LinkedIn bans can feel like a Kafkaesque nightmare, and this episode shares such an ordeal that left me bewildered.
I'll be revealing how an innocuous comment on a post spiralled into a battle for reinstatement.
In this bizarre saga you'll hear about the irony of seeking help from a rival platform, the absurdity of the processes, the often opaque nature of social media policies and the facelessness of customer service in the digital age.
This episode not only recounts my personal journey through the labyrinth of LinkedIn's policies but also serves as a cautionary tale about the fragility of online presence and the importance of maintaining control over one's digital identity.
Mentioned in this episode:
LinkedIn
TikTok
Twitter
Spotify
Instagram
YouTube
Transcripts
Speaker A:
I didn't expect a part one of my LinkedIn band story, much less a part two.
Speaker B:
But here we are.
Speaker B:
Welcome to the asylum.
Speaker B:
LinkedIn will not like this podcast, but you will love it.
Speaker A:
I'm back.
Speaker A:
Reinstated on LinkedIn.
Speaker A:
Yes, you heard that right.
Speaker A:
LinkedIn has reinstated my account.
Speaker A:
And this is a crazy story.
Speaker A:
I'm gonna just say that now.
Speaker A:
It's left me in absolute disbelief, some frustration, and ultimately vindication.
Speaker A:
Let's get into it.
Speaker A:
As you would have heard in part one, the previous episode, I was banned and I went on a mission to get some answers.
Speaker A:
The most bizarre part of all this is it wasn't even LinkedIn where I got those answers.
Speaker A:
No, I ended up talking with LinkedIn's get this, LinkedIn's support team on Twitter.
Speaker A:
Remember that old social media platform that everyone basically evacuated when Elon Musk took it over?
Speaker A:
Who would have thought that they would come rushing to my defenses?
Speaker A:
The irony of reaching out on a rival platform to resolve my issue was not lost on me, believe me.
Speaker A:
I'm still laughing or cry laughing about it.
Speaker A:
Picture this.
Speaker A:
I am desperately tweeting on Twitter about my despair over having my LinkedIn account banned, and I get a tweet back from LinkedIn Support Team on Twitter saying, DM US.
Speaker A:
Which I did.
Speaker A:
And then that led to a frantic back and forth during which I explained my biggest frustration was that I was banned from a platform that I was paying for as a premium subscriber.
Speaker A:
Now, admittedly, I had actually given up paying for premium about a month before this happened because I wanted to test whether or not it made any difference to your experience using the platform.
Speaker A:
Long story short, no, it didn't.
Speaker A:
But there are still some benefits that I enjoy from having premium.
Speaker A:
So I went back there literally 48 hours before this happened.
Speaker A:
Anyway, a really long story short, my restriction came down to a comment.
Speaker A:
A single comment.
Speaker A:
Yep, that's right.
Speaker A:
Apparently, a comment led to my almost permanent ban, and the comment was on someone's post, questioning and daring to speak my mind.
Speaker A:
Apparently that warranted shutting me down.
Speaker A:
Now, the support team on Twitter were sympathetic, I will give them that.
Speaker A:
They seem to understand my frustration at having judged during Executioner carrying out a ban on my account without any recourse opportunity to appeal or any of that.
Speaker A:
No human beings involved at any point.
Speaker A:
They seemed to understand how ridiculous this whole process was being, and they nodded along with me.
Speaker A:
Well, metaphorically, given that, you know, it's Twitter, after all.
Speaker A:
So they're probably rolling their eyes at yet another whinging Customer, who knows?
Speaker A:
But at the end of the day, their hands were tied by the same vague policies that landed me in this situation in the first place.
Speaker A:
Now the entire ordeal left me feeling like I was stranded in some Kafka novel.
Speaker A:
I'm back and forth with these agents, trying to get a straight answer from them, and they tell me things like, we're looking into it, we're investigating.
Speaker A:
It requires a deeper dive.
Speaker A:
Thank you for your patience.
Speaker A:
Patience?
Speaker A:
Patience was gone on day one, mate.
Speaker A:
And yet here I was, still frantically refreshing my account to see if this restriction had been lifted, only to find out yet again, and again and again and again, that it hadn't been.
Speaker A:
The whole situation played out like some kind of tragicomedy where I'm the protagonist just trying to get a fair crack of the whip in this world governed by opaque algorithms and faceless decisions.
Speaker A:
And then a few hours later, around about 3:00pm, there it was, my account back online with a couple of emails to accompany it.
