Table of Contents
Introduction
I have been using the social network LinkedIn for occasional job-related content, but mostly for sharing content on the climate and biodiversity crisis, without any issues since October 1, 2011 with currently about 1,932 connections. However, since October 7, 2023, I have started using this network to bring attention to the crisis in Gaza, in Palestina, and the Middle East in general my posting original content from my blog [11] and commenting on posts by others. On Wednesday, October 16, 2024, I got a message from the LinkedIn “Trust & Safety Team” stating “A problem with your comment”, which, therefore, had been removed from LinkedIn. However, no information was given what comment this was and why there was an issue. In addition, I was locked out of my account. Since a relevant part of my professional (& social) network is based on LinkedIn, I tried to get access to my account again. In the following I describe how I got (and how I did not get) access to my account.
If you do not want to read the whole story, the short answer is, go to these websites for LinkedIn Help:
- https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/ask/default-social
- https://espirian.co.uk/linkedin-help/
- https://edri.org
The Issue
My Comment
The comment which I made on October 14 was a response to an original post by Tarek Bae [3], where he had shared a speech by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, where she defended the killing of Palestinian civilians in the presence of terrorists. My comment which was flagged by the LinkedIn Trust & Safety Team is given in the following [4]:
German (original):
English:
The essential point is that the Palestinians as a people under occupation/colonization/apartheid have the right to armed struggle by all means according to UN GA Resolution 45/130, which includes HAMAS. The entire argument is wrong from the start because these are not terrorists, but resistance fighters under occupation. Violations of international law (e.g., murder of civilians) by HAMAS or IDF should be punished equally after guilt is proven.
Assessment by the LinkedIn Trust & Safety Team
The LinkedIn Trust & Safety Team assessed:
- 2024-10-16: “Your comment doesn’t comply with our Professional Community Policies. It’s been removed from LinkedIn and only you can access it.”
- 2024-10-25: “Your account has been restricted for sharing content related to unlawful violence, intimidation, terrorism, and/or terrorist propaganda, in violation of our
- User Agreement at: https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement and
- Professional Community Policies at: https://www.linkedin.com/legal/professional-community-policies (collectively, our Terms). “
My Re-assessment
In my post, I argued on the grounds of international law (UN GA 45/130) and logically came to the conclusion that if Gaza is under occupation and people under occupation have the right to defend themselves by all means, including armed struggle, then Palestians, including member of HAMAS should not be considered terrorists but resistance fighters. This is also a view which was previously expressed by well-known Israeli historian Avi Shlaim [7], although he did not explicitly refer to “armed struggle”, a term which is explicitly included in the UN GA resolution 45/130:
“I served in the IDF in the mid 1960s. The ultimate aim of all these policies to deny the Palestinians any independent existence in Palestine. Under international law the Palestinians have the right to resist the occupation and HAMAS is the vanguard of this resistance. Israel is a reactionary and racist colonial power which relies on brute military force to impose its apartheid regime on the Palestinians. Israel is the main obstacle to peace and I reject this notion with some vehemence. The biggest obstacle to peace is the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. The Israeli occupation is the most prolonged and brutal military occupation of modern times and the Palestians conduct the last anti-colonial struggle in the world today. Israel prides itself of being a democracy, but because of the occcupation, it’s no longer a democracy. It’s an ethnocracy, a country in which one ethnic group rules over another. And there is another word to describe the situation: Apartheid. Netanyahu is like the man who pretends to be negotiating the division of a pizza while he keeps eating it. There is no Palestinian leader, however moderate, who is prepared to make peace on these ludicrous terms. Land grabbing and peace making don’t go together! It’s one or the other. Maybe good fences make good neighbours, but not if the fence is built in the middle of the neighbour’s garden.” – Avi Shlaim, Oxford University, 2015 [6, 7] (bold text by WI)
Solution 1: Personal authentication (not followed)
The immediate consequence of the action by LinkedIn on 2024-10-16 was that I was also locked out of my account. When trying to login to my account again, I was requested to verify my identity, eg by uploading my passport. Considering that the information was to be shared with Third Parties , ie “trusted partners” (such as Persona [2]), I decided against that for the following reasons:
- I did not want my biometric information being shared with third parties, which I did not know.
- The fact that one of my comments did not follow Professional Community Policies was not logically linked to the requirement to verify my identity.
Note: Potentially, if a comment was very much out of character these could raise concerns that my account had been taken over by somebody else, but this was not the issue here. I suspected that the current account info, does not allow to link the account to an existing person with sufficient certainty because email addresses, phone numbers, pictures etc can be faked, so only by connecting the online activity with a verified identity, one could create a user profile, which also can used across social networks, maybe shared with background screening companies (eg, HireRight) and potentially also for legal actions. Of note, id authentification was finally not required to reopend my account!
