HN Explorer

Tell HN: LinkedIn banned me because of my avatar, in the middle of my fundraise

130 points by scrollaway ↗ HN
I've been on LinkedIn for a while with zero issues with my normal cartoon avatar (which I use absolutely everywhere). Then yesterday, in the middle of my new startup's fundraise, they hit me with an ID verification and banned my account + deleted my startup's page.

My profile is missing. I have unanswered messages with people whose emails I don't have. Potential investors etc. Friends reaching out asking me why my profile is missing.

They didn't tell me why. Still this morning I didn't know. Now they just responded with an email telling me my "appeal has been denied", and telling me that they removed my avatar for not complying with the TOS.

Zero warning, just straight to ban. This is the avatar: https://leclan.ch (it's used with the author's permission)

84 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] thread
WhatDFHere
wow - when they first banned you did you receive an email in your inbox with any details? I'm surprised as MSFT would typically provide some information like a third-party claiming IP infringement or violation of content policies
scrollaway
Nothing. I just logged on and got hit with a captcha + ID verification. They just said they do it when there is a potential account compromise.
rngname22
Potentially someone or some bot was spamming login attempts to your account or something? Or actually got in? And their automated tools detected and triggered your account to enter a state where it required ID verif. before login is possible.

Sounds like their appeals process is broken/bugged or they just don't staff it (and auto-close / auto-reject appeals).

londons_explore
Or maybe he then failed the ID verification step because they match your uploaded government photoid to your profile picture. Can't match to a cartoon.
rngname22
Yep I was gonna say the same. Automated ID verif by comparing facial geometry to the profile pic, if it fails you're toast.

Thing is they should either have an appeals process that works or they should require the ID verif at sign-up (so people discover they can't get by with a fake photo at the start before they invest in the platform and can remake their account). It does sound like fake photo might be against TOS but no one reads TOS?

Sounds like the current system sucks ass. Trust and Safety often underfunded / underthought though nothing surprising.

frollo
Yeah, if OP was getting popular (and getting money out of it), the account would have become a juicy target.

And LinkedIn had probably put it in some "extra checks" list for the same reason, thus triggering the ID check.

version_five
What part of the TOS did it violate?
scrollaway
In the follow up email (sent after the ban, and with a helpful "Please upload a new one", which I cannot do because it's restricted), they cite that "profile photos can get flagged for: (...) Not being an image of you or an actual photograph".
zgluck
> they cite that "profile photos can get flagged for: (...) Not being an image of you or an actual photograph".

That actually seems fair to me, considering what LinkedIn is.

gknoy
That seems very strange that they would _ban the account_ rather than deleting the profile image and rendering a placeholder instead.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
mx_02
Do no expect common sense from IT companies. Google is even worse.

It's pretty normal to ban people instead of trying ro fox the issue. It's probably cheaper to them.

We have no rights and no protection from corporations other than "Do business somewhere else"

[dead] zgluck
[flagged]
scrollaway
I've used the same avatar for ... checks date on comic strip 17 years. On forums, social networks, everywhere. People recognize me better with it than via any photo, especially since I meet people mostly online, not face-to-face.

But whatever, dude.

circuit10
It’s the norm online to not use real photos of yourself, that doesn’t make you a “clown”

In fact there are probably places where that could get you in trouble for sharing personal information or something

wslh
It is important to highlight that a TOS is not over the law, so the TOS could be partially not enforced in court.
mvdtnz
In the LinkedIn Professional Community Policies[0], which is linked from the User Agreement[1], which is linked from the Terms of Service[2], they state,

> Do not use an image of someone else, or any other image that is not your likeness, for your profile photo.

It seems extremely unfair to me to go straight to a ban based on the profile picture alone. But it is clearly part of their terms of service (not that I would expect anyone to know this).

[0] https://www.linkedin.com/legal/professional-community-polici...

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement#obligations

[2] https://www.linkedin.com/legal/l/service-terms

geoah
Is your avatar Marten for QC? :D
scrollaway
Yes, good eye :) I used it for years, and eventually just asked the author to get his official permission. I treasure it.
unforeseen9991
Nice :) That's pretty cool of Jeph to give you the go ahead.

