Glitches in Medium’s Payment System
It looks like we’re not being paid correctly
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote to Medium about a problem I’d noticed with stories not being paid for member reads.
Hi Medium Support, There seem to be glitches in Medium’s payment system. For example, a Medium member read and commented on this story 5 days ago. The story stats don’t even register a view, let alone a member read and a comment.
I have also noticed that sometimes the stats on a story show members as non-members. So, for example, I might have 5 member comments, all sporting the star. But only four of them register as member comments on the stats, while one registers as a non-member comment.
Now that the payment system depends upon getting the reads, comments and claps right, I’m disappointed to see so many obvious errors. And I hear I’m not the only one — you’ve fixed the stats for another guy who had this problem on one of his stories. But he says the problem is ongoing — he just hasn’t mentioned it again because he doesn’t like to keep complaining.
I assume it’s affecting everyone. Would you like to explain what’s going on, and why reads aren’t even registering on stories such as the one above?Thank you.
They said they’d report it to an engineer and investigate. I’m still waiting to hear the outcome, but I’m not terribly optimistic.
As a side note, I’ve come across reads not registering before, and wonder if it was a problem even before the new system. Someone once told me that listening time doesn’t register as a paid read — neither did links opened through Twitter at one time, but that may have changed.
I’ve also read recently that the collapse in our earnings from 25 September, when our stories started earning cents instead of dollars, is a potential glitch that they’re looking into.
Could this be part of the problem — a system that doesn’t register reads and cannot distinguish between members and non-members? It’s not boding well for our future earnings.
Tony did offer an explanation as to why some things may have changed, but I feel there’s something else going on. I hope a fuller explanation is revealed in due course.
More from me…
