Privacy expert sues LinkedIn in first case of AI defamation

Mr Hanff said his account, which has more than 11,000 followers, has been regularly “shadow-banned” over the past year over two issues he says the company has told him will not result in any action being taken against his account should.

When Mr. Hanff’s account is locked, his profile and posts cannot be seen by other users.

When he tries to send a private message to his contacts, the recipients can’t see his name and receive a warning that the account he’s using may be sending “unwanted or harmful content.”

“If one of my contacts tried to message me, or I message one of my contacts, LinkedIn will automatically send them a message that I may be sending them malicious content or that I may be a hacker,” Mr. Hanff said.

“It is totally inappropriate for someone who has built his entire career on cybersecurity, privacy and data protection and is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on these topics and has a great reputation.”

“I speak around the world on these issues. I am a technical adviser to the EU, the European Data Protection Board and the European Parliament. I have many clients who communicate with me on LinkedIn and I get a lot of business because of my reputation.

“The first time this came to my attention was when a customer messaged me to ask why they were getting these alerts. They thought my account was hacked. So I was really upset. I have contacted LinkedIn countless times to get them to stop doing this as it is totally inappropriate.”

Mr. Hanff has written over 50 articles on LinkedIn on privacy issues, but these become “invisible” when LinkedIn’s algorithms decide to restrict his account

Mr Hanff, who lives in Sweden but plans to move to Ireland because it is a European hub for tech companies, said he was initially told his account was restricted because his profile name and picture violated LinkedIn rules . His name includes the title “That Privacy Guy” and his profile picture is a comic book likeness of him.

“I know it’s an algorithm that’s to blame because they keep admitting that I’m not actually breaking any of their rules,” Mr. Hanff said.

“Every time I raise it, they’re like, ‘Okay, we looked at it and we found there wasn’t a violation of the rules, so we reinstated your account.’

“It’s just out of control. They cannot control their own algorithms, their own AI. They are so dependent on these AIs that they just take what they say as gospel. There is no human intervention until someone complains, then the ban is lifted. But they make no changes to the algorithm to prevent this from happening again. It’s a cycle that repeats and repeats.”

LinkedIn includes a feature that allows users to add an optional name, and Mr. Hanff used it to add “That Privacy Guy” to his profile title. He said he didn’t want to use a photo because he was concerned the image would be scraped off other websites. Instead, he commissioned an artist to draw a cartoon image that he believed conformed to LinkedIn’s rules.

Daragh O’Brien, who heads Castlebridge’s privacy advisers, has posted on LinkedIn that he found the site’s treatment of Mr Hanff defamatory after it “unearthed” her private messages during one of his shadow bans.

Mr. O’Brien said LinkedIn had an “Age of Ultron” tendency to target Mr. Hanff when he wrote posts critical of LinkedIn.

“This may be one of the first cases to be taken over by an algorithm, but it won’t be the last,” Mr O’Brien said. “As companies increasingly rely on automated processes without control, this will lead to more wrong decisions.”

Mr Hanff said he was forced to hire an Irish legal team to sue LinkedIn in Dublin, where it is based in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and employs around 1,800 people.

The Microsoft-owned company last year reported pre-tax profit of $176.35 million on sales of $4.62 billion. Mr. Hanff is represented by McGarr Solicitors, which includes Simon McGarr, a solicitor who also practices with Digital Rights Ireland.

LinkedIn said it has not commented on ongoing litigation. It hired attorneys for McCann Fitzgerald to defend it.

Mr. Hanff said he found it frustrating that LinkedIn continued to “slander” him with messages generated by its algorithms.

“They keep admitting that I’m not breaking their rules, but it still happens on a regular basis,” he said. “It’s not appropriate, it’s not okay, and it really needs to stop.”

Mr. Hanff also intends to sue LinkedIn for violating his privacy rights.