I got a cease & desist letter from Linkedin ... This is what platform risk looks like.
Last week I got Cease & Desist from Linkedin for SuperSend.io
If you're unfamiliar with platform risk ... this is what it looks like.
We are of course complying but also it reminds me of this Banksy quote:
"You are an acceptable level of threat and if you were not you would know about it"
When buying or building any business today that relies heavily on a 3rd party, you are subject to platform risk. Most of the time this works out fine. Plenty of Shopify apps have been wildly successful. Same goes for Twitter products (oh wait, except when overnight they 100x the cost of access to the API).
Some other examples:
- Gmail saying what you can and can't build with their API
- Google search algorithm updates
- Facebook algorithm updates that hurt Zynga, etc.
- Talk of banning TikTok in the US.
Just want to warn others that may not be aware of this when building a new idea. Building on top of an existing platform has a ton of benefits. But there are significant risks.
Right now, I see a ton of people building off of Open AI. I've seen a few cease and desist letters from them about using gpt in the domain name. But it could get much worse. They could decide suddenly that they don't like the way you are using their api and decide to shut you off.
Most will not have any issues, but some will one day wake up to a Cease & Desist letter and over night their business will be dead.
Super Send will be fine. We have already complied and will live to fight another day.
Beware platform risk!
I am not sure if it is a platform risk when you are in breach of contract, in this case, the LinkedIn User Agreement. Because there was no “risk” involved, it was a “platform harm” – because the uncertainty was not around an “if”, but rather a “when”. LI, similar to everyone else out there, will defend its core offerings.
As a rule of thumb, you should know the platform you are building upon. It might change tomorrow, and that's your platform risk.
Everyone knows that these thing are against linkedin's TOS. Don't be coy.
I'm shocked that they haven't pursued damages from your company.
Sorry for your loss, but at the same time LOL at getting caught building a bot :)
Look at Lemlist though ... they do everything we do at 1000x the scale. They're valued at $150M + and Linkedin decided to go after a solo dev with a tiny amount of customers.
Once again I'm truly sorry for your loss. It must be frustrating and seem wildly unfair.
If it's any constellation, you are not alone in this. I've see a few similar products just get yoinked from the internet in the past 30 days.
Good luck.
Nothing wrong with building a business upon a platform - just got to make sure you build a brand and a product that can continue even when that platform stops allowing you to use it.
Glad to here you're still up and running!
Scraping content from LinkedIn continues from the date I've stumbled on the platform.
The thing is: LikedIn don't want you to earn money!
They want to keep new accounts registering on the platform, they want to keep visitors on the platform as long as possible, paying for ads and sales navigator.
If you, as a middle man scape and sell data to someone, - you literally grab a piece of pie from LinkedIn...
Yeah currently building a startup with the OpenAI API - definitely a risk, but one I'm willing to take since I cant just train an LLM in my backyard. Should be many more LLMs coming out in the future making it less risky.
It's always been widely known that LinkedIn is extremely hostile to scraping. Calling it "platform risk" is understating it.
damn thats scary, happy that super send is still living on tho!