LinkedIn opts 100 million users into sharing information with ads

There would be no outrage if they simply put "we'll share all your stuff any way we want" on page 74 of EULA (if they haven't already).<p>At least URL for this setting is nice:<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/settings/social-advertising" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/settings/social-advertising</a><p>There are other settings you might want to opt out of:<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/settings/enhanced-advertising" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/settings/enhanced-advertising</a><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/settings/data-sharing" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/settings/data-sharing</a>

I have not once ever felt appreciative of being opted-in to something.<p>If I want it, <i>I</i> will opt-in. If I don't opt-in, that should be taken as an explicit opt-out. Why do so many sites go the other route, tarnishing their reputations (IMO) in the process?

Wow, that was extremely annoying to disable.<p>- I didn't remember my password offhand, so each of my 5 attempts required me to fill out a captcha.<p>- On the settings page, the "Account" link is... less than visible. The word "Account" appears ~4 times on the page. One of them was a link entitled "Manage Account Settings", which you'd think would be it, but no --- that led to a FAQ.<p>This was done without my knowledge or consent. Not that I can do anything but post an HN comment, though...

Yikes! I find myself using LinkedIn less and less these days as it seems people just add each other indiscriminately so the "curated" feeling gets lost. I think their design has also not aged well.<p>Happily, I got an invite to Careers 2.0, and I love both the look of it and the information they choose to display. It's very well thought out - kudos to the Stack* team! I realize it's not a networking site on the same sense as LinkedIn, but it turns out I wasn't using LI that way anyway - just using the profile page as an easily likable online version of my résumé.<p>Shameless plug: <a href="http://careers.stackoverflow.com/bengl3rt" rel="nofollow">http://careers.stackoverflow.com/bengl3rt</a>

Unfortunately this rings truer every day "If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold"

Perhaps it is just me but that check box was not checked by default for me. I don't remember doing anything specific and am not a paid subscriber.<p>The only thing I vaguely remember is setting this "Turn on/off enhanced advertising" to OFF sometime ago. So, it possible that this only happend for users who had accepted "enhanced advertising".

&#62;There would be no outrage if they simply put "we'll share all your stuff any way we want"<p>There would still be outrage, it would just be outrage over burning users with sleazy practices. There would just be no outrage on HN because burrying something in the EULA that nobody ever reads is legally OK and therefore morally OK too.

Unless I'm missing something, they don't seem to send any of the data to advertisers as they host the ads themselves. It is just a ad template that has {user_photo} and {other_users} in it.<p>I saw something similar on Facebook ages ago.

Playstation network will be doing something similar today.<p><i>If you are in the United States or Canada, effective August 11, 2011, we will change the marketing options to allow Sony Computer Entertainment America ("SCEA") and SNEA to market to you about Sony Group of Companies' products and services.</i>

easy solution: use social media to sell money making things and keep personal stuff out