Also I think this is the first time i've come across some fellow QC enjoyers in the wild lol.

derekja
Nice! I read that comic every day :-)
Havoc
Linkedin doesn't do avatars. They do pictures of you. You are not a cartoon character.

> Some examples of photos that shouldn't be used are:

> Avatars, emojis, or cartoons

The straight ban seems excessively harsh, but fundamentally the pic does seem to be against their policies.

https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a1377087/profi...

scrollaway
Yup, but I didn't know that (and when I signed up, it pulled my profile picture from Google, so I didn't think anything of it), and I wasn't given a chance to fix it.

They even sent an email after the ban giving me a "friendly heads up" that my profile pictures has been taken down, and advising me to upload a new one. If I had gotten that email a day before I could have done something about it...

The help article says it can be removed, but it doesn't say anything about the account getting altogether blocked with no warning...

jchw
I had no idea about this policy. Then again, I hate linkedin with a passion. However, I'm pretty sure I saw tons of violations of this policy all over the place, so I bet this is going to result in a lot of bans if they happen to be doing a crackdown.

The funny thing is, on a platform like linkedin, my instinct would be to use an actual photograph. But in protest of a policy like this, I'd rather just have nothing instead.

mlyle
The whole photographs thing is a real mixed bag anyways. Seeing a picture to jog your memory is sometimes great.

But it's also a great way to enable racial and age discrimination: see the face and decide you interpret all the rest of the context in the profile differently (even inadvertently).

Sure, you'll know the race / age / etc eventually, but at least if the person is in the door they have a chance instead of getting chucked in the bin during screening.

michaelmrose
This is very true. Further its not only true of people you would consider bigots. We can all fall victim to unconscious biases. Unfortunately if only people of a certain stripe omit them there is no reason believe it would be effective. People respond well to pictures.

This can be enabled in truth by names as well. Most notably obviously for race/national origin. A notable study found that the exact resume received fewer call backs when the name was a typical white name vs a name indicative of ethnicity. To a lesser extent you can also consider age in relation to name as some names have drastically increased or decreased in popularity over time.

This makes me think that a productive solution would have to take place in HR as opposed to grass roots. Ideally you really want people to review candidates initially without benefit of name or face and only after selecting a subset view potentially biasing information.

Maybe there should be a HR mode for LinkedIn which by default hides these details and shows other items while allowing you to make a saved list of prospective hires to pass down the food chain.

RagnarD
Let's be real here. Ageism is perhaps the last widely accepted prejudice in the tech industry (and probably more broadly). People who'd shrink in horror at admitting to a skin color or gender based prejudice freely dismiss "old people" for most software jobs. It's rampant.
happytoexplain
"seems excessively harsh" seems like a knowing understatement. It is not "excessive", it is incorrect. The link you posted provides clear language:

"Your profile photo may be removed by LinkedIn if it doesn’t comply"

According to this, the reason they were banned is not due to their avatar (but we can't know because LinkedIn has declined to elaborate, according to the OP).

scrollaway
The only context I didn't mention is I set up an ad campaign the week prior to boost a post for the startup in question. I suspect that this is what triggered the ID verification a few days later, which resulted in an "appeal denied" email.

I can only guess. But I did receive a confirmation email about my avatar being taken down due to their policy; and the appeal message mentions "misrepresenting my identity".

Havoc
>According to this, the reason they were banned is not due to their avatar

That doesn't really follow. Especially since they specifically said the avator is the issue:

>they removed my avatar for not complying with the TOS.

Though unclear how OP is talking about both avatar removal AND account ban? Feels like perhaps half the story.

How they got from avatar issue to a whole account ban I can't tell you but I'd imagine there is something in the ToS that makes it viable (impersonation etc).

Not saying it's fair ofc...but plausible

scrollaway
> Though unclear how OP is talking about both avatar removal AND account ban? Feels like perhaps half the story.

Timeline:

Day 1: Account is restricted/blocked, on login I'm presented with ID verification and a "we'll let you know".

