Predatory Recruiters and Where to Find Them

You may have seen many of those posts in LinkedIn with 1000s of likes: "Pls like this post if you are available to start working in Dubai, Doha, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi". These posts usually serve the purpose to increase the views and rankings of the recruiter. On the other hand, some of these posts are indeed partially genuine. They create a farm of potential recruits for the recruiter, to whom the recruiter will later send a mass email collecting CVs and personal information for a job that may or may not be relevant. Some of these jobs may not even exist.

I was recently contacted by a recruiter (Let's call him Tim) from such a predatory HR startup called ProvidePeople on the pretense of a job in an open source company, through LinkedIn. He sent me a connection request (by that time he was a 2nd-degree connection). He then messaged me to email him my CV. He referred to me as "Ganesh". This was the first warning that he was copy-pasting to a mass list. I was reluctant to reply to an email that was not even addressing my name properly. But he reminded me again. So I replied later.

Followed by that, he started asking personal questions such as "Current and expected salary, visa status". Further, he sent a coding challenge (or requested to share a link to a public code). I chose the latter. His SMS-style language ("u" instead of "you", no proper capitalization. Are we talking in SMS?) was the second warning. I did not pay too much attention to these warnings.

After a day or two, he replied that the company found that my CV does not have their required experience. I reminded him that it would be more appropriate to send the CV first and then find more personal information. He vigorously defended his stance, and CC'd the "co-founder" of his company so that the co-founder can support him. Interestingly the co-founder never replied to my email, defending his employee. Probably the co-founder is busy, fishing for the product (i.e., potential employees).

Part of the email communications are given below (omitting personal information):

Tim says:

[Quote]

Thank you…

What is your

Current salary:
Desired Salary:

Notice Period:
Visa Status:

Cheers
 

[/Quote]

---------------------------------------------

I shared with him in detail the notice period and visa status, though I explained to him why it is not relevant to discuss the salary right now.

I later indicated him:

[Quote]

A piece of suggestion: Pls consult the employer next time on getting the first reply before asking personal questions such as
Current salary:
Desired Salary:

Notice Period:
Visa Status:

These questions can be left  a later stage. Especially the salary details can be left to the final stages of the interview.

It wastes both of our time and invades my privacy unnecessarily. It did not reflect well on Provide. I will share my feedback with Provide later on this aspect.

Regards,
Pradeeban.

[/Quote]

----------------------------------------------------

Tim replies back sooner.

[Quote]

Hi Pradeeban,

Thanks for your thoughts. Unfortunately, I must whole heartedly disagree with: “These questions can be left at a latter stage. Specially the salary details can be left to the final stages of the interview”. We need to know this information prior to submitting your CV… this is basic information all clients ask for prior to submission, it is part of our SLA agreement. It saves wasting time with potential candidates who’s salaries not online with client budgets budgets, have maybe inflated salary expectations, visa issues that we cannot support or too long a notice period if we need a hire to start within a month.

This might be the difference between the research and commercial worlds, but the R&D organizations I work for also request this basic information upfront. Image investing 4 hours of you time in interviews, just to get to the final stages and realise the salary we have is too low for you? For a client also, that could be up to 11 man hours wasted in interviews.

I have cc’d one of our founders, ***** ******,  into the email so you can talk openly. I am sure he will voice a similar stance to myself.

Kindest Regards

[/Quote]

--------------------------------------------------------------

I reply back now addressing the "co-founder". Let's call him Stephan:

[Quote]

Hi Stephan,

Probably Tim misunderstood or misrepresented my comment (that is in the email).

"These questions can be left at a latter stage"

A quick overlook of the CV to find the match requires just 2 minutes, specially for a rejection. You may ask further personal questions when there is a match based on CV, and when the employer showed the first interest (as in, "the CV looks good. I need more information").

The same can be mentioned about asking to do the coding challenge (defer it after to the first reply from the employer. I did not do the coding challenge. I just shared a link to my work. But if someone did a coding challenge before the CV screening, this is a waste of time for the prospective employee. I estimate it may take up to an hour for this coding challenge).

