Earlier this year LinkedIn quietly introduced a new featured called S.W.A.M. designed to reduce the volume of spam and unsolicited sales pitches on their platform.
S.W.A.M. is short for Sitewide Auto Moderation and, in a nutshell, means that if one LinkedIn Group Manager blocks a person from their group, all future posts from that person to any other group will be placed into a moderation queue and not automatically published to group’s members.
While this is great news for the fight against spam and other misconduct in LinkedIn groups, it can be painful if a group manager decides to block someone who inadvertently breaks a rule. Group managers therefore should only use use block group members as a last resort; a simple reminder email about the group rules might have more desirable results.
For individual group members who find themselves the subject of a block it can be a painful and time-consuming exercise to ensure that future posts will be seen by other group members. Currently the only course of action is to contact the manager of each group to which you wish to post content and request that they unrestrict your posting permissions for their group. You’re unlikely to find out which group manager blocked you because LinkedIn never discloses details of which groups have blocked an individual. Your only recourse is to contact group managers one by one to request reinstatement of normal auto-posting status.
In summary: Group Managers should only block group members as a last resort and Group Members should take great care to ensure they play by each group’s rules. A SWAM block is a painful penalty for innocent mistakes, but a welcome new weapon to help reduce the volume of spam and other unwelcome behaviour in group discussions.
You can read more about SWAM on the LinkedIn Help Center.