LinkedIn has bowed to pressure from users and stopped using their photos in third-party advertising.
The professional social network angered users with its "social ads", which pulled in photos and names of people who had endorsed or followed companies, in order to run them alongside ads.
The system was flipped on by default, but LinkedIn did warn users months ago of the changes.
LinkedIn said it heard the feedback "loud and clear". Now, names and photos will not be used directly on the ad, but there will still be a link alerting users that people in their network follow the company.
While director of product management Ryan Roslansky said the company was "listening to its members", he admitted LinkedIn didn't make the changes clear enough - despite publishing a pair of blog posts and surfacing a notification when users logged in. "We could have communicated our intentions — to provide more value and relevancy to our members — more clearly," he said in a post on the LinkedIn blog.
"We never share personal information with third party advertisers. That was true prior to the launch of the social ads test, and remains true today," he added. "The only information that is used in social ads is information that is already publicly available and viewable by anyone in your network."
Users who aren't happy with being included in such marketing can still turn off the system by going to Account, Settings, and Manage Social Advertising.
This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk
