Trust and safety

Our Commitment to Safe Conversations

Every LinkedIn member has the right to a safe, trusted, and professional experience on our platform. We've heard from some of you that we should set a higher bar for safe conversations given the professional context of LinkedIn. We could not agree more. We’re committed to making sure conversations remain respectful and professional. Here are some of the changes you can expect, and some of the controls we’ve put in place to help you foster constructive conversations.

Making our policies even stronger and clearer

We’re strengthening our Professional Community Policies to make it even clearer that hateful, harassing, inflammatory or racist content has absolutely no place on our platform. In this ever-changing world, people are bringing more conversations about sensitive topics to LinkedIn and it’s critical these conversations stay constructive and respectful, never harmful. When we see content or behavior that violates our Policies, we take swift action to remove it. We’re starting to roll out new educational content in the feed as you post, message and engage with others, to review our Policies and to always keep things professional.

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning to protect against inappropriate content

We’re doing more with AI and ML, including an ongoing partnership with Microsoft, to help keep the LinkedIn feed appropriate and professional. More recently, we’ve scaled our defenses with new AI models for finding and removing profiles containing inappropriate content. We created a LinkedIn Fairness Toolkit (LiFT) to help us measure multiple definitions of fairness in large-scale machine learning workflows. We’ve used LiFT to improve our prototype anti-harassment classification systems and now we’re making it broadly available to other companies by open sourcing it. 

Also, we’ve implemented AI that helps stop inappropriate, inflammatory, harassing, or hateful content when sent privately via messaging to individual members. When content is detected as possible harassment, you’ll also see an in-line warning at the top of the message that gives you the option to view (and report), or dismiss and mark as safe. This will signal to us any unwanted messages from senders, and allow us to take appropriate action, including reminding senders of our professional guidelines.

Closing the loop when you report content that violates our policies

When you report content or behavior that violates our policies, we take action, which can include removing content or restricting an account. In the coming weeks we’ll be increasing transparency in this process. We’ll close the loop with members who report inappropriate content, letting them know the action we’ve taken on their report. And, for members who violate our policies, we’ll inform them about which policy they violated and why their content was removed.

Helping you keep conversations safe right now
Here are some controls and tips to help you keep conversations safe:

  • Connect with people you know and trust. By keeping your network tight —  connecting with people you know personally — there is a greater chance those connections can be helpful to your professional life, whether that’s a job recommendation, an introduction, or career advice. 

  • Click “Ignore, then I don’t know this person” when you get an invitation you don’t feel comfortable accepting. This removes the invitation without accepting it and the sender won't be notified that you've ignored their invitation. Once you click Ignore, if you select the “I don't know this person” option, you’ll prevent that member from sending you future invitations to connect.

  • Unfollow people if you no longer want receive updates from them. Unfollowing a person will hide all updates from them on your LinkedIn feed, going forward. If you're connected to a person and choose to unfollow them, you'll remain connected but won't see their updates in your feed. They won't be notified that you've unfollowed them. Learn about how to unfollow people.

  • Choose your audience when you post. You now have the option to select who gets to see your content. You can select Anyone, which makes your post visible to anyone on or off LinkedIn; Anyone + Twitter, which makes your post visible to anyone on both LinkedIn and Twitter; or Connections only, which makes your post visible to only your 1st-degree connections and reduces the likelihood of people you don’t know or don’t trust seeing your post. 

  • Delete or turn off comments. Conversation is important but there may be times when you want the power of your words to stand on their own. You have the option to turn off comments before you post or turn them off after you post. If comments make you feel unsafe or steer the conversation in an unproductive or unprofessional direction, you can delete comments you made on other members’ posts or comments made on content you shared.

  • Block members who make you feel unsafe or uncomfortable. Once you've blocked a member, they'll appear on your blocked list. The blocked member won't receive any notification of this action.

We embrace the opportunity to be better as a platform, amplifying all the good we see everyday, and stopping the behavior and content that could harm your experience. We’ll keep you posted as we release new technology and features that keep you and everyone on the platform safe.