Most recruiters view a LinkedIn profile as an invite to reach out to almost anyone, and many recruiters apparently are reaching out to people who explicitly say "please, don't contact me if you're a recruiter".
There used to be an "interested in" section at the bottom of profiles. It appears to be gone now, and you could check off things like "Career opportunities", "networking", etc. That section appears to be gone now.
Using LinkedIn isn't lazy for recruiters, it's smart - it's just the easiest way to find people. The easiest way to find active job seekers would be resume/job boards.
Recruiters who limit themselves to only using LinkedIn to identify potential candidates are lazy. Many devs could be found in a host of other places, and many like you don't want to be on LinkedIn.
The other reason recruiters tend to rely on LinkedIn is they can get quite a bit of value out of it even at the free level.
Managed to stay away from LinkedIn, don't post on Twitter, FB and still get calls once in a while. They probably scour language / platform specific mailing lists or look at conference attendance lists.
Tangental, but are there any laws against SMS recruiter spam in the U.S.? Some recruiters have found my SMS somehow and text me with offers now. Mildly infuriating.
I don't know about laws, but your cell provider should have information about where to report spam texts, and those would certainly qualify. You should get reimbursed for the charges (since SMS in the US makes no sense and receivers pay for them).
There's a good reason for me not to have a linkedin profile. Recruiters somehow still manage to find me but this is fortunately less of a problem than it would be otherwise (judging by my colleagues and friends).
It's a bit like not being visible in google: if you can't google it, it doesn't exist. And if you're not on linkedin the laziest contingent of the recruiting profession will be unable to locate you. Fine by me.