Speaker A:
No real apology, no fanfare, just my account back and them telling me, thank you for being on LinkedIn, we appreciate you, like nothing had happened.
Speaker A:
But you know what?
Speaker A:
Something did happen.
Speaker A:
And that's what we need to talk about.
Speaker A:
Now.
Speaker A:
Here's the big reveal.
Speaker A:
The reason for the ban on the comment that I made was on a post from none other than Simon Squibb, a well known LinkedIn grifter.
Speaker A:
I dared to literally tell him I'd regretted some previous praise I'd given him and that was enough for him to get me banned.
Speaker A:
Just rolling back a bit of backstory here.
Speaker A:
I had seen Simon posting some TikTok content where at the time it seemed pretty cool.
Speaker A:
He was going up to randoms in the street, asking them how he could change their lives, how much it would cost.
Speaker A:
And he was getting these people saying things like, oh, I really want to run my own restaurant, or oh, I really want to go to this business school.
Speaker A:
And he was apparently making it happen for them.
Speaker A:
Unbeknownst to me when I was watching these videos, these were all paid actors that he was going up to, so called in the street, having paid them to stand there at the right moment, at the right time and have him walk up to them and film these bits.
Speaker A:
I'd have been fine with that.
Speaker A:
But I'd left a comment on one of his posts saying about how wholesome the content was and how I felt he should do a podcast.
Speaker A:
And I regretted that because knowing then what I did find out about him, it made me feel a bit icky to be publicly endorsing him.
Speaker A:
And so I blamed him for that.
Speaker A:
I blamed him for being the one that put me in that situation in the first place where I was giving him, in my view, a false endorsement.
Speaker A:
I didn't know it was false at the time, but the result is the same.
Speaker A:
So I made a point of saying on his comments below the comment I'd previously left saying, I really wish I hadn't left this comment.
Speaker A:
Now that I know that you're a spanner.
Speaker A:
Who knew that these people have such fragile egos that calling them out was enough for them to actually try and get you banned.
Speaker A:
That's how lily livered and thin skinned these people are.
Speaker A:
While you might be impressed by the hundreds of thousands of followers that they have, the posts that they create that get thousands of comments, thousands of likes and shares, don't be.
Speaker A:
These people are pathetic.
Speaker A:
Let this be a reminder to you as a user of LinkedIn that unless you are willing to play ball, suck up to these sycophants and keep your neck wound in, then understand you are in danger of having your account taken away from you.
Speaker A:
Forget the people that are buying followers, running engagement pods, and doing all the icky things that the ickiest people on the planet are doing on that platform.
Speaker A:
That doesn't matter.
Speaker A:
You call someone a spanner for demonstrating spanner like behavior, it's your account that's getting banned.
Speaker A:
This is why you should never rely on a third party platform for your business marketing any of these platforms.
Speaker A:
LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, they can all take away your presence at the click of a button.
Speaker A:
And that's why it's important that you build your business on your own property.
Speaker A:
Email, newsletters, podcast, RSS feeds, social media won't do anything for you.
Speaker A:
Trust me, you don't want to find out one day that the landlord has decided to change the locks on you just because you dare to speak your mind.
Speaker A:
So now that's out the way, can we please get into this podcast properly and talk about all the things including bits like this.
Speaker A:
Q Highlight reel.
Speaker C:
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:
It's time to share some light on the shadows of a LinkedIn.
Speaker D:
What goes around comes around.
Speaker D:
And what I mean by that is go out and support other people and it absolutely comes back at you.
Speaker D:
And you know the fancy term is law of reciprocity, but that's a mouthful.
Speaker E:
Oh my God, it's.
Speaker E:
You know, I felt like you wrote that directly to me today.
Speaker E:
And you know, I mean, I think that's, that's honestly the gift of having a very specific niche and really understanding the people you serve.
Speaker E:
Here's Jim.
Speaker E:
I really want Jim to be my client.
Speaker C:
Connections fade instead of hiding?
Speaker C:
Away from lights and empty titles.
Speaker C:
Searching for true Fantasy of life.
Speaker C:
This is our cyber.
Speaker C:
Get lost.
Speaker F:
Try stuff.
Speaker F:
Don't be boring.
Speaker F:
Take risks.
Speaker F:
It boggles my mind that there are people investing a lot of time into writing for, like, company pages that, like.
Speaker F:
We are happy to announce our new partnership with Nobody Cares.
Speaker C:
Welcome to L's Dark side, where connections fade instead of hiding.
