Large previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20214752

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18853607

So in an effort to thwart scraping of LinkedIn data, they're actively scraping the local browser of every single user.

I have a hard time calling it linkedin's data when it belongs to the users.

I may be wrong here but I assume linkedin's user's don't have a strong preference if their data is searchable by anyone or just people who pay linkedin thousands of dollars for one of their paid accounts.

How do you know the purpose is to prevent scraping? It could be some general marketing drive or general snoop for whatever other invented privacy invasive reason.

Because linkedin has been involved in a few lawsuits to try to stop people from user's data from their site. And the browser extensions they scan for are scraping extensions.

I figured it was to help them track users.

LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. These things make me very hesitant using Github (another Microsoft outlet) more. First make it dominant then milk it to the bone?

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

They have been doing it for years.

I just interviewed with GH and they claimed MS hasn’t interfered, having learned lessons from earlier buyouts.

Sounds like it was more of a goodwill gesture to stabilize a resource important to the internet.

Tbh LinkedIn could very well have bubbled this up if their culture was untouched. Never really seemed like much more than Facebook curated for professional profile content. Pretty like minded sort of snooping, IMO.

Not saying MS isn’t interfering and GH is selling a line. Also no evidence this isn’t just LinkedIn hiring the same kind of people. They’re kind of all over.

Standard procedure on acquisitions is to not rock the boat in the first few years to keep the institutional knowledge from fleeing. Then you borgify with new management.

I guess this partially explains why LinkedIn is the worst performing website/SPA that I (have to) use on a regular basis.

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but for last 1-2 days I've noticed that whenever I open a LinkedIn tab, my MBP Fan goes in overdrive. Verified that it's LinkedIn by checking activity monitor.

Can we get a 2019 in the title?

s/will scan/is scanning/?

Yes, that's what it means. They do scan when/if you visit them. I'm not a native, but "is scanning" doesn't sound right here because it means that it's happening right now. However, the title says "the browser" (i.e. the browser of whoever visits) and that is not happening right now, only when that browser does visit. So, I'd say that "is scanning" should go with "browsers" (i.e. they are scanning the browsers in general, not a specific browser).

But anyway, the sentence means what you think it should :).

In general, the working assumption is that this would be limited to LinkedIn's own website, or I suspect this would be a much larger issue ;) The way I interpreted the title is "LinkedIn will do this in the future" rather than "LinkedIn is doing this now if you use their website".