I stand by my stance on asking the salary details early on is a no-no. It should be left to the employer. It is better if the employer is transparent on potential offering instead. It is a win - win. But that is a separate topic/discussion.

I have interviewed myself candidates for junior roles for my previous employers in the US and Sri Lanka. Also in my experience, I had zero instance where a recruiter (those who represent companies and research labs) asked for my salary and visa details when the CV is not even shared with the employer. This is somewhat a predatory practice.

I would rather prefer if you contact the potential employees with more personal questions when there is some interest and match from the employer's perspective. But if this is your business model, I have no say on that. But feel free to reflect upon these comments during an internal discussion.

Regards,

Pradeeban.

[/Quote]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No replies from Stephan. Probably Stephan's email address is not even valid. Or may be he does not care about us - we are his product. His customers are the employers.

What is next? Provide People and similar companies will ask questions such as "Are you pregnant? Do you have any life-challenging diseases?" to help the companies weed out these "anomalies" earlier? It is not just me. Someone else has observed that Providepeople.com are scammers/spammers and included them in a spam list. These are predatory companies that discriminate based on nationality, gender, and sexuality, I learned later. Meaningless expect fairness from them, although they may be functioning borderline illegal and outright immoral in their predatory/shady hiring practices. Online reviews mentioned mandatory 8 am - 6 pm work hours. We are in a weird situation where employees are brain-washed to believe their founders. I believe Tim is one of them who "must whole heartedly disagree with" me.

Cut the LinkedIn Small Talk

One of the most annoying LinkedIn marketers I have encountered - those who add you out of nowhere (3rd degree connections, usually). Then they start a small talk with you.

Some advises:

1. Don't add random people and start messaging them in LinkedIn - at least read their profile well to see whether they would be interested in your message. No need to waste both of your time by a boring chat.

2. If you have the urge to do so, do it as a single message, a paragraph. I don't use LinkedIn as a chat client.

If you are doing #LinkedIn #marketing, come to the point in a single bulk first message. Don't start a small talk: "Hi, How r u?" #spam

— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) March 17, 2017

The marketer small talk usually goes weird and slow, as if they were asking me out. I help them these days to cut this small talk short. By this way, I help them end this within  a few minutes.

In the above chat, I helped end the chat sooner with the counter-question "How can I help you?" instead of answering "I am fine, thanks, how are you?", then waiting for their follow up answer and further small talk on how bad the weather these days. Second, the short and direct reply "No" helped them stop the chat without further small talk such as "Good bye", "Hope to make business with you again".

Though I come across rude in the above chat and sharing this blog post, you should realize that this is not a single message. We, each of us, receive a ton of such messages in LinkedIn. So this is a collective annoyance.

Worst of LinkedIn: Those who warn of scammers in a scamming way!

So we all know that there are so many scammers in LinkedIn by now. Many of them try to get views or attention to their profile by posing as a recruiter in a city like Dubai or Doha, or by posting silly mathematical questions. The worse is those who fall for this scam, and write down their email address to the public display and to be scrawled by the spam bots. Some just "like" the status, or type "interested" or "pls review my profile", as that is the best way to prove their competent in the posted job.

Worst scammers of LinkedIn

Now the worst kind of scammers: see the above screenshot.

The status, by default, shows only the first 5 lines. For the entire message, you need to press "Show more". Hence, the unsuspecting LinkedIn users give their contact details as they would do for a LinkedIn job posting I discussed before. They would not read and realize that this status was posted as a warning.

I will explain why these guys who attempt to give light to the con recruiters in LinkedIn are the worst. First, if he was genuine, he would have started the message with the warning, such as "Pls do not fall for this type of scams in LinkedIn:", instead of making the warning hide deep below the advertisement. If you go through the comments, almost everyone has given their contact details, with only a very few commenting how others have misinterpreted this gentleman's kind gesture. 

