Don’t let LinkedIn - or any other media - censor you.

Media is being weaponised to eliminate your opinion. LinkedIn is a microcosm of this dangerous trend.

Last week, Esteban Kolsky, a well known, respected and often challenging thinker on CRM/CSX/CX (pick your preferred TLA) topics bemoaned the apparent censorship of Alex Mead, a proven CSX practitioner.

Alex was concerned that his questioning of the criteria governing Top X lists published by CX Magazine (CXM) led to his accompanying LinkedIn story being dinged as containing ‘defamatory content.’ Esteban saw this as a form of censorship. He is right to do so.

My response in the thread was terse:

Holy crap! That’s BS on a galactic scale!! I can’t count the number of times I was asked to PAY to be included in a list of so-called influencers. The answer was always the same - no interest. I could care less about being on anyone’s list.

Top X lists have long been a source of mild irritation to me. Often they’re little more than lousily researched popularity contests (count my social media followers/fans why don’t ya?) or are paid for as a thinly disguised form of advertising. Very few of the lists I’ve seen are evidenced by anything substantive. A history of success and experience seems low on many list creation criteria.

Can you imagine hiring someone based on their social media fan club numbers rather than their understanding of the job for which you’re hiring?

I’ll return to the censorship issue in a moment but before doing so, here are some facts about CXM.

CXM is owned by a firm called Awards International Ltd. I leave others to draw their own conclusions on what that might say. As matters of fact, a search on Companies House reveals the firm has regularly changed reporting accountants over the years, has been subject to several past compulsory dissolution notifications, and is technically insolvent per its last filed accounts to the tune of £58,823. It also files as a micro company which means it is not subject to audit and only has to file minimal information.

If you plan on doing business in the U.K. it makes sense to know with whom you’re dealing. In my experience, that should include at least a cursory check at Companies House. In this case I see at least two red flags (insolvency and change of reporting accountants) and possibly three (threats of compulsory dissolution.) But again, I invite others to form their own conclusions. Back to the censorship issue.

In my past tech focused world, opinions both matter and are often contentious. You only have to consider the ongoing and sometimes dreary debate about the importance or validity of Magic Quadrants as marketed by Gartner and Forrester Waves to know that opinions are used as tick box items in software selection criteria. Got the right box ticked? Move on to the next step. Not got it ticked? You’re toast.

Opinions can lead to conflict. I’ve had heated argument about the manner in which an opinion was expressed. My answer was always the same: challenge my facts but feel free to ignore my opinion. In extreme cases, firms cut off access to their people. That was never a problem for me because I had numerous sources of information. It was a problem for those firms choosing to effectively censor access because they lost their right of reply. Again, not a problem for me.

However, when you publish on a platform that claims not to be a media outfit but behaves for all intents and purposes as a media outfit then censorship becomes a danger. That’s the case here.

Most cases of censorship focus on high profile people. But it is a very slippery slope. In Matt Taibbi’s most recent Substack polemic, he says:

We saw hints of what was coming after Brexit and around the time of Donald Trump’s election, via op-eds with headlines like, “Bring Back the Smoke-Filled Room.” The people needed saving from themselves. Leaving democracy in their hands was like letting a macaque run loose with a hammer. There was a significant heightening of “Democracy is overrated” rhetoric after Trump’s election, but the “No More Screwing Around” bugle-call didn’t really sound until the coordinated removal of Alex Jonesfrom Internet platforms in August, 2018. This move was celebrated almost universally because Jones is a demented lunatic, but it was still a deeply un-American kind of move. Jones was a perfect fit for the old-school “Even a goddamned werewolf is entitled to legal counsel” defense of civil liberties, but Facebook, Apple, and YouTube put a very public kibosh on that, and it proved a turning point.

Once the GoodThinkers realized all it took was a few phone calls to a few pals in a few Silicon Valley boardrooms to eliminate a major social irritant, they immediately began looking around and asking (I predicted this at the time) what other public annoyances might need disappearing. In their minds, the fact that they had the power to remove purveyors of extremist rage and “It makes the frogs gay!” conspiracism at any time essentially made it their fault that any of those people were still on the air.

Alex’s experience on LI may seem removed from Matt’s commentary. Some might say Alex’s experience is an innocuous though annoying ‘blip’ affecting a few folk about whom most people don’t care.

I wonder where this leads. Especially when you see ‘little people’ with little ability to fight back under attack. When platforms like LI and others can waft these folk away with the wave of a digital hand then all bets are off.

The flip side has its rewards. Well argued debate is always valuable and despite the ego driven nature of opinion forming, mature commentators know they don’t always have to be right.

And to illustrate that point, check this discussion about a Top X ERP list. Author PJ asks:

No IFS or Unit4 in ERP, but SNow and Salesforce yes?! :-)

To which Simon Griffith said:

As a Salesforce Admin I can categorically say it doesn’t belong in an ERP vendor list.

If that wasn’t enough fun then Andy Campbell, who is an evangelist for a Salesforce partner providing finance related solutions comes back with:

Simon Griffiths I know a few hundred customers who might disagree with you 😉

Of course Andy! Not to be outdone, Paul Esherwood, editor of ERP Today pipes up with a shameless plug:

ServiceNow and Salesforce are not ERP vendors. If you want to see a more accurate list of the top 10 ERP vendors take a look at the ERP Today annual vendor review.

I’m not going down any of these rabbit holes as that’s not the point. Sorry children, my days of enjoining those battles are over…although I do have an opinion that might surprise.

My point is that while the comments read similar to marketing folk shouting into a void, no-one got their panties in enough of a twist to call foul for spreading disinformation and reporting any of the comments to the LI Deletion Police.

In short, it doesn’t matter whether you agree or not with any of those speaking in that conversation. They had something to add which should not be censored by anyone.

The overarching problem as I see it is that we now live in a febrile society where the fundamental fight is between decency and a kind of pornography where dissension to any point of view is sneered at. At places like LI that becomes ‘defamatory,’ inviting the Deletion Police to step and arbitrarily do their worst, often without obvious recourse. It’s censorship by another name. Don’t fall for it. It never ends happily.