Day 2: I receive an email as a follow up to the ID verification. "Your appeal has been denied and your account will remain restricted". No reason given beyond having "misrepresented my identity".

Day 2.5: Slightly later, I receive an email saying my avatar has been removed because it didn't comply with the TOS and I should upload a real photo.

dangus
I bet $10 that OP re-uploaded the avatar after having it removed the first time.
scrollaway
I didn't have it removed until after the account got restricted. I'll happily forward you the emails if you send the $10 to anything listed here: https://help.gov.ua/en/
dangus
No thanks. Good luck with that.
scrollaway
Sounds like it wasn't really a bet, then.
dangus
Not everything you read on the Internet is true.
b_f
I wonder how long they've had this policy in place. I've been using the same, illustrated self-portrait on LinkedIn since 2008.
nashashmi
I am guessing that the more attention you got, the more scrutiny your profile received. And thus someone reported you for violating the TOS. That someone may be a competitor??
[dead] sgt
[flagged]
dang
Please don't cross into personal attack.
orangetexter
Sign up for one of their paid plans and resubmit your support requests. They’ll help a paying customer much quicker than non-paying customer.
scrollaway
I can't log in.
rngname22
Maybe create a new account (even if it requires VPN / new device ID, new email, new IP), then get paid plan on that, then contact support?
scrollaway
Honestly, I have zero doubt it would make things worse and get me blocked again for ban evasion / duplicate accounts. I also used to be on Premium a while back, and I don't remember any customer support beyond automated billing CS trees.
probably_wrong
I'm not sure how it could make it worse. What are they going to do, call your parents? Super ban you?
solardev
There's not going to be someone on the other side thinking "oh okay well this guy must be legit, he made a new paid account just to talk to us and let us know what happened. We'll help him now that we know what happened!"

It's gonna be a bunch of separate underpaid undertrained drones seeing a duplicate account and banning that one too and making up random TOS violations, probably a different one every time. Then even if you manage to reach someone on the first account they'll be like sorry you were banned for spamming, I don't know anything about the profile picture.

These sites don't care about you. At all.

qingcharles
LOL. Doesn't always help. My business account on Twitter is stuck in read-only. I can't follow or like anyone or anything. BUT, it will let me subscribe to paying feeds. Still no way to get support though...
j-bos
In the days of deep fakes I find it weird that real photos are a requirement on a social media site. I'd prefer to limit photos floating around.
shortrounddev2
I've gotten so many "recruiters" message me whose PFPs are obviously AI generated
shitlord
I've been cluelessly using a picture of my dog for about a decade now
nikanj
Congratulations, you have successfully reached The One True Customer Service: HN front page.

Expect your issue to be resolved promptly. The HN front page proudly serves customers from all megacorporations, including but not limited to the classic FAANG, Microsoft and many others.

Is your account locked and customer service unwilling to review your case? Did all your data disappear and you can only reach a chat bot from 1997? Stop wasting time with official channels, post on HN front page today!

frollo
I have lots of complaints about this website, but seeing how quickly things get solved when you're getting a bad rep in the whole damned industry is always fun.
jdthedisciple
Tbh I don't mind learning about the latest frenzies in big tech.

Serves as a good warning at times, don't you think?

Esp. if potential data loss is involved.

paxys
Sounds like some moderator/support agent was on a power trip. Even if such a policy exists, deleting an entire profile without letting the problem even be addressed first is wayyyy too strict an enforcement.
0xfedbee
I don't know why people even use the cesspool that's LinkedIn. I deleted my account in 2012 because of their spam emails and haven't looked back since.
scrollaway
Honestly so did I. I recreated it last year after managing /not/ to use it for a long time. But my sector is particularly LinkedIn-heavy and when you're fundraising it's nigh impossible not to use it.

Plus it's for a legaltech, so a LinkedIn page for it is important from the marketing side of things.

valar_m
Because it's invaluable during a job search. A person can easily apply to 50 jobs in one evening through LinkedIn. A decade or so ago, that could take a full week of work or more. Each individual company you applied to would require you to register on their job board and fill out a long application where you re-enter the information from the resume you just uploaded. It could take an hour or two just to apply to a single job. And that's only after you lucked into finding the job posting in the first place because postings weren't centralized and searchable like now with LinkedIn.