Little did they know that this type of statuses are very common and popular. In fact, they serve the same purpose. Getting more views to your profile. These are worse, as they are made to obviously make fool of those who commented. Besides, this trick can be used by anyone, not just recruiters, hence increasing the potential reach of the scam.

Don't be this guy, who ruins LinkedIn for everyone! I have been unsubscribing from everyone who falls for these shit to keep my LinkedIn sane.

Proxy humans - The worst kind of social media users!

A useless image disguised as a "helpful resource"

Something I dislike about many social media users - specifically when they do that on LinkedIn - sharing content with no way to trace back to the origin. Some users are just plain novice and they do so without knowing the ways to propagate the information in the right way. For example, see the viral image on the left hand side. It was shared by millions of such novice users. But who creates these images? Are they social media novices too? No, they surely are not. These are social media crocodiles who create these "information" just for the sake of getting more visibility. If you were fortunate/unfortunate to witness this image, you would have noticed that there was no caption or pointers to where to find the MIT's online course material. Of course, a quick Google search would reveal that. But the intention here is not to help (as it seems); rather to make this particular image itself popular/viral.

The worse offenders are those who copy-paste others' content without giving the credit or link to the original post. Some would argue that they are sharing knowledge here. Some might really be unaware of the "Share" mechanisms present in all the social media. However, most are deliberately plagiarizing. They function as a proxy human between the knowledge source and the public, preventing access to the source of information, by functioning as a proxy in the middle. 

Next time, when you spot a proxy human in social media, please do not engage with them much under their post. The more their post get engaged, higher the possibilities that it will eclipse the origin.

The LinkedIn Police

A LinkedIn Police trying to advice what is LinkedIn.

There are so many annoying users in LinkedIn. The worst of all falls into the category called "LinkedIn Police". Why are they worst? Because, first they think they are smart, while being apparently oblivious from how LinkedIn or any social media works. Second they attempt to control others in LinkedIn, and by doing so in fact they contribute to the content that they do not really support. The commonest mantra of the LinkedIn Police is, "This does not belong to LinkedIn". They also have another: "Please go to Facebook".

While I hate spammers, I dislike the LinkedIn Police more, as either they contribute more to the spam, or they just create flame wards due to their ignorance and interest in controlling other users. For instance, one's entertainment is another one's entertainment or random topic. So next time, before being the LinkedIn Police, try to be nice. If you really want to combat the spam, use the best of all strategy: ignore.

In the image: A member of the LinkedIn Police seems to educate what is allowed on LinkedIn. However, other members of the LinkedIn community were quick to note that this indeed belongs to LinkedIn as this is what the job of the poster - a stylist.

If you are not sure, being a LinkedIn Police does not help your career. It is worse than the spammers, if you would ask me.

I do not of course support random guys and girls adding cute selfies to LinkedIn. But unless you guys communicate with them even by commenting negatively, these images or irrelevant content won't spread as viral content. Also please do not forget that stylists and models are professionals too. Respect their choice of posting their work or sample (which may look like a "Facebook content" for you, while it is not). Overall, just be nice to strangers.

The rise and the fall of a Facebook star

1. The Hi5 Era
It was early 2006, if I remember correctly. Hi5 was getting popular. It was a social media where each new member is encouraged to invite 5 of their friends to the platform. My friend asked me why did not I accept his invitation. I told him that I had an email account (Yahoo!), which for now was enough for me. He tried his best to convince me that Hi5 was good for sharing photos and chatting. He still failed. I did not even have a digital camera till early 2007 to share the photos. I told him that I would rather email the friends I care about, instead of joining another random platform.

2. Dawn of the Facebook

Later that year, I would join the engineering faculty, and in mid 2007 I joined the department of computer science and engineering as an undergraduate. New social media platforms were getting popular. Everyone had started talking about Facebook. At some point, a clear majority among the 100 of us in the batch had joined Facebook. I was not among them, despite having received an invite from one of my good friends. My reasoning was still valid - I had a very active Gmail account which I used for sharing photos and sharing emails (including cute pictures of cats and jokes, as well as the emails to project mailing lists and class email groups dedicated entirely for friendship and fun).

