LinkedIn: How rights and a loophole for hate and incitement use

Career Network
Hate, hate speech, sexism – the dark side of LinkedIn

LinkedIn was considered apolitical until anti-vaccination activists and the New Right began flooding the career network with misinformation and harassment during the Corona pandemic. A loophole in legal interpretation helps them here.

During the Corona pandemic, the world of work in Germany has become increasingly digitalized. Some areas of work have long since shifted to the digital world. An important tool is the career network LinkedIn. Around 17 million people in German-speaking countries use the platform. Around two million are added every year.

It is mainly young entrepreneurs and academics who hope to use the platform to start their professional life. LinkedIn is no longer a pure professional network. With the effects of the Corona measures on everyday working life, the boundaries between private and professional life have become increasingly blurred.

LinkedIn is now no longer just used to provide information about new career steps or celebrate a completed project, but also to talk about past Corona measures, Russia or the supposedly “corrupt” federal government. During the pandemic, right-wing and conspiracy theory users repeatedly questioned the authenticity of the coronavirus, posted swastikas or compared themselves as unvaccinated people to the victims of the Holocaust. Many such postings remain on the site for months, even if they are reported by other users. Why does the platform find it so difficult to delete criminally relevant content?

Few problems with LinkedIn opponent Xing

The increase in misinformation and hate messages is also reflected in LinkedIn’s official figures. At the beginning of the corona pandemic, LinkedIn reported in its semi-annual transparency report just under 23,000 cases of misinformation and 2,600 hate messages between January and June 2020. A year later, there were already 147,500 postings with false information and more than 18,000 hate messages that were deleted in the same period. In addition, there were 147,000 additional pieces of content with harassing or offensive content – around nine times as many as in the previous year.

Compared to LinkedIn, hate speech only occurs extremely rarely on its largest competitor, Xing, even though both networks have similar target groups. The organization “Hate Reports” reports that more than 1,600 offensive or suggestive posts were reported by LinkedIn in November 2021 alone. For Xing there were 89. Self-help organizations also report significantly fewer cases in connection with Xing. There is simply less job-related content discussed here. Socio-political issues are increasingly being discussed on LinkedIn and people are becoming increasingly heated.

Neither the federal government nor the platform itself have done much to combat hate and hate speech on LinkedIn in recent years. The Ministry of Justice recently confirmed to “Zeit” that it was investigating Facebook and Twitter on the same issue. However, a similar action against the career platform is not yet known. Criminal prosecution would be easier here than anywhere else. After all, the perpetrators share their criminally relevant postings under their name. Occupation and employer are also always stated. After all, everyone here wants to be valued, commissioned and seen at their best.

Women report pickup lines and sexist attacks

Another big problem is a wave of pick-up lines and sexism, which female users in particular find themselves at the mercy of on LinkedIn. The head of the SWR’s search engine optimization department, Sarah Stein, made this clear. A user had written to her privately with the following words: “Hello Sarah, I don’t normally do this by adding without comment, but you really have an extraordinary charisma here. (…) I thought I’d just say hello and see what happens.” She posted the private message with the appropriate response – “It pisses us off as women.” The article was very well received within a very short time, especially from young career starters. In just a few hours, the post received more than 3,000 reactions and over 500 comments.

Recruiter Celine Melo Cristino suffered a similar fate. After she received repeated messages praising her figure or her smile, she created the hashtag #linkedinisnotadatingplatform. This lettering now adorns many descriptions of female profiles. A picture is emerging: men tend to be confronted with hatred, while women are confronted with sexualized comments.

Blind spot in the NetzDG

LinkedIn encourages its members to report such content and refers to internal company statistics that show that 99.6 percent of all irregular posts are automatically filtered and deleted by software. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, one would not benefit from highly emotional debates that users have on the platform in order to sell more advertising. Instead, LinkedIn makes its money primarily through companies’ advertising efforts and the cost of a premium account.

Statements from users paint a different picture. In various media articles, they report waiting times that last for days and obvious errors in judgment. Reported posts often remained available for months. So why is there still so much hate speech and sexism here?

The reason is a legal loophole. Six years ago, the Federal Office of Justice decided that LinkedIn did not fall under the so-called Network Enforcement Act, or NetzDG for short. Since 2017, the NetzDG has required social networks such as Facebook to address hateful messages as quickly and comprehensively as possible. The platforms then hired hundreds of employees to combat the problem. They track complaints, review reports and, if necessary, forward cases to criminal authorities. Reports show how many posts and comments have been deleted. LinkedIn, on the other hand, does not disclose how many employees deal with usage complaints.

The career platform does not fall under the law because, according to the Federal Office of Justice, users here do not “share any content with other users or make it available to the public”. After all, it would mainly be about your own career.

However, the Microsoft subsidiary no longer just acts as a meeting place for old and new colleagues and as a bulletin board for job offers, but has become an important political mouthpiece in recent years. Even the Minister of State for Culture in the Chancellery, Claudia Roth, posts updates from her everyday working life here at regular intervals. The army inspector Alfons Mais complained about the state of the Bundeswehr in view of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, and a certain former chancellor spoke more badly than well about his confidant in the Kremlin. The examples show that it is time to re-examine the platform.

However, it doesn’t look like a change for the better will happen any time soon. The European Union is currently discussing the final text of the Digital Service Act. Similar to the German NetzDG, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter will soon have to quickly delete illegal content and disclose their software across Europe. If the regulation comes into force, it replaces German law. It is not yet known which version will prevail. However, the weakest version from the European Parliament only resembles LinkedIn’s current practice.

Sources:TIME Online, Handelsblatt, LinkedIn Community Report, t3n