"seems excessively harsh" seems like a knowing understatement. It is not "excessive", it is incorrect. The link you posted provides clear language:

"Your profile photo may be removed by LinkedIn if it doesn’t comply"

According to this, the reason they were banned is not due to their avatar (but we can't know because LinkedIn has declined to elaborate, according to the OP).

The only context I didn't mention is I set up an ad campaign the week prior to boost a post for the startup in question. I suspect that this is what triggered the ID verification a few days later, which resulted in an "appeal denied" email.

I can only guess. But I did receive a confirmation email about my avatar being taken down due to their policy; and the appeal message mentions "misrepresenting my identity".

>According to this, the reason they were banned is not due to their avatar

That doesn't really follow. Especially since they specifically said the avator is the issue:

>they removed my avatar for not complying with the TOS.

Though unclear how OP is talking about both avatar removal AND account ban? Feels like perhaps half the story.

How they got from avatar issue to a whole account ban I can't tell you but I'd imagine there is something in the ToS that makes it viable (impersonation etc).

Not saying it's fair ofc...but plausible

> Though unclear how OP is talking about both avatar removal AND account ban? Feels like perhaps half the story.

Timeline:

Day 1: Account is restricted/blocked, on login I'm presented with ID verification and a "we'll let you know".

Day 2: I receive an email as a follow up to the ID verification. "Your appeal has been denied and your account will remain restricted". No reason given beyond having "misrepresented my identity".

Day 2.5: Slightly later, I receive an email saying my avatar has been removed because it didn't comply with the TOS and I should upload a real photo.

I didn't have it removed until after the account got restricted. I'll happily forward you the emails if you send the $10 to anything listed here: https://help.gov.ua/en/

Sounds like it wasn't really a bet, then.

Not everything you read on the Internet is true.

I had no idea about this policy. Then again, I hate linkedin with a passion. However, I'm pretty sure I saw tons of violations of this policy all over the place, so I bet this is going to result in a lot of bans if they happen to be doing a crackdown.

The funny thing is, on a platform like linkedin, my instinct would be to use an actual photograph. But in protest of a policy like this, I'd rather just have nothing instead.

The whole photographs thing is a real mixed bag anyways. Seeing a picture to jog your memory is sometimes great.

But it's also a great way to enable racial and age discrimination: see the face and decide you interpret all the rest of the context in the profile differently (even inadvertently).

Sure, you'll know the race / age / etc eventually, but at least if the person is in the door they have a chance instead of getting chucked in the bin during screening.

This is very true. Further its not only true of people you would consider bigots. We can all fall victim to unconscious biases. Unfortunately if only people of a certain stripe omit them there is no reason believe it would be effective. People respond well to pictures.

This can be enabled in truth by names as well. Most notably obviously for race/national origin. A notable study found that the exact resume received fewer call backs when the name was a typical white name vs a name indicative of ethnicity. To a lesser extent you can also consider age in relation to name as some names have drastically increased or decreased in popularity over time.

This makes me think that a productive solution would have to take place in HR as opposed to grass roots. Ideally you really want people to review candidates initially without benefit of name or face and only after selecting a subset view potentially biasing information.

Maybe there should be a HR mode for LinkedIn which by default hides these details and shows other items while allowing you to make a saved list of prospective hires to pass down the food chain.

Let's be real here. Ageism is perhaps the last widely accepted prejudice in the tech industry (and probably more broadly). People who'd shrink in horror at admitting to a skin color or gender based prejudice freely dismiss "old people" for most software jobs. It's rampant.

Yup, but I didn't know that (and when I signed up, it pulled my profile picture from Google, so I didn't think anything of it), and I wasn't given a chance to fix it.

They even sent an email after the ban giving me a "friendly heads up" that my profile pictures has been taken down, and advising me to upload a new one. If I had gotten that email a day before I could have done something about it...

The help article says it can be removed, but it doesn't say anything about the account getting altogether blocked with no warning...

I wonder how long they've had this policy in place. I've been using the same, illustrated self-portrait on LinkedIn since 2008.