3. The Entry

In 2008, a lecturer who was teaching us Software Engineering finally managed to get me into Facebook. He asked us to create a Facebook group for his course, where he would initiate group discussions based on the lecture sessions we had. I was not impressed in the beginning by this idea. However, I eventually started to become active in Facebook by the mid of 2008. It felt great when I was able to connect to the friends from different continents. My school friends were distributed across the globe, and receiving messages and updates from them was so encouraging. Apart from the friends I already knew, I also got to know new friends from Facebook itself through mutual friends, and some online communities. My Facebook account was entirely dedicated for fun and friendship by that time.

4. Intern Diaries

I joined WSO2 as an intern in September 2008. The company encouraged everyone to be active in social media, and motivated us to collaborate and communicate in social media, spreading the word about what we do as a team. By early 2009, I had a Facebook account that also contained technology related posts in addition to that of a regular undergraduate that just had funny posts and photos. I even had friend requests from a few customers of the company. My Facebook friend list had grown above 1500 by that time, spreading across the globe. By that time, I knew that my Facebook account was a reasonably valuable asset to me, and losing it or deactivating it was never an option.

5. Professional Gangster

Around the end of 2009, I had become a professional Facebooker. I was aware of the scams of Facebook. I also knew which were the dodgy links and how viral posts were born. I never clicked or shared anything that had a hidden agenda. I carefully avoided politics. My Facebook was still in its golden era. There were even random people asking me questions through Facebook about some of the technology posts I made. As I completed my second Google Summer of Code in 2010, my Facebook had more content intense in technology with links and often content I wrote by myself. I also joined WSO2 as a software engineer later that year.

6. Social Media Pro (alias shameless promoter)

In the latter half of 2011, I was leading the social media engagement of the company and had shared massive amount of promotional material. Later in 2012, I quit my job to continue my higher studies in Europe. I eventually became a frequent traveller, and shared many of my travel stories and photos online, in Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger. Facebook became even more important to me, as I used it to connect to my friends back in Sri Lanka. It also helped me get news updates. I basically was logged in Facebook always. Never logged out.

7. Maturity

My Facebook started to age, along with me. :P As we grow older, it also reflects in the social media. The number of fun posts started to decline while more promotional content from companies and photos of babies started to appear more frequently. When I went to China in 2014, I made sure to install and configure the relevant proxy and VPN solutions so that I would not miss the updates when I was away, since Facebook was otherwise inaccessible from China.

8. Facebook Wars

By 2015, I knew how "visionaries" or "thought leaders" and "idols" from Sri Lanka and other countries would manipulate their follower base to get their views across. It was easy for them to sensationalize their view points than merely stating the facts. Sometimes it got annoying to see how a large base of followers fall for trivial tricks and scams. It was easy for the visionaries to provoke an unsuspecting victim for their hidden agenda. Politics - I tried my best to avoid - was not always easy to omit. I had to engage in multiple occasions, when it appeared in my feed. I started to give my voice for whatever I felt was right.

9. Getting Intense

There were some failed politicians in Sri Lanka (as well as globally) starting to use social media to spread racism in order to regain the grounds. They did not have a really huge follower base. But they did have support from some "social media stars" and "thought leaders". Racism - I loathe in any of its forms. I tried my best to voice against the online bullies and racists, without sensationalizing the view points. In my observation, the IQ or EQ of average Facebook population was very minimal. Though I had a very intelligent LinkedIn, lately I noticed that this had started to happen to my LinkedIn as well. I unfollowed bulks of people who shared irrelevant content on Facebook and LinkedIn. 

