LinkedIn is the king of "dark patterns" UI - every part of their website is optimized to trick you into doing something you have no intention of doing.
And the sad thing about it is that (i) they have so much mindshare they don't need to do that shit any more, and (ii) it probably makes the average person that would consider subscribing to an online networking tool less likely to consider buying LinkedIn Premium...
It blows my mind that linkedin exists. I believe its Zero to One that talks about how Reid realized rather than try to replace recruiters he made a tool to help them do their job.
Non recruiter/sales people use it as some type on online resume and look at how great I am page while recruiters get access to everyone they could ever want.
LinkedIn does have some non-recruiter customers, though. Like everyone else in the game, has also realized they could make a few bucks off the supply side.
Having trouble getting a job? Just pay us $20/month and more people will see your res... er, profile! Too bad visibility is not the solution those people need. Just one that is trivially implemented and easy to sell.
And I absolutely hate that they track which profiles you view and then display that information in the side bar under "people who viewed this profile also viewed". Unless you're looking at high profile person with millions of views, the "also viewed" list becomes a list of friends and not people in the same field or similar job profiles. If I ever have to click on a LinkedIn link, I always go into incognito mode.
I created a dummy linkedin profile exactly because of this. I kept getting notifications that an ex from 5 years ago was constantly looking at my profile.
I've been endorsed by very close friends, who absolutely know what the endorsements are for, for things that I don't actually have any experience in. There's no way they could have been doing the endorsement intentionally.
1.) Your good at gaming the system. In college, it wasn't unusual to see entire classes sit down, connect, and endorse for everything you had "skills" added for. Bam, hundred of endorsements.
2.) Your connected with people who are a combo of being a bit clueless and want to be nice. It prompts you to endorse people all the time. Like my sibling comment's anecdote, you often get endorsed for random things from random people who have no clue what the skill is, but want to be nice.
Regarding 1, it also want uncommon to hear advisers in my college giving students advice to the effect of, "You remember that 'Hello World!' code you wrote on MIPS? Now you can put x86 assembly language programming on your resume!" I just ignore lists of skills regardless of location.
I figured this out quite a few years ago. The first time they spammed me, I signed in and turned off anything that said they would send me email. The next time they spammed I deleted my account and black-holed the email address I used to sign up with them. I gather things continued to go downhill from there (e.g. spamming all your contacts).
I can't understand why people would continue to use a web site from such an obviously dishonest company.
