When designing a feature, application, solution or platform, its unintended consequences must be considered as part of the design.
I have noticed a large increase in the number of unsolicited InMail messages on LinkedIn. As a side note, I also recently added LinkedIn Premium.
While researching this I noticed that there is a feature on LinkedIn under
Settings->Communications called
Open Profile, that makes your profile open (as the feature name implies) to everyone. I don’t remember tweaking with this feature’s setting, or if the default value is set to “Yes”:
A little bit about
Open Profile:
“The Open Profile Premium feature allows anyone on LinkedIn to contact a Premium member for free, even if they’re not in the sender’s network. All LinkedIn members can see the full profiles of Premium members who have enabled Open Profile. In order to be an Open Profile member, you must have a Premium subscription.”
The feature itself I’m sure came into existence with good intentions, to make LinkedIn Premium members more accessible to others, but the result is unsolicited messages and tons of them. Some of these messages have potential value but the
majority are non-applicable or of no interest, with a major concern is that it is hard to discern if those messages are coming from bad actors or not.
Open Profile is a good example of designing a feature without much regard for the unintended consequences. In the case of Facebook, the platform is about connecting with others, but the platform had the unintended consequence of becoming a channel of misinformation and privacy concerns. AI applications have great potential for unintended consequences.
When designing a feature, application, solution or platform, its unintended consequences must be considered as part of the design.
The fix to LinkedIn unsolicited messages and Open Profile is to set the feature’s setting to “No”, which perhaps should be the default value in the first place:
Related topics:
-ceo