Oops! They did it againLinkedIN continues to inactivate user accounts

-- a _kt75 | note

_NEW: follow the development of wolframscharnhorst.blogspot.com and explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here

Have you also been informed that your LinkedIN account has been inactivated, at least temporarily? Did you also receive an e-mail that told you that "some members accused you to either spam, perform phishing or connecting with people you don't know"? Did the same e-mail ask you to confirm in written that you will adhere to the rules of LinkedIN? If so, you are in good company with many other concerned people. The common procedure is as follows:

• the account is inactivated without any prior warning
• the only contact path is directly via some sort of help center of LinkedIN
• if happened for the second time or more, the individual request for re-activation of the account is processed rather slowly
• the accusations are as always: spam, phishing or connecting with to many people and the accusations are not documented at all

This rather in-transparent and basically crude way of "coordinating" member behavior in principle must result in a functional loss of the usefulness of social media as such. Essential questions popup like:

• How does LinkedIN evaluate accusations like spamming, phishing, wrong commenting, etc.? What are the benchmarks?
• Who actually accuses? More and more one gets the impression that everybody can accuse anybody for doing wrong resulting in the inactivation of the respective member account.
• What in terms of member participation is actually still allowed? 
• Isn't it LinkedIN that encourages the members to network (today one simply can connect with almost everybody without indicating any reason like in earlier times)?
• Isn't it LinkedIN that motivates the members to share comments as much as possible?

All this is basically frustrating and is in principle in contradiction to what social media was before. Though trying to think positive, the impression appears that inactivating member accounts may also be some kind of censorship. In the particular case important information provided by http://kt75-mirror.blogspot.ch/ about sustainable development (with a particular focus on sustainable water management) is suppressed. The publication of the Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management is hindered. And lively debates about sustainable development (including networking) is prevented. Question: is this the aim of social media? Just take into account: there is nothing about marketing a product (which would be spam if its done to often). There is nothing about stealing information (which would be phishing). There is nothing about connecting with to many people and there is nothing about flooding members with information (as posting is done 3 to 5 times a month at its maximum).

Feel invited to reflect about the above, comment it, share it, etc. and follow the further development of a new sustainability page.