Why no tool can post your LinkedIn comments for you

LinkedIn does not let applications read comments on a member’s behalf: the permission required, r_member_social_feed, is granted to selected developers only. Writing comments is open; reading them is closed. BrandLoop therefore drafts the reply and leaves the sending to the person.

One of the more useful questions to ask of any personal-brand tool: which permission does it use to do what it promises?

The permissions are public and readable

LinkedIn’s developer documentation sorts permissions into open, partner and closed. Writing comments sits in the open category. Reading them is restricted, marked “granted to select developers only”. For reading messages, the only route is the compliance API, and LinkedIn’s own wording there is blunter still: access is closed and may not be requested.

What that means in practice

• A tool cannot read your comments through the API. If it reads them, it is using browser automation or a third-party scraper.
• A tool cannot send connection requests on your behalf. The User Agreement prohibits it directly.
• A tool cannot read your direct messages.

That clause binds the person using the tool, not the company selling it. It is your account that gets restricted. In BrandLoop this is step five of the flow; the questions section explains why your account is not at risk.

What an honest solution looks like

What can be done: the system writes the reply, you decide and you send. This is not a workaround. LinkedIn’s own conduct rules for approved partners describe exactly the same flow — the message must be tied to a member action, the member must be able to edit it, no scheduled automated sending. Even with approval you arrive at the same place.

The part that costs time is thinking of the reply, not pasting it.

Why LinkedIn keeps these permissions closed

No guesswork is needed here; the permission categories explain themselves. Write permissions are open, read permissions are closed. An app posting on your behalf touches only your data. Reading comments means reaching other people’s data — the person who wrote that comment granted the app nothing. The messaging side is closed for the same reason and more tightly: access cannot even be requested.

Seeing that split lets you predict what a tool can honestly promise. If the promise is “I will write something as you”, it is technically possible. If it is “I will read what others wrote”, it is not.

Five questions to ask any tool

• Which permission does this feature use? If the answer contains no permission name, it is not an answer.
• Official API or browser automation? The second breaches the User Agreement and the risk sits with me.
• Do you want my LinkedIn password or session cookie? If so, this is not delegation — it is handover of the account.
• What happens if my account gets restricted? Check whether your contract addresses this at all.
• Who decides to send? If the system sends automatically, that breaches even the rules LinkedIn sets for its approved partners.

What the risk of browser automation looks like

This risk is not abstract. Browser automation moves through your own session at inhuman speed; what LinkedIn sees is your account behaving abnormally. The consequence is usually staged: temporary limits on some actions first, then feature restrictions, then suspension. That the vendor is party to none of these steps is exactly why the risk stays with the user.

There is a further layer in Turkey: some of these tools collect profile data and serve it to other users. The personal-data boundaries are covered in our piece on Turkish data protection law, which sets out the regulator’s position that public availability does not mean processable for any purpose.

Would being an approved partner change this?

Very little. LinkedIn’s conduct rules for approved partners already describe the flow we recommend: the message must be tied to a member action, the member must be able to edit content before it goes out, and there must be no scheduled automated sending. So even with approval you arrive at the same place — human approval stays inside the flow. That turns the constraint from a gap into a design decision.