Professional networks: how to verify claims from their own documents

Most of what circulates about professional networks is repetition. A figure appears in a press release, is picked up by a trade site, rounded by a journalist, and quoted by a consultant. By the time it reaches you it is confirmed only by its own echo, which is circular reporting.

The way out is not a better secondary source but a primary one. Go to the service's own documents and read what they actually say, which is usually less than the claim and more precise.

This page is a method for doing that: which document answers which kind of question, how to quote it so the answer stays checkable, and what to do when no document answers at all.

What to take away

Match the claim to the document

The gap in the table is the point. No row covers "how many people use it" or "how many hires it produced," because no document a reader can check settles those, for all the reasons a platform figure is not a measurement.

The service publishes a figure it defines, and that figure describes what the service chose to count.

The reading discipline

Read the definition before the number. Any figure a service publishes comes with a footnote saying what it counts. The footnote is the fact. The number is a summary of it.

Read the qualifiers before the sentence. A policy that says data "may" be shared with "partners" for "service improvement" has told you three things it can do and nothing it will do. Quote the sentence with its qualifiers intact.

The model sentence below shows the pattern. It is written to illustrate the class, not quoted from one company:

"We may share your information with trusted partners and service providers to operate and improve our services, and where required by law."

Count the qualifiers: may, trusted, partners, providers, operate, improve, required by law. Each one narrows what was promised.

Find the effective date. Terms and policies carry one. A help article often carries only a last-updated stamp or none. If a document is undated, your checked date becomes its date, and the entry should say so.

Save a copy. Documents are revised in place. Without a copy you cannot show what the page said when you read it, and the next revision may silently remove the sentence you relied on. A saved copy with a timestamp is the difference between a citation and a memory.

Locate precisely. Section number, heading, or a short quoted phrase that a search will find. "The privacy policy says" is not a location.

Three worked claims

Each of these is a type of claim that turns up in every discussion of these services. The fictional wording is the sort of thing you hear; the method is real. The documents named below are real: LinkedIn's User Agreement, LinkedIn's Privacy Policy, and the LinkedIn Help Center. Indeed's help center and privacy policy work the same way.

"Profiles are verified." On LinkedIn, go to the Help Center and find the article on verification badges. It will name what was checked: a document, an email domain, a phone number, a payment method. That sentence, quoted, is the fact. The claim as stated is not wrong; it is empty until the check is named.

"Recruiters can see everything." Go to the pricing page for the recruiter product and to the member help article on visibility settings. Between them they describe what a paying searcher can see and what a member can hide. Quote both. The claim will usually turn out to be partly true, in a way that depends on a setting the member controls.

"They sell your data." Go to the privacy policy and find the section on sharing. It will list categories of recipients and purposes. Quote the categories. The word "sell" may or may not appear, and where it does it often carries a legal definition from a specific jurisdiction, which is worth noting as such rather than reading as ordinary English.

When the document does not exist

Some claims cannot be settled from anything public: how the ranking system weights a post, how many accounts are fake, whether a reported feature is live in your region, what the company plans.

Usage figures and hiring figures sit on that list permanently. No document a reader can check will ever settle how many people use a service or how many hires it produced, because no service publishes a count with a method attached. Record those as unverifiable, not as temporarily missing.

For these, the honest record has three parts: the claim, the document classes you searched, and the date. That beats a guess. It tells the next person not to repeat the search and the reader the claim is unsupported rather than contested.

Resist the temptation to fill the gap from a secondary source. A trade article quoting an unnamed insider is not a document; it is a claim with a different author.

Keeping the record

A verification record for one claim fits in five fields, and it sits beside the directory entry rather than inside it.

A profile makes claims of its own, and they need the same discipline. A member's job title has no document behind it, so the record names the member as the only source. Keep the two records side by side, because much confusion comes from treating a profile's claim and a platform's claim as the same kind of thing.

Common questions

Is the help center reliable?

It is the service's own description of its own behavior, so it is reliable about what the service intends and unreliable about what is actually live for you today. Where the difference matters, test it with an account and record the test beside the quote.

A read receipt claim is settled by sending a message and checking the second account. That is how the testable claims on a messaging service are handled.

A news article says the policy changed. Do I need the policy?

Yes. The article tells you to look; the policy tells you what changed. Read the new version, diff it against your saved copy, and quote the difference.

What about claims in the service's own marketing?

Marketing is a document class too, and it is quotable. It is just the class with the loosest definitions and no effective dates. Treat a marketing claim as a prompt to find the help article or policy that would have to be true for it to hold.

How much of this is worth doing for an ordinary decision?

Very little of it, for a decision about where to keep a profile. All of it, for a claim you are going to publish, rely on in a dispute, or use to advise someone else.