LinkedIn experiment changed job prospects for millions — and it raises red flags: privacy experts

A five-year study by LinkedIn on nearly 20 million of its users raises ethical red flags since some unknowing participants in the social experiment likely had job opportunities curtailed, experts in data privacy and human resources suggest. 

The online networking and social media platform randomly varied the number of strong and weak acquaintances present in users "People You May Know" suggestions to test a long-held theory: that people are more likely to get a new job through distant acquaintances than they are close contacts. 

The resulting study, published in Science Magazine on Sept. 15, by LinkedIn, MIT, Stanford and Harvard researchers, confirmed the idea: users shown contacts with whom they had only 10 mutual friends doubled their chances of a new job, compared to those shown people with 20 mutual friends.

But that also means the LinkedIn users whose algorithms were inundated with "close contacts" — those with 20 or more mutual friends — connected with fewer opportunities through the networking site.

Given the possible consequences, it's unlikely many people would knowingly consent to have their network, and livelihoods, manipulated as they were for the study, said Jonathon Penney, a law professor whose research focuses on internet, society and data policy at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School.

It was "a huge number of people that could be negatively affected in terms of job prospects simply because of this study," Penney said of the 20 million subjects. More than five million participants were said to be from North America in the 2019 phase of the study. 

"Most users, if you asked them, would say there's no way they would have consented to this kind of study … I have real concerns with the ethics." 

While academics are held to a rigorous standard of ethics and disclosure, it's not unusual for marketing or media companies to use an algorithm to gauge the success of new products or services. It's a process known as A/B testing, in which users have access to different online tools or experiences to analyze how a person engages with it.

In an email to CBC News, a LinkedIn spokesperson said the company hoped to use the data to tailor its services.

"Through these observations we were able to determine that you're more likely to get a job from an acquaintance over your best friend," LinkedIn said in an email. "We can't wait to see how the study helps companies, recruiters and job seekers change the way we think about the labour market."

Though the company never notified its users of the experiment while it was underway, its privacy policy states that LinkedIn can use members' profiles to conduct research. 

But online privacy experts who spoke to CBC News suggest that the standard privacy policies people click through when registering for an online platform give the companies too much latitude in how they use people's information. 

In fact, the purpose limitation principle in Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) states that user data can only be used for the purpose declared at the moment of collection — but companies often push the envelope, said Ignacio Cofone, Canada Research Chair in artificial intelligence law and data governance at McGill University. 

"The problem … is that corporations very rarely know the purpose for which they're going to use data later on," Cofone said in an interview.