I have a theory that LinkedIn the product is only a platform for LinkedIn the company to tell us how great it is to work for them.

Add to that the "thought leaders", the quotes and other FB-ish artefacts, without forgetting a constant stream of brown-nosing and if you have 20% of the content that is interesting, you can consider yourself lucky.

In contrast, I hang in an industry specific slack with folks all over the world and it's so much better. I don't have a solution to offer with regards to an open platform, but I think curated communities are the way to go.