I was early on a team that was > 100 people when I left years ago There's lots of assymetric memories of relationships, especially for people that joined in my last 6-12 months.

I'm sure a GAN picture that looked like a strong team member with a close-but-not-the-same name and lots of connections to people I knew well would fool me.

Also, the cost to me incorrectly friending such a person is much lower than missing a strong hire or new job opportunity.

Edit: Also, as someone hiring, you can't even reasonably ban people for this stuff. Some crappy recruiter database integration startup occasionally merges me with a coworoker, then spams out the fake profile. I've had my own company try to poach me before.

Linkedin should randomly send people made-up requests. They could collect statistics on the gullibility or neediness of the person and sell it!

Yeah it's a good question, most of mine are direct or recruiters. You have someone with "franchise" in their title, guess what... you get pitched a franchise. Idk what I was thinking.

edit: part of it in my rationale is "being nice" but yeah I mostly use LinkedIn to get a job