The pitfalls of using engagement pods on LinkedIn
Here's what pod services are not telling you.
Thinking of using an engagement pod to "increase your reach" on LinkedIn? Here's what these services are not telling their subscribers.
It's so tempting.
For tens of dollars a month, it's possible to sign up for a service to get 100 likes and comments - or more, for each of your post.
Beyond the obvious reasons which I've written about in the past, here are 3 new reasons this UnfilteredFriday why it's a bad idea.
Everything you do can be tracked
It's good to have social cred, isn't it? Just use it for a few months, grow your following first, and stop later. Nobody will be the wiser.
Hint: It's easy to start but hard to stop.
Well, there are those like D A N I E L H A L L who has made it a mission to track down pod users. A gifted coder, Daniel has written code that logs into the top pods out there.
And it had allowed him to see the most interesting things:
- Requests for 'likes'.
- Sample comments to use.
And his apps have been collecting logs - for years now.
At last count, he has a database of tens of thousands of users who have ever sent out requests for engagements across multiple pod services.
- Top influencers.
- Gurus selling LinkedIn training.
- Some senior leaders of large firms*.
- Even some LinkedIn Top Voices.
Don't take my word for it - ask him and he'll gladly tell you. Do you really want to be recorded as gaming the system?
*𝘓𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢 '𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴'.
They use the access to create new services
In the 2 months of posting daily in 2023, I subscribed to a new service that allowed me to schedule my LinkedIn posts, though I avoided the AI copying, I mean AI 'rewriting' features.
All good and well.
The next month, however, it suddenly launched a new, very high-end service offering the profiles of millions of users from their 'database'. Where did this data come from?
I never got a satisfactory answer and unsubscribed soon after.
But yes, it's possible for pods and dodgy service providers to profit from your connections because of the below reason.
Cancelling doesn't stop them
Most pod services work by making a copy of your authentication token. They then masquerade as you from their servers, engaging with others from your pod.
But unless you log out manually or explicitly revoke the session - invalidating the tokens - these services can continue to like and comment on others' posts.
This is not a theory but has been shown to happen. And LinkedIn cookies have a default expiration time: one year after their creation... which is a long time.
What are your thoughts about pods?
