It’s all about the money on medium

Why are we pretending otherwise?

Articles complaining about declining readerships and opaque new rules all point to one thing: Money

I just read a whine-fest about the opacity of the new system and the difficulty in getting the sort of readership that sees you earn above $100 — which is the threshold for success, on this platform.

I, for one, have never seen the system as being inherently fair, given the degree to which, a handful of players on this platform, seem to have a monopoly on views and prominence, however mediocre or profoundly intellectually incoherent their articles are.

Let’s face it, not one of the writers on this platform — not even the highly venerated ones — are in any danger of winning the Booker, Pulitzer or the Nobel prize, any time soon.

I once had a debate with an editor on Illumination(my favorite publication), who wrote a disparaging post about having to edit people who write badly. I wasn’t at all impressed by his comments and said to him that I found his views unprofessional, to which he replied:

‘ I have more followers than you and I have only been a member since 2019, enough said’.

There are writers on this page, for whom English isn’t their mother tongue and there are the likes of us — those who speak English as a first language and yet are distinctly average writers. Medium connects all of us and regardless of our pet peeves of poor punctuation, spelling and inability to grasp split infinitives, we should all learn to embrace the diversity and range of talents.

Everything about the article I read a few minutes ago points to one thing — money — more internal views, fewer external views, the relational model and its all-round opacity are hurting those who are used to seeing medium as an easy space to make several thousands of dollars.

For writers like me who have had a very hard time getting medium’s complex algorithm to show me any love, I couldn’t care less, if a guy who had 1,000,000 views in January 2021, can only muster 10,000 views today.

To pretend that medium has been all about quality and never been about money is what Spanish speaking folks would call ‘ La gran mentira’.

Money is the only currency that matters on this platform and the sooner we are all honest about this, the better.

Thanks very much for reading.