Linkedin putting pressure on users to enable location tracking

I got this email from Linkedin this morning. It is telling me that they are going to change my location from “Auckland, New Zealand” to “Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand“.

Email from Linkedin on 30 August 2020

Since “Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand” sounds stupid to New Zealanders (Auckland is pretty much a big city with a single job market and is not a state or similar) I clicked on the link and opened the application to stick with what I currently have

Except the problem is that the pulldown doesn’t offer many any other locations

The only way to change the location is to click “use Current Location” and then allow Linkedin to access my device’s location.

According to the help page:

By default, the location on your profile will be suggested based on the postal code you provided in the past, either when you set up your profile or last edited your location. However, you can manually update the location on your LinkedIn profile to display a different location.

but it appears the manual method is disabled. I am guessing they have a fixed list of locations in my postcode and this can’t be changed.

So it appears that my options are to accept Linkedin’s crappy name for my location (Other NZers have posted problems with their location naming) or to allow Linkedin to spy on my location and it’ll probably still assign the same dumb name.

The basically appears to be a way for Linkedin to push user to enable location tracking. While at the same time they get to force their own ideas on how New Zealand locations work on users.

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