LinkedIn Birthday Permaban

LinkedIn is a chaotic place. It’s only made more chaotic by the fact that they 1) asked for your birthday and 2) decided it was a good idea to let everyone who is connected with you know when it’s your birthday. I received probably 30 or 40 automated “happy birthday” messages from people I literally did not know. Where do they all come from? More importantly, how do I make them stop?

Reddit has a wonderful feature where moderators of subreddits have the option to “permaban” or permanently ban people who do not adhere to the guidelines specified on any given subreddit.

I wish that LinkedIn put the same power in the hands of their users. What if when someone messaged you a happy birthday, in addition to the cheesy one-click replies that they provide, they also provided a button that made it easy to permanently ban someone from the platform?

I cannot for the life of me think of a way to more expediently deal with this spam issue. If you knew you were risking permanent suspension by clicking the birthday button, you’d think twice. If you happened to actually know the person, you’d likely text them instead. That’s much more meaningful.

Have a friend who uses the automated LinkedIn feature? Send them this newsletter.

https://sorens.beehiiv.com/