LinkedIn is Protecting Your Right to IDK My LinkedIn Invitation

By Neal Schaffer

Image by Neal Schaffer

In my one of my first blog posts, I wrote about what a LinkedIn IDK is and why you should know.  You have the ability to block people on Twitter and Facebook, and LinkedIn gives you a similar ability to block someone by disconnecting with someone, although in the case of LinkedIn you have to connect with them before you can block them (yes, I know, it sounds strange).  But the policy on penalizing someone without either the sender or recipient knowing it, which is the case of replying to a LinkedIn Invitation with an “I Don’t Know” or IDK, is simply unfair to all parties because it is not a transparent rule for everyone to see and truly understand until after the fact.  The person who selects “I Don’t Know,” in fact, may never know how that may have affected the person on the sending end.

As a LinkedIn LION, I have followed the golden rule and have never responded to someone’s invitation with an “IDK.”  If I am not interested in connecting with someone, I simply archive the invitation.  I have contacted people who responded to my invitation with an IDK, and after hearing the consequences of their decision, they actually decided to connect with me to negate their original IDK selection.  I do believe that many people may not be so trigger-happy on the “IDK” response if they knew the consequences.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago.

I received an email from LinkedIn Customer Service about my Windmill Networking LinkedIn Group being restricted.  That’s funny, I thought.  It was a new group with not too many followers and I wasn’t doing anything controversial with it.  But it was one line in my Group Profile, which said “We do not IDK” which caught the eye of LinkedIn.  And for that they restricted the Group.

Open networking LinkedIn Groups have been around for years, and many have group membership in the thousands if not tens of thousands.  Why pick on a group that was so small?  Well, it was that wording.  But it was more than that, something that I did not even think of that LinkedIn enlightened me on:

“Your group title and/or description currently have terminology that advises users to not use the functionality choices that we offer for our members to make the appropriate personal choice regarding the receipt of an invitation to connect. The clear instruction to not use the “I Don’t Know/IDK” option as a condition for acceptance of membership or maintenance of membership is in direct conflict with the spirit of LinkedIn.”

To be honest with you, I never thought of the flip side of the equation, that being able to utilize the IDK functionality is a right that those minority of people on LinkedIn have the right to use.  It’s almost like a Freedom of Speech debate, but you have to give the opposing side a right to voice their opinion.  So, while I still would never use the IDK, it is no longer a criteria for joining my Windmill Networking Group.  Of course, after reading my book and seeing the potential for connecting with someone on LinkedIn, I don’t think that anyone joining my group would ever use the IDK, but they do have the right to use it should they see fit.

I do understand and applaud what LinkedIn is trying to do, and as a supporter and advocate of LinkedIn, I feel it is my right to tell their side of the story as they told me.  But I would like to add some suggestions for you that are even better alternatives to avoid the IDK situation:

1. If you don’t want to receive LinkedIn Invitations in the first place, as I mentioned in my previous post on How to Keep a LinkedIn Profile Private, in your Account Settings you can filter your invitations to accept only those from people that either know your email address or those that you imported from your address book when you first sent out invitations.  If you choose this, you should know everyone that invites you and thus have no need to IDK someone.
2. If you want to be selective as to what LinkedIn Invitations you will accept, please update your Contact Settings appropriately so that you are not false advertising.  After all, if you are clear in your Contact Settings as to who you want to receive invitations from and that person totally ignores your request, the burden is on the sender to confirm this before sending out the invitation.
3. If you think you are truly being “spammed” by a fake LinkedIn profile, why not go one step further and select the “Report as Spam” text? Hopefully if we all did this we can help LinkedIn rid themselves of the real spammers.

LinkedIn is protecting your right to respond to an invite with an IDK, and I can accept that this is a fundamental functionality of LinkedIn that cannot and should not be ignored.  But before you select that “I Don’t Know” button, think of the alternatives that exist to prevent receiving such invitations in the future.  Thank you.