10. LinkedIn as another Facebook

I wanted my LinkedIn account to contain professional and educational material. Though not many of my contacts did that, still some irrelevant posts from the 2nd level connections ("connections of connections" or "friends or friends", though I do not usually call LinkedIn connections as "friends", unlike Facebook). Those who solve simple mathematical equations (even with the claim that only  geniuses can solve them), those who claim how a few thousands likes will help them feel happy, help them quit smoking, or even help them recover from cancer, those fake recruiters who would ask you to like or post "interested" in their post so that they can review your profile, those who posts their random cute photos, those who seek prayers in LinkedIn for themselves or their far relatives, and also those who posts photos dictating LinkedIn ≠ Facebook (quite ironically), all I had to unfollow - those who posted them, or those who interact with these posts by commenting or liking. Even if you comment "Please do not post this", it appears on your followers' feed. So somehow I managed to keep my LinkedIn clean.

11. Unfollow Marathon

However, things were different in Facebook. I did like to get updates - random updates - from Facebook. I liked political posts - but not the way they appear sensationalized. I unfollowed around 500 racists and those who simply posted spam during my almost decade long stay in Facebook. However, racists and Facebook thought leaders managed to spread their view by commenting on others' profiles. Same story with those who posted annoying posts. I realized I was spending more time managing Facebook, which was not effective and worse - counter-productive. The social media is made in a way that it promotes viral content, regardless of its lack of quality.

12. Demise of a Facebook Star
One of my close friends had deactivated his Facebook, citing similar reasons. I decided to finally deactivate my Facebook account. After 5.5 years, I did not fail to notice that the Facebook deactivate and permanent delete options remain the same, with no change in display or user experience, regardless of tens of major reformations of Facebook itself.

13. Final Good bye

I re-assigned the ownership of the Facebook groups I had created to those I trusted as suitable candidates. I also sent my contact details to my Facebook friends, who would lose contact with me otherwise. By mid-December, I deactivated my account, and kept it deactivated for 2 months successfully, without ever feeling the need to go back. I did re-activate it once in a while to send some quick messages, as required. However, I was simply able to break the habit of social media. I rather increased my updates to my blog and twitter. If in the future, a better social media platform appears, I will give it one more try. 

14. The End

This marks the end of my 8 year long Facebook life - the rise and the fall of my Facebook kingdom. :P My friend who initially deactivated his account had it reactivated though. However, looking back, I felt like I had traveled in a circle. I feel like I have come back to the period of 2006, after 10 years. I do not really feel I am missing something by not having an account in the most popular social media platform of the world. It is not to boost that I am saving more time or have become more productive. We always find ways to waste some of our time in the Internet, regardless of the existence of Facebook. Just I find that my time with Facebook has come to an end. I will continue writing in the other platforms, such as this blog and my Twitter account.

How to hire a sheep or a bot using LinkedIn

'Please comment "interested"
we will get back to you if your profile fulfills this requirement.'

What  requirement?
You mean, commenting "interested" to a random image with no job description, posted by a random guy who does not even possess the qualification to be a recruiter of the UN?

I am not sure how many of the LinkedIn users will fall for these kind of marketing scams by random individuals to increase their visibility.

First, I am unfollowing those in my list who fall for this stupid shit. Leave United Nations, who in the right mind would hire someone who randomly post "interested" to a LinkedIn thread to which 20,000 others have already responded.

I have also unfollowed the "mathematical geniuses" who fall in the "3% category", doing all sort of elementary mathematics in LinkedIn.

Now I have a LinkedIn feed that has a higher level of intelligence. But I may have to rinse and repeat every once in a while.

LinkedIn 0 Notification

Notification for "0 Messages"

Found something interesting. A LinkedIn notification indicating that I have received 0 messages. :P

Internet of Emotions

The world is driven  by emotions. In the Internet, the emotions are further exaggerated. Many articles, videos, and posts are created with the interest of invoking the emotions. While a politically correct and perfect title may be ideal for a school essay, even the major news providers and bloggers have chosen catchy titles, which are often unethical and misleading for their articles.

I never subscribed to any of these "influencers" in LinkedIn. Rather, I am "forced" to read them. These are two of the posts I found in LinkedIn today from the "Influencers". I clicked both of them out of curiosity.

