I’ve Published On Medium For 6 Years— Do I Have Any Faith In This Place Anymore?
If you know me, I call things like I see them.
I will not bullshit you.
Especially not in my writing.
So that explains why lately I’ve been calling Medium a lot of things:
- A shitshow
Wait, I thought I had more bullet points..
Well, okay, “shitshow” is about it.
Yeah, the guy who has a Medium course is calling Medium itself a shitshow.
And that’s because it is.
I haven’t been curated since, like, a year ago. It’s probably because I keep telling the truth about Medium and they’ve blacklisted me.
That’s another article for another time.
Medium Keeps Making Dumb Decisions (Like, Really Really Dumb Decisions)
I’ve been tweeting like a madman about the stupidity of this platform and how seemingly every decision they make leads to widespread belly-aching from their users.
Like the fact that they took editing capabilities out of their mobile app.
Um. Excuse me, what?
You’re a social media platform + content publisher and you took the ability to edit content away from your mobile app?
That’s like a baker selling their oven or something.
What the fuck, Medium?
It’s just one horrible decision after another with this platform.
Like putting links to other people’s articles on the right side of our own articles.
Like, I don’t want people to go read anybody else but me, Medium.
Thanks.
And if you think that’s selfish, I wonder what the fuck you think about it?
You don’t want it either. It’s okay, come be an asshole with me. The water’s warm, and it’s more fun here.
I could go down the list of fuck ups if you want, but I don’t have enough time. This is but a tasting.
Perhaps the biggest issue I’ve had with Medium is the fact that their algorithm just flat out sucks.
I have 50K+ followers here and 1% of my followers see my content.
Um, excuse me what?
They say they want a more “relational” Medium, and then they turn around and don’t show my own articles to my own audience.
And I get it — I’m using Medium to complain about Medium and that’s bad and blah blah blah.
I don’t care.
People go to our nation’s Capitol to complain about our nation all the time.
Give me a break.
So, Do I Have Any Faith At All In This Place Anymore?
So I’ve bashed this place enough.
What do I think about the future of Medium?
Honestly, I actually have some faith they can turn it around.
Yesterday, somehow, I got to talk to one of Medium’s developers on Twitter.
His name was Trevor.
He said Medium welcomes all feedback from writers, and since he was on Twitter tweeting about it, I decided to respond.
After I responded to Trevor, I got a response..
You know, I gotta say, it’s nice to feel like you’re being heard by the platform you helped build for 6 years.
Trevor continued:
So I spent the first 400 words of this article absolutely massacring Medium.
But I’m not an unfair dude.
I will give credit where it’s due.
It’s nice that they take feedback seriously.
One thing I don’t understand, though, is that if Medium seriously welcomes feedback and that it’s “integral” to the process, how in the blue hell do they keep making changes that are so unpopular?
Whoever can answer that has my undying attention.
I used to be Medium’s biggest champion. I used to be the guy taking up for Medium in the comments sections of articles like this one.
But it’s gotten so bad that I don’t even want to write here anymore.
And I haven’t been, honestly.
I’ve cut my output here by 40% in the last 3 months and last week I only published one article here.
I just, like, don’t care anymore. I can get way better reach on LinkedIn so I spend all my time there now.
No lie, if Medium disappeared or banned me tomorrow, it would have little to no effect on my business.
I know I’m not the only person who has taken a step back from Medium either.
They are losing writers and readers because it’s simply more beneficial to publish elsewhere, and when they keep making their platform worse, it’s exactly what they deserve.
Medium either has to get better or die.