OH MEDIUM YOU ARE GONNA RUE THE DAY YOU OFFENDED MY MORAL CODE

I Wrote a Really Cool Story with a Great Click-Bait Title and Subtitle

At least I thought I wrote a story — turns out it’s a response and Medium baited and switched me.

It started as a response but I chose Medium’s “make this response a story” function, which makes it look like a story and has all the “write a story” functionality such as feature image and embedded links, both in-line and all-pretty. For those confused by the two types of links, this is an in-line embedded link to my I-thought-I-wrote-a-story.

This is an all-pretty link:

What Medium’s “make-this-response-a-story” function lacks and why my story is not a story is even though Medium advertises otherwise, is it will not show up anywhere on my profile, even though it claims to provide “pin-this-story-to-the-top-your-profile-functionality:”

Moreover, and what truly makes Medium guilty of bait and switch, is one cannot earn money from this type of post.

No, Medium, that is a fucking lie. Jesus and I did not choose not to earn money from this story. You baited me into this choice. Nor is it a choice I can undo.

Here is another piece of Medium chicanery of which many may not be aware. When someone actually does choose not to earn money, that choice can be undone, but only if one has the desktop app. The desktop app, which is a lousy place from which to write a story because one cannot insert emoticons nor use plug-ins like Grammarly, provides the “Manage meter setting” option in the middle of the 3ddM:

That function is not available even in the desktop app for a response written as a story.

I do not care that the story cannot earn money. The purpose of the “story” was to promote my publication, ChannSpirations and Coincidences,

from which there is also no way to make any money.

In case this is also news to the reader, there is no extra $$ juice in creating and owning a publication. The only “person” financially rewarded by the existence of publications would be the illustrious Ev Williams. By my rough calculations, only 20% of the subscription fees collected by Medium get paid out to writers. As I wrote in response to Kiran Yasmin’s An Appeal To Evan Williams:

The threshold question any writer who comes here in the hopes of making or supplementing their living from the MPP should be asking is what % of the subscription fees is the formula designed to payout? I figure Medium takes in between $5M and $7M a month in fees. For sake of argument, if the 6% average $500 a month, that’s $900,000. If the other 28,500 writers average $10 a month, that’s a shade over $1.2M a month paid out. I’m sure there are a lot of techsperts in here who can estimate Medium’s fixed-costs for engineers and server farm space and then we might have some idea where the money is going.

I also wrote in response to that story:

That assumes making money is the goal. I do need money, but I do not expect to make money here as I see through the curtain — I came here to grow as a writer, which I have, and as a place to share my ideas as a stepping stone to a career change that may be primarily as a writer or may be primarily as thinker, and in the process I have also gained more spirituality in the last 30 days than I would have doing decades of 12-step program work, so, while on a macro level I am bothered by what I see through the curtain (30 editor limits and other obvious-to-the-aware dampening policies), I am personally thrilled with my Medium experience

Others have x-ray vision too:

When I started this story I was annoyed. Now, I am having fun. I love my INTP-mind sometimes — it really brings me such joy when a plan of which I was not consciously aware comes together!

One has to begin to wonder about Medium’s hubris. Why does The Innovation get shut down behind a wall of secrecy which serves no one any good as publication owners cannot learn from the alleged errors?

Why does Medium tolerate the blatant defamation suffered by thousands of its writers,

on whose backs the subscription fees are collected? Why has Medium not removed, to use his own words against him, the stain of the Assemblage’s owner, Jonathan Greene, whom I cannot tag because he thinks blocking me will make me give up and go away when I told the world that accountability makes me tick:

and the courage to be vulnerable is my superpower:

Medium, I suggest you act to ban Mr. Greene as I have demanded:

Accountability — Non-Monetary Demands

Now that I have your attention, resolution with me requires: 1) the removal of the articles of which I am aware from Medium and anywhere else they may have been posted, 2) the disclosure and removal of any other posts anywhere of a similar nature, 3) that Medium ban Mr. Greene for no less than 36 months, unless he issues a full retraction and an apology satisfactory to me in my soul (pun-intended) discretion, in which case the ban may be reduced to no less than 18 months, in Medium’s discretion, 4) that if someone wishes to take over the Assemblage, that person shall post a 500–word essay in the publication unequivocally making amends for Mr. Greene’s malfeasance, and 5) that Medium shall review its moderation mechanisms and issue a story indicating its findings and what steps it shall implement to improve.

See:

I served your legal department with that demand letter ELEVEN days ago. My patience is wearing thin. Do you really want to wait for my next salvo? Ted Cruz is an ignoramus and not nearly as creative as me, but he does have a bully pulpit and, while he doesn’t understand it, he hates Section 230 the Communications Decency Act…

And as every day goes by, I amass evidence of actual damages, bolstering the case for presumed damages and punitive damages, and more defamed writers “me too” my demands (Paul Myers MBA, Geetika Sethi, GranPa-Festus, John Cunningham, Liam Ireland, Jennifer Friebely, Zen Chan, Alison Tennent and Karen Madej). It is more than likely that our demands for $4,100 per person are light.

Have you even made a demand upon Greene under your right to indemnification?

Have you put your insurance company on notice? I suggest you do so and provide me with a copy.

Have a pleasant day. I know I will. Perhaps I’ll try tantric meditations.

In Rama I create,

Marcus