Expert Advice Online: The Internet Made Everyone Look Like an Expert. China Says: Now Prove That You Are.

The internet gives everyone a voice. But when does opinion become expert advice online, and should qualifications matter?

Speak Your Mind! 🎯 “Should Expert Advice Online Require Qualifications?” by Dejan Trpkovic

24–AUG–2026 | Millions of followers can make you influential overnight. But should they also make you an expert on medicine, finance, law or education?

China has been tightening rules around influencers who publish professional content on medicine, finance, law and education. Platforms are expected to check relevant professional qualifications, and unverified accounts can lose the ability to publish in those fields. Medical content is now subject to particularly strict credential checks.

Now, China and internet censorship obviously come with a much bigger conversation attached. But put China aside for a moment, because the more interesting question applies everywhere.

Should absolutely anyone be allowed to present themselves online as an expert on subjects where bad advice can seriously affect somebody else’s health, money, education or legal position?

Offline, we do not find this particularly controversial. You cannot simply decide that you are a doctor, lawyer or licensed financial adviser because you have read a lot about the subject. Professional authority usually comes with qualifications, standards and some form of accountability.

Online, however, we have created a different system. A confident person, a good camera, some books in the background and a few hundred thousand followers can create an impressive appearance of authority. The problem is that an algorithm does not measure expertise. It measures attention.

Someone with one million followers may genuinely know the subject extremely well. Another may simply be very good at looking as though they do. From the audience side, the difference is not always obvious.

And that matters. Recommending a restaurant is one thing. Telling people how to invest their savings, treat a medical condition or make an important educational decision is another.

Still, demanding qualifications creates its own problem: who gets to decide who is allowed to speak?

There is an important difference between saying, “You cannot pretend to be a doctor and give professional medical advice if you are not one,” and saying, “You cannot discuss medicine unless somebody has approved your qualifications.”

The first looks like consumer protection. The second starts looking much more like control.

And credentials themselves are no guarantee of truth. Experts have different opinions. Institutions get things wrong. People without formal qualifications can still have decades of useful experience, while personal experience can also contribute something valuable to public discussion.

Perhaps, then, the better distinction is not between experts and everyone else, but between opinion, information and professional advice.

A patient talking about their own treatment is not the same as telling thousands of followers to stop taking medication. An entrepreneur discussing what worked in their company is not the same as presenting themselves as a regulated financial adviser.

Platforms could help here far more than they currently do. They already verify identities, businesses and advertisers. Why not make professional qualifications clearer as well?

A simple label such as licensed physician, qualified financial adviser, teacher, or personal experience – no professional qualification, would not stop anyone from speaking. It would simply give the audience more information about how much weight to give what they are hearing.

The internet gave almost everyone a voice, which is one of its greatest strengths. But somewhere along the way, we started confusing having a voice with having the right to claim professional authority.

Followers are evidence of influence. They are not evidence of expertise.

So perhaps the real question is not whether governments should decide who may speak. It is this:

When someone starts giving advice that can seriously affect another person’s life, should they also have some responsibility to publicly declare their qualifications, or lack of them, and be able to prove any qualifications they claim to have?

And if the answer is yes, who should enforce it: governments, platforms, professional bodies, or simply a better-informed public?

Where would you draw the line?

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