Manchester PR guru, author, and City Life founder Andy Spinoza is back on LinkedIn after a four-month lock out during which he said the only person he could turn to for help was a Microsoft bot named Zoya.
Spinoza told Prolific North at the time: “LinkedIn explicitly state they offer an appeal, but this person/bot who has handled my case says I will have no appeal. ‘Zoya’ also says that my account is being restricted because of the ‘severity and / or number of violations’ – which is simply one empty, unused duplicate account. My crime seems to be one of mild technical ineptness, which is being treated with excessive harshness,” he told Prolific North.”
Spinoza primarily uses his account to his account to promote himself for speaking opportunities through his agency Pomona Partners, to contact people in the course of research for his next Manchester history book and, of course, to plug his last one – Manchester Unspun.
Bizarrely, it has now emerged that Spinoza’s previous account appears to have been hacked by someone who was purporting to be from a wine supplier in the US who was inviting various US middle market execs to connect and, one can only assume, buy wine.
His restored account is now under the name of ‘Andrew Spinoza,’ rather than his preferred Andy Spinoza, although the two old Andy Spinoza accounts still appear in searches, despite having now been deleted
Spinoza marked his return to the platform with a link to a new story he has written for The Mill about Manchester’s connections to hit US sitcom Frasier, which made the intriguing casting decision of having an Essex-born Southerner, Jane Leeves, adopt a thick Lancashire accent to play Cheers psychologist Frasier Crane’s trusty helper Daphne Moon, while Mancunian actor John Mahoney was required to feign being American as lead Kelsey Grammer’s dad.
He added on a reply to a comment welcoming him back to the world’s favourite source of information on B2B funnels and wellness podcasts that his return to the platform had been “complicated.”
Spinoza’s LinkedIn lock out is in stark contrast to the experience of Manchester tech entrepreneur Naomi Timperley, who was harassed and abused on the platform for months by convicted stalker and social media consultant Samantha Wall and received little to no assistance in her attempts to have her abuser sanctioned by LinkedIn’s customer service team. Wall is currently awaiting sentencing following a fourth adjournment in June.
