LinkedIn is swimming in SWAM’d

After a good friend of mine recently got added to the growing list of people SWAM’d over at LinkedIn I decided to do a little bit of research on a topic that seems to have gone under the radar.

Before I start I want to make it clear that I truly do believe LinkedIn is a great resource and one that has helped many, many people find jobs or employees over the last few years. Having a forum where professionals can find other professionals easily from all over the world can be nothing but a boon to modern society.

There is however a secret thorn hidden deep in the flowers of this particular rose and after doing my research it is one I feel needs to be explored more deeply.

I myself have a LinkedIn account although one that I use all too rarely. SWAMming however is not something I (like many other users) had come across until it happened to someone I knew. A few quick explanations may be in order at this point:

• As of writing this LinkedIn has more than 300 million members across almost every industry.

• LinkedIn groups are since the retirement of Signal the most common and important method of communication on the platform.

• Most active members are part of multiple groups (up to 50).

• Groups are often open, that is, there is no active moderation within the group as regards to posts that are awaiting moderation.

So, now we have a basic outline of the facts and figures, what exactly is SWAM and why is it becoming a major issue? SWAM stands for Site-Wide Automatic Moderation. In an effort to reduce spam (a noble goal in any social media organization) LinkedIn decided back in early 2013 to enact strong measures to protect it’s legitimate users from the flood of junk floating around the net. So far so good.

That unfortunately is where the good news ends. You see when the anti-spam initiative was put in place it was done with almost no fanfare. The original and in fact the only post to be found mentioning it’s inception appeared in a rather obscure corner of the site and would have been seen by less than 5,000 of their over 300 million users.

The basic issue with SWAM is that if someone dislikes something you say or post in a group in which they are a moderator they can choose to “block & delete” you. If a moderator in any group you are a member of does this it then means that any comment or post you make in any group you are in goes automatically to a moderation queue and must be accepted by a moderator before appearing in that group.

As you can imagine, while most people are responsible in the use of such a powerful tool, there are many who have abused the power given to them. As many LinkedIn members will attest it is all too easy for someone to push the hush button on you simple because they feel like it, they don’t like you for any number of reasons or even because they are totally unaware of the true repercussions of their actions.

Many cases have appeared where members in good standing, some of them even being top contributors, have fallen victim to SWAM. Besides the fact that any moderator in any group can do this to you possibly the worst part is that you get no explanation, no warning and no indication as to who decided to block you.

Obviously keeping spam levels down is a good thing but not if potentially innocent users can fall victim to a ban than can only be called crippling in the process.

Two other issues have arisen with the policy of SWAM as well. The first issue is that the LinkedIn help staff claim they cannot lift this ban manually and seem to have no interest in helping you with some people reporting they have even go so far as to deny there is a problem and tell you that you must have been spamming or else you wouldn’t have been blocked in the first place.

The second issue is that the only way to get out of the situation is to appeal to each and every group manager whose group you are in to individually restore your privileges in their own group. Not only is this an inconvenience for them but as your message will mark you as a spammer, whether or not you are, many group managers will dismiss or at least delay the message meaning you can be stuck on moderation forever.

According to some new information though it does look like there are possibly some changes coming with LinkedIn announcing that SWAM has been changed in a couple of subtle ways. One way it has changed is the option for members of groups to now get in on the SWAMming too by flagging posts they feel inappropriate which can lead to a temporary stay in the sin bin of up to two weeks.

So, what to take away from all this? I guess the lesson is know your platform well, consider others before dooming them to LinkedIn oblivion and try to use some common sense. As for social media sites I think the key lesson here is that putting your legitimate users in jail to try and boot spammers is seriously counter-productive.

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