That's pretty much what I thought, i.e "LinkedIn spent considerable effort building something that very few of their users want".

Thanks for confirming that there's no evidence otherwise.

It's more common than you may think, especially for companies where the user is not a paying customer and the feature benefits the company. Sure somebody wants this feature. Somebody who works for linkedin and isn't a security geek.

And for companies with poor-decision-making skills or short-term thinking.