- LinkedIn is trying to thwart the spread of misinformation fueled by the rise of artificial intelligence by verifying users — more than 55 million so far, the company said.
- The Microsoft-owned service said it has the most verified individual human identities of any social network.
- While Meta and X require users to pay for subscription services to receive verifications, LinkedIn said it has made “a sizable investment” to verify users free of charge.
LinkedIn has verified more than 55 million of its users, for free, in order to combat the spread of misinformation fueled by the rise of artificial intelligence, the company told CNBC.
The Microsoft-owned service said it has the most verified individual human identities of any major social network. In November, the company will begin showing its user verification badges within the primary LinkedIn feed.
“You now see things like deep-fake videos, photos that are increasingly harder with the naked eye to understand if they’re real or fake,” Oscar Rodriguez, LinkedIn’s vice president of trust and safety, told CNBC in an interview. “That line-blurring is what we believe poses a significant challenge in combating things like misinformation, faking expertise and so forth.”
LinkedIn began verifying users in April 2023. The move followed social media platform X’s decision in November 2022 to require users who wanted a verification badge to subscribe to its premium service, and came shortly after Meta launched Meta Verified, a subscription service that allowed Facebook and Instagram users to receive verification badges for their profiles.
Social networks are stepping up their efforts to weed out inauthentic activity, including scams and misinformation, across their services. The rise of generative AI technology since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022 has made it easier and cheaper for people to create fake accounts and content on social media.
While peers are charging users for verification, LinkedIn is verifying people for free, and using a two-pronged strategy, with a goal of having 100 million users verified by 2025, the company said.