Comment by jeffkumar
3 days ago
I understand the problem with building a caricature of other people, but when it comes to your own contact email list on a platform, you should be able to access that. Essentially, not being able to download that is away for them to prevent you from de-platforming. I argue, that they aren't truly trying to safeguard against automation, that's a disguise for trying to prevent you from de-platforming because then they can't monetize as well if you become independent and use your own direct outreach for your customer list. I'd hope they would have the best intentions, but this process has lead me to believe otherwise.
Did you confirm with each of your contacts that they want to be on your direct outreach list? If not, why should you be able to de-platform with their emails?
I don’t think this is about ignoring consent. It’s about who controls relationships. These are mutual, first-degree connections, and the emails are intentionally visible to me.
LinkedIn isn’t protecting people from misuse here; it’s preventing portability. If the concern were outreach consent, that could be handled with clearer user controls. Blocking access entirely keeps relationships dependent on the platform, which conveniently aligns with their business incentives.
Again, there's a very clear user control. On the email visibility settings page, there's a toggle named "Allow connection to export emails". The 5% of contacts who had an email in your data dump are the 5% of people who've chosen to let you export their email by enabling this toggle.
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