After one week, where I did not verify my account, this option was taken away and when I tried to login I had only the option left to remove my account, which I did not do. Therefore, I cannot tell whether the solution of personal authentication would have resulted in regaining access to my account and what long-term consequences would have had for me.
Solution 2: Appeal to LinkedIn (worked)
Since I could not get access to my LinkedIn account and reach the LinkedIn Trust & Safety team as a customer, I had to access LinkedIn by other means. However, I had difficulty to find a contact which did not require an active LinkedIn Account. Only with the help of another LinkedIn user who noticed that my account had been suspended and who reached out via another communication channel to share the relevant link to the LinkedIn which does not require a LinkedIn account [5], I could appeal to get my account restored. More info on how to get help from LinkedIn can be found elsewhere [9, 10].
The requirement to get my account restored was:
“If you agree to abide by LinkedIn’s Terms and not to violate them again, we’ll grant another chance to regain access to your account. You can do that by replying to this email and expressly stating that you agree to abide by our Terms going forward.
Please note that LinkedIn expects all members to behave in a professional manner when engaging on the platform. Any future violations of our Terms may result in a permanent restriction.
To learn more about what is and is not acceptable on LinkedIn, please review LinkedIn’s Professional Community Policies at: https://www.linkedin.com/legal/professional-community-policies“
Therefore, I replied accordingly “I have now read the information on User Agreement and Professional Community Policies and agree to abide by LinkedIn’s Terms and not to violate them again. ”
Conclusion
In summary, a statement which is within the scope of what well-known Israeli historians previously expressed and which was the first such issue on the LinkedIn platform, resulted in:
- the immediate removal of the comment without specific information what comment was removed and why the comment was removed
- suspension of the account without without information how to appeal and regain access to the account
- requests for authentication of my identity, which finally where not (!) required to open my account again
To be clear, by suspending my user account LinkedIn, thereby, removed my access to my virtual professional network and parts of my social network (ca 2000 connections), which I consider a severe penalty. Even if the account finally was restored with the help of friends, this causes substantial work and stress to re-open the account.
I got access to my account after another 1-2 days after the LinkedIn Trust & Safety center agreed to reopen it after about 12 days since the account was closed. Since I do not want to lose my account again, I have now restricted my posts to job-related topics.
Postscript
One could argue, that LinkedIn did nothing wrong since the company can arbitrarily set their own rules (ie, User Agreement and Professional Community Policies) , eg limiting communciation to business-related topics, and I by signing up for the service I am also obliged to follow. However, if people accept that electronic social networks are controlled by corporate interests, in connection with political agendas, a fundamental pilar of democracy, which is freedom of speech and the market of ideas, especially on controversial topics, will be eroded. Although people still could talk to each other in real life, this would put themselves at a severe disadvantage in comparison to the vast electronic social networks, which are controlled by corporations or political organisations.
Therefore, there is an urgent need for safe, trustworthy, open social networks on which people can discuss all relevant topics which are personally or publicly relevant without interference by corporate or political interests, eg, war, climate crisis, corporate and political corruption. Federated social networks, which are primarily characterized by the communication protocols, which they are using, and not the servers, on which user accounts are stored. Exciting examples for such federated social networks are:
- Peer-based/Topic-based network (“Instant Messenger”): Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), which is implemented, for example, in the “Conversations” software (cf https://conversations.im)
- Influence-based networks:
- ActivityPub Protocol (APP, apub), which is implemented, for example, in the MASTODON software (https://joinmastodon.org)
- Authenticated Transfer Protocol (ATP, atproto), whic is implemented, for example in the BLUESKY software (https://bsky.app)
Especially, the Authenticated Transfer Protocol, is very promising, because it is build on the principle that users own their data and their connnections, which allows them to move their account to another server, eg, after being suspended, without losing personal data or their network.
In the absence of such networks, in my opinion it is the right of the people to use available infrastructures in the interest of the public good.
Finally, I think a political democracy cannot exist without an economic democracy [12, 13], where also people decide on the rules of how companies are run and how these organisations best serve the common good. This also applies to corporate social networks and their users.
References:
[1] https://biosphere.wilmarigl.de
[2] https://withpersona.com
[3] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tarek-ba%C3%A9-995011138_au%C3%9Fenministerin-baerbock-verteidigt-vor-dem-activity-7251677665688993792-RPrG
[4] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7251677556171522048?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28ugcPost%3A7251677556171522048%2C7251681808201768960%29&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287251681808201768960%2Curn%3Ali%3AugcPost%3A7251677556171522048%29
[5] https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/ask/default-social
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avi_Shlaim
[7] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/amie-siriphong-19491824_the-words-of-the-israeli-historian-activity-7257157797140664320-JpX1?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BKoxT6ZRog (part of speech)
[9] https://espirian.co.uk/linkedin-help/
[10] https://edri.org
[11] https://biosphere.wilmarigl.de/en/
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_demand
English 
German