain from posting any photos, videos, or personal information about you on their LinkedIn company page until they have successfully opted out of generative AI training.
• Opt out of AI training on your user data (steps)
• Reshare my X post :)

I will keep this post updated with any correspondence from LinkedIn. Do share your insights in the comments. Thank you for your kind attention