World's largest professional social network website LinkedIn is facing a lawsuit by its premium users for allegedly sharing personal messages of users with other companies to train artificial intelligence (AI) models. The US lawsuit claimed that the platform, in August last year, "quietly" introduced privacy settings that automatically made the users opt into a programme allowing third parties to use their data.
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The lawsuit further accused LinkdIn, owned by Microsoft, of trying to conceal the action by changing its privacy policy after a month in which it was mentioned that the users' data could be disclosed by LinkdIn for training AI.
However, LinkedIn rejected all the allegations.
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The lawsuit alleged that the platform further changed its 'frequently asked questions' section, which now says that a user can choose not to share their data for AI training, but the decisions could not change the training that had already taken place.
"LinkedIn's actions... indicate a pattern of attempting to cover its tracks," the lawsuit claimed, BBC reported.
It further adds, "This behaviour suggests that LinkedIn was fully aware that it had violated its contractual promises and privacy standards and aimed to minimise public scrutiny."
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The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a LinkedIn Premium user, and everyone else in the same situation, in a California federal court.
In return, the lawsuit asked for $1,000 for each user who was the victim of the alleged violation.
LinkedIn has around a billion users across the globe, and almost a quarter of them are based in the US.
The platform earned $1.7 billion in 2023 in revenue from premium subscriptions.
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(With inputs from agencies)