1. If You're 30 And Don't Know This, You're In Trouble
2. How To Prevent Heartbreak From A Less Qualified Person Being Promoted

Here you may notice, the title 1 is just intended to derive your curiosity. It does not have a proper audience. In fact, the article itself lacked value. Its intent was just to get more audience, and probably it has succeeded in that. The latter title is more open, but still good enough to attract the right audience. In a world driven by clicks and revenue, it is obvious what these articles want. 

More viewers means, more visibility. More visibility means, more revenue. I have seen many existing videos in YouTube rehashed with some random content and catchy title. A sample would be, "These man/woman was asked to X. His/Her response was AWESOME". or "He did X to Y. What happened next is Incredible". Something like that to make you curious to see what happened next. Commoner examples in LinkedIn is, "Solve this, if you are a genius" followed by an elementary quiz or question which can practically be solved by anyone with a little knowledge. The more user engagement gives these stupid posts an uplifting, making the Internet "polluted".

Talking these unethical headlines to next level, I read so many blog posts writing headlines such as "Strong evidence on what happened to MH370 has been found!" while the content just provided some existing known uncertain information. Even giving a negative comment discouraging future readers will boost the popularity of these posts in the social circle, as many of the social media strive on not having a negative voting.

It is hard to get views with a politically correct and moderate values in the Internet. Shocking and extreme views easily get the attraction, just that they are capable of breaking our indifference. Recent example was a woman posted her photo visibly stained menstruating herself in her period, to Instagram in public view settings. As expected, it was removed by the Instagram, respecting the community guidelines. Her intention may be just to get some views to her blog posts. Probably she had some good intention - that is by creating a shock value, passing on the message she wanted us to listen on feminism and freedom of media.

In the very business-oriented world, this woman has successfully created a shock value and made her blog and book popular. While I am 100% supportive of freedom of speech and expression, feminism, and all that, it is hard for me not to question the motives. Sharing a photo of this nature does not prove or solve anything. While Instagram apologized mentioning that was a mistake on their side, I believe they were right in removing it from their site according to their own policies. However, it was smart of them to restore it mentioning that that was a mistake to remove the photo. It avoids further social media damage or wasting of time on this from their end. In my opinion, removal of this photo was not misogyny. Rather, just their community standards. They would have removed a boy with a visible stain suggesting he had a wet dream as well. I don't blame her for that. Just stating my opinion. However, to some extent, taking similar extreme stances such as this woman just alienates feminism from the mainstream. 

The Instagram issue was the one which made this photo popular. It was surely not a 'mistake'; rather they (Instagram) intentionally removed it and undid that when they realized the backfire. If I am not wrong, this photo was shared with public visibility, and most probably someone reported it (I don't think Instagram, Facebook, et al. go on monitoring each upload). I am not sure about the age limit of Instagram. Is it 18+ or 13+ like Facebook? How are they effective in really setting these limits? A parental filter may not filter Instagram (nor this image) and chances are high Instagram would be listed as a trusted site by the parents. This may cause shock for an underage kid, as young as 11 something (they are active users of the Internet now).

I don't find mistake in her photo. Not in Instagram for removing the photo either. Just could not fail to notice the potential business-motive in the photo from her end, and the smart move from Instagram's end by restoring it without causing more social media stir. The Internet of emotions is so strong that there are so many incidents reported where a photo or post online caused much trouble beyond the online world. Employers do not want to get involved in controversies. While individuals may be happy with whatever the attention they receive, positive or negative, it may not be the case for a large organization or a country. I am not sure about the support and consequences these individuals receive from their companies, if they are affiliated to any.

Another recent example was a feminism video with a popular Indian actress portrayed. Again, it exhibited much more extreme thoughts, specially considering the fact that the video is coming from a much conservative India. While a moderate and commonly acceptable video may be well-received by a larger audience, it would not create such a hype. Negative or positive, the comments in social media add up. There should be a way of demoting the videos we dislike. But it is not available in many platforms. Even if you comment, "This video sucks", that will still increase the popularity of the content, with your engagement. This is one reason why I avoid commenting on spams, as much as I can. Interestingly, that video was an advertisement or placement video by a media. Not by the actress herself. The magazine/media was successful in getting the reach they wanted.

