The Brief Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has opened an investigation into LinkedIn over claims the platform misleads consumers and profits from fake or inactive  ghost jobs.  Investigators are probing whether LinkedIn violated state consumer protection laws by charging up to $70 a month for Premium services that promote these fake listings. The state is currently demanding documents and data from the company, but no lawsuit or formal charges of wrongdoing have been filed yet.



The Texas Attorney General's office has opened an investigation into LinkedIn over allegations that the professional networking platform misleads consumers with advertising and profiting from misleading or fake job listings, otherwise known as  ghost jobs. 

LinkedIn investigation

In this photo illustration a Linkedin logo seen displayed on a mobile phone. (Photo Illustration by Stanislav Kogiku/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

What we know:

Texas announced on Tuesday it has issued a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) seeking documents, data and internal communications related to LinkedIn's advertising, marketing, job listing verification practices and its Premium subscription services.

The investigation centers on whether LinkedIn violated Texas' consumer protection laws by promoting paid subscription services while allegedly failing to disclose that some job listings on the platform may not actually be representative of hiring opportunities.

What is a  ghost job'?

An image of a woman holding a cell phone in front of a LinkedIn logo displayed on a computer screen. On Tuesday, January 12, 2021, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Dig deeper:

LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft and the world's largest professional networking platform, with more than 1 billion registered users worldwide.

A  ghost job  generally refers to a position advertised online that either is no longer available or that an employer has no immediate intention of filling. The attorney general's office cited independent studies estimating that ghost jobs account for between one-fift

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