LinkedIn's Default Opt-In Turned 930 Million Profiles Into Training Data

Consent, in LinkedIn's implementation, was not removed — it was relocated. The platform's privacy policy update placed the opt-out control inside settings menus that most users do not visit, with framing that positions AI training as a product improvement rather than a data transfer ^[13]. The practical consequence is that the burden of refusal fell on each of 930 million users individually, while the benefit of their collective data accrued to the platform and to the models trained on it . This is not a novel architecture — it mirrors…