I was once blocked by a Sri Lankan, upon mocking a preacher on his misogynistic views. The Internet expects us to be tolerant of all kind of trolls, while not to offend anyone who has subscribed to any belief system. There is also a plenty of trolls that will always try to provoke you with their extreme views on topics such as politics, religion, or whatever, whether you align yourself with them or not.

I was going through a Facebook page, and found a comment. "Do a Google Search for XXXXX, and click the first video result. The singer has insulted the fans of this page. Go and dislike that video. Also subscribe to the channel, and dislike all the videos from the uploader". It turned out that the comments were made by the video uploader himself and his proxies. All his videos have 99% dislikes. But still they also have a million of views, and thousands of subscribers. Many of the viewers have identified his strategy. Still he has achieved what he wanted - views. Hence, the revenue from the advertisements, from Google. There are many web sites and blogs that force you to wait for a while, with an advertisement covering the page. Most of them even have a limited possibility of removing such advertisements.

In the Internet of emotions, invoking the curiosity and emotions of the viewers will produce more engagement - good or bad. Moderate views are less favoured by this environment, though I would prefer it otherwise.

Why "Ignore" is the best strategy to combat spam

A typical image used to manipulate human emotions

The most annoying of all the spams are the spams that make us feel that the person who shared it is a person with minimal level of knowledge. Many of my friends, despite their education and professional levels, fall for the spams that claim sharing a photo will make Facebook donate 1 USD to the poor people. 

More annoyingly, now it has even started to spread to LinkedIn. People download and share photos asking for "Likes". "A million of likes would make my dad quit smoking". They do not even care how can someone use LinkedIn to track the number of likes each of these photos received, as the original photo is actually not just shared. Rather, it is downloaded and re-uploaded. Also, they just assume that the social networks somehow keep track of the number of shares of these photos.

I used to explain to people sharing such posts why these are scams/spams. Eventually I have realized, ignoring is the best way to combat these spams. If you really feel the urge to voice your opinion, send a separate personal email or message regarding this. Just do not comment on the spam/scam photo/post.

Here I explain why.

1. Some users just think Facebook works this way

Trying to explain them is often useless. They just reply, "OK. I just shared. It did not cost me anything. In case, if Facebook indeed donates something? What a big deal?".

2. "Sharing is caring/praying/.."

The second logic they give is, we share to pray for these people. These are just plain spams and the original page owner wants you to share these images just to make their page popular. Moreover, the images are used without the permission of the rightful owners, and are often manipulated with hoaxes. 

The more you share, the more visibility the page gets. The page will eventually be sold to someone. However, if you try to explain the reality as a comment to the photo, the photo gets more visibility. Facebook or LinkedIn cannot differentiate the positive comment from a negative comment. For a spammer, any response is a good response. Ignorance is the only bad response.

3. "If you don't care, can't you just shut up"

"We share because we care about people who are affected. It is ok that you do not care. But can you just stop discouraging those who genuinely care about this marvellous initiative that gives away money to the poor" Believe me, I have seen similar comments for real as a response to anyone who try to explain why we should not share these images.

4. Some users just pretend to be stupid

Now these are the ones who spam intentionally. They download and re-share these contents, or create their own. By manipulating human emotions, they try to exploit some photo that obviously does not belong to them, for their own benefit. For example, getting more visibility to their page or business. Likes, comments, and shares - all are equally valuable for them.

Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media should be made more intelligent. They should be made to differentiate a supportive comment from a negative comment. At least, they should provide options to the commenter, whether he/she chooses to publish his activity to their network. I do not want my friends to see a spam image just because I commented on that. Also, I do not want the spam to get more scores, just because of the number of comments. Unfortunately, this option is not yet available. Till we get this fixed, it is better to ignore, than trying to explain.

