Many people disagree about what blockchain technology is. To me, it' about the characteristics, rather than how they're implemented. I see three characteristics: decentralized, immutable, assets [1].

Under this framing, the "linked list of hashes" is one partial way to achieve immutability. And "every node has this list" is one partial way to get to decentralization is achieved. But that's only part of it. Eg you need to address: what if a node acts badly? And you want a means to create & issue assets.

> every node has a copy AND the list is append only leads me to something that doesn't scale well.

Correct. That's why there is work to scale better, e.g. via sharding by BigchainDB and by others.

[1] https://blog.bigchaindb.com/three-blockchain-benefits-ae3a2a...