To your point though, I do pretty much forget that LinkedIn exists if I'm not actively in a job search.

sjducb
When you’re back in set up 2FA it stops a lot of the blocking when you do high risk things like start new ad campaigns or new startup pages.

The initial red flag is usually a security red flag.

scrollaway
Thank you - I had 2FA on; still do in fact, it's asking me for it on login before hitting me with the captcha + ID verif.
caseyf7
We as an industry should just stop using LimkedIn
janalsncm
And do what instead?
pokeb
Contribute exclusively to open source and let big software corporations die.

The Linux kernel has been developed by email since the beginning. It runs the world.

All the other crap we layered on was resource wasting “job creation” that gave MS, Meta, and the like outsized reach and influence

These days I appreciate my computer engineering degree; we’ll always need AI capable hardware. Not so much the filesystem taxonomy police.

andsoitis
> Contribute exclusively to open source and let big software corporations die.

Sounds like you’re either in the privileged position to not have to earn a living or you earn a living outside the software industry. For many of us, we prefer to get paid to write software and make interesting products.

ipaddr
Thousands of people make a living off open source and many are interesting products. Going commercial makes it easier to make a living. If making a living on open source is privileged, that privilege comes from hard work and some luck.
pokeb
Many of us prefer otherwise. Why is my identity coupled to serving your sensibilities?

Compensation just means money cause the story goes that makes primates still coupled to Earth and social norms (make money) freer?

Ok. Yeah.

Why is how I have to utilized technology coupled to your preference to make money? Just as arbitrary a social ideology as religion, since it’s not a divine mandate. It’s just clinging to some abstract historical barnacle, LARPing proper stewardship of reality.

LLMs hallucinate because humans hallucinate.

unmole
How old are you? I ask because this is puerile nonsense.
pokeb
You’re just another of billions of primates. It’s just as puerile to think your view is sacrosanct.

None of the primates eviscerating the environment for video games and comic book movies have the moral high ground.

muzani
I ignored it for a decade and things went fine. But for some reason, more people took LinkedIn seriously, and it has become the most stable of social media.
ilrwbwrkhv
I have never used LinkedIn my entire life. I had a very good career and now a very good business without being on that spam infested platform.
8n4vidtmkvmk
I have an account but have never gotten any value out of it. Just a bit of recruiter spam. I'm not really sure what its purpose is. Just apply for jobs the old fashioned way, I don't see how a friend of a friend of a friend can possibly lend any credibility whatsoever.
scrollaway
Depending on your sector, it might be a messaging/intro platform, it might also be a way for people to do a quick background check on you without asking for your CV.
Trias11
We should use it (or anything else) but not rely on it.

If it's useful while it lasts, why not.

Always have Plan B, C, D, etc...

Internet is polluted with horror stories from clueless users: "omg (youtube|facebook|linkdin|(tele|insta)gram) banned me and my business! Help!"

dan301
I rarely use LinkedIn but I was also banned without warning/reason after attempting to post a new job. Any ideas on getting reactivated? Support emails are responded to with a generic denial template.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
egberts1
LinkedIn is just being racist.

Say this often enough and they'll drop the "real" photo requirement.

scrollaway
Update: The hold has been removed. Thank you HN.
glimmung
Any news as to the process or reasoning for the hold?
scrollaway
They confirmed it was because of the profile picture, but did not explain why they went so far as to put a hold on the picture. I think it's because there was an ad campaign running at the same time which triggered extra scrutiny.
JCharante
Unrelated, but I really like your simple website that just serves as a business card.
andrefuchs
I once reported an API bug to LinkedIn.

Received an email that I initially thought was a thank you note, but it turned out to be about my avatar (a stylized animal picture) being removed.

ailef
Some time ago I was banned as well, even though I don't remember exactly why but it was a similarly petty reason.

What solved it for me was telling that my account was hacked in the support ticket. If this was an automated ban, maybe shifting the blame to the "hackers" might get your account back if you're lucky.