Is LinkedIn losing it?

LinkedIn is supposed to be a professional network. Right? Though it is a personal freedom of the users to use the social networks as they please, LinkedIn was able to secure some niche uses. At least till recently. Recently I noticed my news feed filled up with completely irrelevant, Facebook-like updates. Sadly, these updates are still boring, unlike Facebook. Here are a few examples (names are changed), that are something completely irrelevant for a "Professional network".

1. Annoying "80% will fail" claims to childish tasks.

2. Information on who "likes" whose profile photos. 

Come on, I have Facebook for that, and I spend enough time doing and reading the same shit there! It is hiding more relevant information such as the news updates and opportunities from my friends and colleagues, which I use LinkedIn for. This is something to blame on LinkedIn, and not the users.

3. Some vague shit written by some weird "influencer"

I accept that I have read so many interesting news articles from LinkedIn. But the articles from influencers are often spam-material. To mention one, an  "influencer" discusses how she merrily fires 25% of her task force annually, as they are the bottom 25% in performance. She calls to fire the losers sooner - shoot the dogs early. Genius! I can tolerate her post, if she was my friend. But this is seriously some bull. Anyway, I don't pay for LinkedIn. Let me tolerate the trash for the good in it. I am just clueless how these people end up in my news feed as influencers. Probably they are paying for it. 

Fed up with all these influencers, as the final attempt, I tried to unsubscribe from the LinkedIn Pulse application, which brings these news item from unknown random people into my wall. But LinkedIn says, it is impossible. Annoyed users, however, have found ways to hide it though.

4. Philosophers and viral contents 

Probably LinkedIn wants to expand its user base beyond boring stuff, and make it as 'kewl' as Facebook. Everyone wants to be another Facebook, it seems. If that was not the case, they should at least consider letting me hide information such as "comment" or "like" activities, without unsubscribing from a person completely. These are anyway my personal opinions. Feel free to disagree.

Moments with Facebook..

After the successful blog post Moments with Twitter and its sequel Moments with Twitter - II, I wanted to write a similar one on my moments with Facebook. But it didn't turn up that easy. 

Most of the stuff that I have shared over the Facebook were in the form of useful links, along with my thoughts around them, similar to Twitter. The recent shift to the Facebook timeline made it hard to locate the links that one already shared. A few applications might help you find the links that you recently posted, or let you search them. FindMyLinks is such an application. I used an application named "My Facebook Links" to find my links. It lets you sort your links, which makes it easier. It even lets you go to the original post, or re-upload (re-share) the link.

You can easily find your Facebook notes, by appending /notes to your profile url. That means, I can find I Facebook notes at https://www.facebook.com/pradeeban/notes. Most of the users (probably including myself) have limited the access to their notes to "Friends only". Hence, you can view your friend's notes, and the notes that your friend is tagged in, by appending /notes to their profile url, as above, based on the permissions set. For others the above link will just redirect to the profile of the user. I used to write quite a few Facebook notes and tag my friends in them during 2009 and early 2010, which I stopped after refurbishing Llovina, as I found it reaching a wider audience.

Unlike Twitter, I post more private (not so private though) material in Facebook, as status messages. From the information point of view, Twitter always wins. I don't think the links I have posted on Facebook would deserve a blog post on them itself, as they were mostly significant only during the time that I shared. I share the links to the music, videos, pictures, photos, or news items that I enjoyed. Usually I share the links to my important blog posts. I used to post the blog posts as notes to Facebook, which I later stopped to avoid data duplication over the Internet!

On a related note, I rarely use Google+, which I just use to share the blog posts that I write here. I have a very well maintained professional LinkedIn profile. However, I rarely share any links on them. An interesting feature of LinkedIn is it lets you view who viewed your profile, to a limited extend on Basic (free) profiles, and completely in the Business and Execute profiles, which are paid ones. Hence I have no interest or plan to write similar blog posts dedicated to Google+ or LinkedIn.