anandsuresh

Made me hit "Subscribe" on YouTube. :) Looking forward to checking out the full series.

>What I cannot understand is how such a system could reasonably be enforced.

That would be a 26 billion dollar question, and one I would very much love to solve one day! :)

I believe that your example is fairly simplistic to capture the crux of the issue here. The metadata associated with posts often contain features that are quite revealing, but not necessarily the kind of data that the source would wish to be revealed. E.g. I have noticed multiple times that the number of cold emails I have received from recruiters is higher immediately after I update my LinkedIn profile, leading me to believe that the last-update timestamp is a feature that the LinkedIn search engine may be relying on to rank results. While my evidence is purely empirical, it isn't a stretch to imagine that it would be a reasonable thing to do, given that most users normally update their profiles when they are about to start searching for new opportunities.

On the one hand, this is a an excellent product that allows recruiters to reach targets that exhibit behavior associated with active job-seekers, resulting in better connections. It results in a win-win situation where the recruiter gets a pretty good return on his/her investment, and the target receives the attention/information they were looking for with their update. False positives in this situation result in a few unsolicited emails/unwanted attention.

On the flip side, this information can be repackaged to present a manager with a graph plotting the probability of an employee quitting. While this is a perfectly good product, no employee would every use a service that might reveal their future plans ahead of a time of their own choosing. Furthermore, false positives here can have a significant impact and LinkedIn may not remain in business for long if word of this product gets out.

The issue isn't that the data is public. The issue is the extraction of underlying behavior based on the spatial and temporal characteristics of the data being posted. E.g. the fact that I updated my profile on LinkedIn is not in question. But the underlying behavior is that the average user normally updates their profile around the time that they start a job-search. While this isn't true for every user, the use of an algorithm may turn up false positives, which may have unintended results, especially when this data is presented to your manager.

Secondly, while the updated profile is public knowledge, the temporal characteristics of the update isn't a feature that is directly published by LinkedIn. Call it a product feature; it is tailored to present the qualifications of a user, not to advertise the fact that they may be looking for a job. While one can argue that update is public knowledge, and must therefore be available for data-mining purposes, there is a subtle, but potentially dangerous leak of information here that is open to interpretation.

LinkedIn's position, that this leak may be potentially harmful to its users, and by extension, its core business, is therefore a fair point.

This is a tricky issue that has more to do with user psychology than technology. While the data is public, most users do not understand the persistence characteristics of data, especially in the presence of 3rd parties.

In a world where there are no (persistent) copies made by third-parties, the user still is in control of the visibility of their data by updating their profile directly on LinkedIn to show/hide pieces as they see fit. With a 3rd-party in the picture, updates to user-data may or may not be respected by the 3rd party, leading to poor user-experience.

Quoting the article, "HiQ Labs uses the LinkedIn data to build algorithms capable of predicting employee behaviors, such as when they might quit."

Based on that one statement alone, as an employee, I would be uncomfortable with the use of my data to supply my employer with my future plans before I choose to disclose it myself. That choice is mine, and mine alone; not something to be monetized simply because the option exists. And while I have no control over the sharing of data, should something like this happen to me, I'd be more inclined to stop using LinkedIn, which in-turn affects LinkedIn's ability to do business.

Seems like a response to GoDaddy and Google kicking the Daily Stormer off of their registration/hosting platforms.