Ask HN: Why is LinkedIn so broken?

by garyfirestorm on 9/17/2020, 8:52 PM with 11 comments

I wrote a little script in python which uses selenium to unfollow everyone on LinkedIn. After a certain amount of unfollows, LinkedIn stopped showing me the people that I follow. The total number of people that I follow remains ~50, but the page doesn't return any more results. I should be able to see those 50 people in my follow list (so I can click unfollow button). Something this simple shouldn't be broken.

  • by dylz on 9/17/2020, 8:54 PM

    It's not broken, you're just doing something horribly forbidden and bannable and LinkedIn would love to make automating your browser a felony.

    NB: This is mildly in jest, but also not really.

  • by gkbrk on 9/17/2020, 8:58 PM

    LinkedIn's sales pitch is basically a connected professional network of people that interact with each other, topics. and companies a lot.

    Their second strong point is the fact that they have valuable data hidden in their social graph.

    Automating a browser to unfollow companies basically undermines both of their valuable assets, so they are not interested in making this process seamless.

    Good thing they are hit with lawsuits that make it a precedent to allow them to be scraped.

  • by sdevonoes on 9/18/2020, 8:19 AM

    Another approach that I sometimes follow (adapted to your scenario):

    - go to your follow list (manually, via Chrome or whatever browser you are using)

    - execute your unfollow script in the dev console (so, yes, it must be rewritten in JS)

    - go to your next follow list page (or refresh the page, or scroll down... I don't actually know how the follow list page looks like in linkedin)

    - have some patience and you'll end up unfollowing everyone on linkedin

    It's what I call pseudo-scraping: yes, there is some automation (the JS script) but it requires manual intervention (manual scroll down, clicking next page, etc.). So far, it has always worked for me.

  • by fiftyacorn on 9/17/2020, 9:14 PM

    Would be interesting if that fifty are paying for linkedin membership

  • by amerkhalid on 9/18/2020, 3:27 PM

    It is likely a bug, some cache needs updating somewhere. I had similar issue with Twitter. I used some sort of extension to delete my old tweets. It removed all of the tweets but tweets count didn't change. I am sure count is cached somewhere and when a job or some event triggers update, it will go down.

  • by forgotmypw17 on 9/18/2020, 3:06 AM

    Why do thieves steal? Why do fraudsters commit fraud? Doesn't matter.

    Once you know, you'd be smart to no longer trust them, no matter how enticing.

    I deleted my account years ago, nullrouted their email, and haven't looked back since.

  • by garyfirestorm on 9/18/2020, 3:38 AM

    I was very annoyed with facebook like wall feed. So I figured I'll unfollow everyone except for few really important colleagues. I guess I can't control what's on my feed.

  • by stakkur on 9/17/2020, 11:03 PM

    Remember, when you say 'LinkedIn' you're really saying 'Microsoft'. That's most of the answer to your question.