The Box Ticked While You Read This: LinkedIn, AI Training, and the Switch You Did Not Flip
LinkedIn has a setting that allows the platform to use user data for training generative AI models, which is enabled by default. Most users are likely unaware that their data is being utilized unless they actively opt out. The article discusses the implications of this feature and the timeline of its implementation, particularly in relation to privacy regulations in Europe and the UK.
- ▪The 'Data for Generative AI Improvement' setting on LinkedIn is enabled by default for most users.
- ▪LinkedIn uses public profile information and content for AI training, but not private messages.
- ▪The feature was introduced without prior consent, leading to concerns about user awareness and data privacy.
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | DEV.to (Top) |
| Canonical URL | https://dev.to/vivian-voss/the-box-ticked-while-you-read-this-linkedin-ai-training-and-the-switch-you-did-not-flip-2040 |
| Publication time | Sat, 23 May 2026 07:54:11 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-23T08:07:25.785Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-23T08:07:25.785Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | I5rAerXKZZOO |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 3841501) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } Vivian Voss Posted on May 23 • Originally published at vivianvoss.net The Box Ticked While You Read This: LinkedIn, AI Training, and the Switch You Did Not Flip #privacy #ai #linkedin #dataprotection Not in the Brief (4 Part Series) 1 The Browser That Brought Its Own AI 2 The Vault That Stays Open: Microsoft Edge 3 The Screenshot Diary: Microsoft Recall, the Vault, and the Wall Next to It 4 The Box Ticked While You Read This: LinkedIn, AI Training, and the Switch You Did Not Flip…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at DEV.to (Top).
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