“Social advertising”. It sounds so innocuous. But it isn’t. It means that simply by “liking” something on LinkedIn, or if you “take other actions”, they can use your name and photo in third-party advertising. Pricks.

I’ve written about this in Crikey today, LinkedIn pulls a Facebook-like swifty on ‘social advertising’. I called them “exploitative”. I compared them to the “consumer-grade arseholes at Facebook”. I stand by all of that, and more.

I asked how LinkedIn could be so stupid. But it’s more than that.

Just what sort of mindset do LinkedIn’s executives have if they reckon this is an acceptable way to do business with people?

To me it indicates that they have no idea how people might react to discovering their face in someone else’s advertising. Or, if they do realise that, a disturbingly callous disregard for others, putting their business profits before their basic responsibilities as human beings.

Is that antisocial personality disorder? That seems to be what we call being a psychopath these days.

If you’re a LinkedIn user and want to opt out of all this, go to where your name is displayed on the top right of your LinkedIn screen and click on “Settings”. Click on “Account” at the bottom left of screen, then “Manage Social Advertising”.

[Disclosure: I receive a free LinkedIn Pro account as part of their media outreach program.]

Actually not quite all. There’s a challenge or two which need to be planned. You’ll see what I mean… more soon.

According to the research, organizational behaviour which mirrors the characteristics of psychopaths include:

• Unconcern for others’ feelings (for example, harsh treatment of employees, customers and partners, sudden terminations of employment contracts and business contracts)
• Inability to maintain human relations (transferring business operations from country to country in order to minimize production expenses- constant change of employees and partners)
• Disregard for others’ safety (products and production methods endangering human health and the environment, dangerous working conditions)
• Dishonesty and lying to one’s own advantage (keeping silent about the risks of hazardous products and production methods, covering them up and denying their existence, deceiving employees, customers and partners)
• Inability to feel guilt — when exposed of wrong-doing, asserting innocence (denial), blaming others (projection) and justifying one’s action (rationalisation)
• Inability to observe the laws and norms of society (breaking human rights, labour, contract and environmental laws and agreements when it is economically more beneficial than observing them)

The research will be published in the next edition of Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management.