The CEO of LinkedIn personally responded to a woman who claimed she was sexually harassed on the platform: 'It is completely unacceptable' (MSFT)

linkedin jeff weiner

Last week, a LinkedIn user published an open letter to CEO Jeff Weiner, saying that she's experienced harassment and an attempted scam on the professional social network.
She called for Microsoft-owned LinkedIn to do more to prevent harassment and scamming.
Weiner responded, writing LinkedIn's efforts to address the problems have "room for improvement."
LinkedIn users, particularly women, have reported experiencing harassment on the site for years.
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LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said the Microsoft-owned professional social network still has work to do to address sexual harassment and scamming on the platform, after a user wrote on open letter calling for greater measures to combat the problems.

LinkedIn user Amy Perkins in a Jan. 17 post on the website said that she's experienced harassment and attempted scams on the social network intended for professionals. The post had more than 6,200 reactions and 1,000 comments at the time of this writing.

Perkins said she uploaded a video to LinkedIn about her decision to quit her job after 25 years in education. The video went viral, she said, and soon she started receiving inappropriate comments from other users — some of them, she said, saying things like "hey sexy," "call me," and "you're hot." Perkins also said she was the target of an attempted scam by another LinkedIn user claiming to have a business opportunity.

"Here's the thing Jeff, I'm a middle-aged mom of two. I uploaded a video on a business platform, not a dating site. I was terrified and confused," Perkins wrote. "I was sick to my stomach, ready to delete my account."

Perkins has yet to respond to a request for an interview from Business Insider. However, LinkedIn users, particularly women, have reported experiencing harassment on the site for years, suggesting that her story is not an uncommon one on the site.

Weiner responded in a comment on Perkins' post, writing LinkedIn's efforts to address the problems have "room for improvement."

"It is completely unacceptable for you or any member of LinkedIn to experience this and runs completely counter to our values and expectations for community interaction," Weiner wrote. "We continue to invest aggressively to combat this kind of behavior, both through people and technology, but clearly still have room for improvement."

Perkins in a later post said LinkedIn followed up Weiner's comment with a call from a LinkedIn manager.

In a statement, LinkedIn reiterated its stance on the issue: "Abusive behavior is not tolerated. It's absolutely not acceptable for a member to harass others on LinkedIn. We have strong systems in place to monitor and keep members safe. We encourage anyone and everyone who has experienced harassment to report it to us."

Removing harassment and fraud

The company in November released for the first time data about its efforts to eliminate harassment and fraud on the site. LinkedIn did not include the number of reports it received, only what it actually removed.

LinkedIn said it removed more than 16,000 instances of harassment from the website in the first half of the 2019. Harassment made up the largest category of content removed by LinkedIn. The company defined other categories as "adult" (11,019 removals), "violent or graphic" (1,933 removals), "hate speech" (1,637 removals), and "child exploitation" (22 removals).

Scams – or, as LinkedIn refers to then, "untargeted, irrelevant, and repetitive communications or invitations, often for financial gain" – required most attention from LinkedIn during the same period. The company said it removed 60.5 million instances of this type of content, detected 99.8 percent of which it said it automatically detected. Around 100,000 were removed after being reported by individuals.

Examples of the removed scams include recruiters offering high-paying jobs for little work or job postings that mirror an application to a reputable company.

LinkedIn also said at the time that it removed 21 million fake accounts, most of which the company said it detected during registration.

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