Networking site LinkedIn will allow academics to access its data for their studies but assures users that proper privacy protections will remain in place. The move is an expansion of previous collaborative effort that produced “path-breaking findings,” the Microsoft-owned company said.
Triblive posted this Bloomberg report:
“The data will be restricted to only those whose academic proposals have been approved. The researchers will only have access to aggregate, anonymized data and will only be able to use it within a secure “sandbox,” (LinkedIn chief data officer) Perisic wrote. That means they won’t be able to download the data themselves.
The academics will not be able to “obtain or retain data beyond the scope of the research project,” LinkedIn said. Its legal and security teams will vet all proposals to access the data, and only projects related to “economic opportunity with an eye toward enabling a level playing field for economic outcomes” will be approved.
[…]
“The company is calling for academics to submit project ideas in three broad areas: analytics, economics and artificial intelligence. It will select teams on a rolling basis, Perisic said, with probably no more than a dozen teams being allowed to access the data at one time.”
