The career- and business-oriented social media platform LinkedIn has been absent from the public conversation around the topic of health misinformation, as compared to more informal platforms like Facebook and Twitter. While LinkedIn’s policies state that it prohibits “content directly contradicting guidance from leading global health organizations and public health authorities”, anecdotal user reports paint a different picture. To determine whether LinkedIn enforces its policies on health misinformation, we obtained a sample of 61 posts, in English or French, identified as containing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and flagged them through LinkedIn’s reporting mechanism. We found that more than two-thirds of these posts received no moderation despite violating LinkedIn policies. Our findings indicate a significant discrepancy between LinkedIn’s public stance on health misinformation and its actual enforcement of its policies.
The conversation around the subject of dangerous misinformation on social media platforms has centered heavily on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and even the relatively new player TikTok. Curiously, LinkedIn, the career- and business-oriented social media platform that launched in 2003 has been spared the same level of scrutiny.
However, LinkedIn has proved to be vulnerable to misinformation like other platforms. For starters, its Transparency Report for the first half of 2021 reported “record-high engagement...
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