By Hiran de Silva
For some time now I’ve been asking myself a question.
What exactly is LinkedIn supposed to be?
Is it an academic forum?
A professional engineering community?
A place where business people debate ideas, challenge assumptions and move knowledge forward?
Or is it simply a marketplace where everyone is promoting themselves?
Or perhaps it is neither.
Perhaps LinkedIn has quietly become just another social media platform where engagement matters more than truth.
That distinction matters enormously.
The Ancient Idea of a Forum
When people talk about a professional network, I think of something much older than LinkedIn.
I think of the academies of Ancient Greece.
I think of Socrates.
I think of learned people gathering together to discuss philosophy, mathematics, engineering, astronomy and science.
Nobody expected universal agreement.
Quite the opposite.
Ideas were expected to collide.
Claims were expected to be challenged.
Evidence mattered.
Proof mattered.
If Galileo proposed something revolutionary, nobody was expected simply to applaud.
His peers expected him to demonstrate it.
Likewise, if somebody claimed to have discovered something genuinely new, the burden was on them to provide evidence that it genuinely advanced existing knowledge.
Recognition came because the idea survived scrutiny.
Not because it attracted the most applause.
That, to me, is what a professional forum ought to look like.
LinkedIn Often Looks Very Different
What I increasingly see is something else.
Whenever someone is mentioned, it is usually to congratulate them.
Congratulations on becoming an MVP.
Congratulations on your latest video.
Amazing work.
Fantastic post.
Brilliant insight.
Awesome.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with encouraging people.
The problem is when encouragement becomes the primary purpose of the conversation.
At that point it becomes sycophancy.
Bootlicking, if we’re being blunt.
Instead of testing ideas, we celebrate personalities.
Instead of asking, “Is this true?”, we ask, “Will this get likes?”
Those are completely different objectives.
Gaming the Algorithm
Several years ago there was a noticeable trend within the Excel community.
People would publish posts titled something like:
“If you want to learn Excel properly, these are the people you should follow…”
The list almost always contained well-known names including Leila Gharani, Oz du Soleil, Mark Proctor, Randy Austin, Wyn Hopkins, Mynda Treacy, Paul Barnhurst and others.
Was the purpose genuinely educational?
Perhaps partly.
But many people also believed that tagging high-profile creators improved the visibility of their own posts.
LinkedIn’s algorithm rewarded association.
The post became less about education and more about visibility.
Even LinkedIn itself reinforced this behaviour.
About ten years ago I asked what I thought was a fascinating question:
What do we actually mean by “improving Excel skills”?
The discussion exceeded one hundred comments.
People debated definitions.
They disagreed.
They challenged one another.
It became an extraordinary snapshot of how the Excel community thought at the time.
Years later I asked exactly the same question.
Almost nobody engaged.
LinkedIn even suggested that I should tag influential people to increase engagement.
In other words, the platform itself was encouraging optimisation of visibility rather than optimisation of discussion.
That says a great deal.
Challenging Claims Is Not Being Negative
My reputation on LinkedIn has become fairly predictable.
If somebody makes a technical claim that I know to be incorrect…
…there is a reasonable chance I will challenge it.
Not because I enjoy arguments.
Because I believe that is precisely what a professional forum should encourage.
Take Colin Wall’s 2023 claim that spreadsheets cannot perform proper bottom-up budgeting.
To me, that statement was simply wrong.
I explained why.
I explained that I had already built enterprise bottom-up budgeting systems in Excel.
The discussion continued for days.
Eventually it became apparent that we were describing two completely different understandings of what Excel is capable of.
That discussion mattered.
Not because someone “won”.
Because ideas were examined.
Likewise I have challenged claims that Power Query somehow turns Excel into a database.
Christopher Finlan argued that Power Query tables and joins effectively meant Excel had become a database.
I disagreed.
Power Query is an ETL tool.
It transforms data.
It does not create a remotely accessible system of record.
Calling something a database simply because it contains tables is rather like saying a wheelbarrow is a motor car because both have wheels.
Definitions matter.
Architecture matters.
Precision matters.
Commercial Promotion Is Perfectly Legitimate
I have absolutely no objection to people promoting their businesses.
None whatsoever.
Businesses need marketing.
Consultants need clients.
Software companies need customers.
There is nothing unethical about advertising.
Hamilton Gollakota once made a point that I thought was entirely fair.
He said that if somebody is using LinkedIn to promote their business, he wouldn’t deliberately “rain on their parade.”
I understand that.
I agree with it—to a point.
The problem comes when the promotion depends upon technical claims that are misleading.
If someone promotes ERP software by telling the world that Excel cannot perform enterprise budgeting…
…or promotes an Excel replacement by exaggerating Excel’s weaknesses…
…then that is no longer just advertising.
It has become an engineering claim.
Engineering claims deserve engineering scrutiny.
That’s how professional communities work.
Why Do Posts Disappear?
One pattern I have noticed over the years is surprisingly common.
Challenge a claim.
Present evidence.
Ask technical questions.
Then sometimes…
…the post disappears.
Sometimes the comment disappears.
Occasionally the entire discussion vanishes.
I have seen this happen more than once.
I have watched posts deleted after technical objections.
I have seen discussions quietly removed.
More recently I saw Steven Kogan’s post promoting Access over Excel disappear shortly after I challenged the underlying architectural assumptions. The account itself also appeared to disappear before a new profile emerged. I cannot know the reason, so I cannot draw conclusions from that sequence alone. But it illustrates how online discussions can become difficult to follow when posts or profiles vanish.
Again, the point is not about individuals.
It is about culture.
If a professional discussion disappears whenever serious technical questions are asked, then what kind of forum are we creating?
Popularity Is Not Evidence
One of the great weaknesses of modern social media is the assumption that popularity equals correctness.
It doesn’t.
A post with 100,000 views may be completely wrong.
A post with twelve views may change an industry.
History is full of unpopular ideas that later proved correct.
Science has never operated by counting applause.
It operates by testing hypotheses.
The same should apply to business, engineering and technology.
The Opportunity
Ironically, this creates an enormous opportunity.
If much of LinkedIn has become a game of algorithms, visibility and engagement…
…then there is tremendous value in simply demonstrating things that actually work.
That is exactly why I have been publishing enterprise Excel demonstrations.
Not because I expect people to believe me.
Quite the opposite.
I expect them to challenge me.
Test it.
Break it.
Compare it.
Judge it against alternatives.
That is how knowledge advances.
My Question
So I return to the question I began with.
What is LinkedIn?
Is it an academy?
Is it a marketplace?
Or is it simply another engagement platform dressed in business clothes?
If it is a marketplace, then promotion is entirely expected.
If it is social media, then algorithms will inevitably dominate.
But if LinkedIn genuinely wants to be a professional network…
…then disagreement should be welcomed.
Evidence should matter.
Claims should be challenged.
Proof should carry more weight than popularity.
That was the purpose of the great academies.
It is still the purpose of every serious scientific, engineering and professional community today.
The real question is whether LinkedIn still wants to be one of them.
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