€310 million GDPR fine. LinkedIn used your professional profile — your career history, skills, connections — for targeted advertising without valid consent. Then started training AI on your posts without telling you. Your resume, your career trajectory, your professional network — monetised for ads and AI training. You thought you were building a career. LinkedIn was building a dataset. LinkedIn started training AI on your posts, articles, and professional content. They turned it on by default. They didn't tell you. Users found out from journalists, not from LinkedIn. The opt-out was buried in settings nobody checks. Your professional writing, your thought leadership, your expertise — fed to an AI without asking.
What they claim: LinkedIn describes professional networking with user-controlled data
What we found: In September 2024, LinkedIn quietly enabled AI training on user content by default — updating the privacy setting without notification. Users discovered LinkedIn was feeding their posts, articles, and professional content to AI models only after media coverage. The opt-out was buried in settings. LinkedIn did not inform users before starting training.
What they claim: LinkedIn Jobs promoted as a professional networking tool connecting talent with opportunities
What we found: LinkedIn scraped and sold user data for ad targeting despite claiming data was used for career development. In 2024, Ireland's Data Protection Commission fined LinkedIn €310 million for GDPR violations related to targeted advertising — finding LinkedIn processed user data without valid legal basis for behavioural analysis and ad targeting. Additionally, LinkedIn began training AI models on user content in 2024, only disclosing the opt-out after media coverage.