Medium Continues to Evolve…and Not in Good Ways. 5 Things You May Not Have Noticed.

What does all of this mean? Maybe something. Maybe nothing.

For at least the past 6 months, Medium members enrolled in the Medium Partner Program have been dismayed…to put it lightly. Some have been outraged. Some have expressed their outcry directly in Medium articles. Stats are down, earnings are down, and the reader algorithm seems different…and not in a good way.

I’ve been reading these articles and keeping my thoughts quiet, waiting to see if something would change. As I’ve been a writer on this platform for ~3 years, I’ve seen Medium’s algorithm evolve. The first 2 years I wrote on this platform (and based on some articles, some of the years preceding) seemed like the golden age. The top Medium writers were making 4 and 5 figures on the platform every month. That doesn’t seem to be happening anymore.

I kept my mouth shut for the past 6 months because I’ve been seeing the opposite effect. And, to be frank, I’ve been happy with my earnings during that time. They are 1.5–2 times higher than when we were in the “golden age”. Although I’m talking about pennies here…still. I’ve been writing less and less on Medium over time and have been earning more. What is there to complain about (from my perspective)?

However, now it’s time to speak up. I’ve noticed 5 important changes to Medium in 2023 that signal something interesting to me. I don’t exactly know when these changes took place, but I’m happy about some and less happy about others.

Change #1: Unsplash Picture Search in Medium App

This is the one change that I’m ecstatic about. I’ve never seen this in the Medium app before and we’re finally there!

You can now search for Unsplash pictures directly in the Medium app while you’re writing your articles. The lack of this feature was the #1 reason why I chose not to use the app for writing before. Now we have near full parity between the app and the web writing experience.

Change #2: Medium Support Requests Can No Longer Be Initiated Through Email

I’m not someone who uses Medium support very often. However, I had to open a new request a couple of months ago. It’s probably been at least a year since I last did this.

So I fired off an email to Medium support, using the last email address that I had in my contacts. Within minutes I was sent an auto-response letting me know that email was no longer supported for creating support requests. I was given explicit instructions on the current way of opening a request, but it did require searching through Medium’s online help questions first.

Being in the corporate world for decades, I can tell you that the reason why a company chooses to do this is to save on costs. It makes logical sense that Medium is asking users to self-service their own help requests first…it reduces the amount of labor (and $) required by their support team.

Luckily, there’s still a way to submit a support request if you can’t find the answer to your question (which was my situation).

Change #3: One of My Medium Accounts Was Suppressed from Searches

This problem had actually been going on since I first opened the account, but I didn’t notice it until this year.

I have another Medium account that is intentionally not behind the paywall. I ran an A.I. experiment for 30+ days and published the results there over a year and a half ago. I created a brand new, free account intentionally so anyone could read those articles without having to pay for a Medium subscription. However, Medium suppressed that profile.

What I mean by “suppression” is…when you searched for that user profile, nothing showed up in the search results for the People category. Other readers who were fond of that account and the experiment had mentioned in it in some of their comments, too.

I sent Medium a support request to ask why. I don’t know if this had anything to do with Medium’s initiative to start to cracking down on A.I. content (although I don’t believe I violated any rules).

I received a strange response. It was akin to “there’s nothing we can do about it. Get more views on that user’s articles!” I replied and explained the nature of that account and how that wouldn’t be possible by suppressing it, and then contested their logic that accounts must reach a minimum number of views to be seen. That seemed to be against Medium’s goals (as according to Tony-the-CEO’s recent posts). Fortunately, they saw the logic in my reasoning and unsuppressed that account within 2 days.

However, the whole situation left me unsettled.

Change #4: I Stumbled Across a Help Article That Gives a Plausible Explanation for the Loss of MPP Stats and Earnings

Take a look at this part of the help content (unfortunately, I could not find a way to include a direct link to this article):

The reason why I bring this up is that I’ve heard rumors that there’s been a serious outflux of subscribers from the Medium platform, including both readers and writers.

I was one of them. But then, Medium sent me something…keep reading.

Change #5: Medium is Offering Discounts for Membership Renewals

For the very first time in 5 years, I decided not to renew my Medium membership. To be candid, it was because I needed to change my payment method. The only way to do this is to cancel your current membership, change the payment method, then re-subscribe. I decided to wait until my membership expired to make this change.

However, since I haven’t been reading Medium articles lately (due to algorithm changes that have not been serving up the content I used to like), I decided to wait to renew my membership until a later date when the algorithm improved.

After 2 weeks of not renewing, Medium sent me a discount on my membership. Since I’ve never not renewed, this was new to me. I don’t know how long Medium has been doing this or who fits the criteria for this discount, but I found it interesting since I’ve never heard of Medium offering a discount. It was a 10% discount off either the monthly or annual membership.

I took the offer since I was only given a few days to decide and I planned to resubscribe at some point anyways. However, I’m curious about this seemingly new offer. This means writers are getting less of the subscription pool if it’s being offered at a discount. It also signals to me that Medium might be feeling the pressure to retain subscribers.

Summary Thoughts

I can’t help but wonder what all of the above clues mean. In some ways, Medium is cutting costs and improving the interface. In other ways, why is this happening now (or seemingly now, depending on when some of these things came into the picture)?

Given how much of these + other grumblings in the Medium community are occurring, it mostly points to financials. That begs the question…is Medium in trouble? Is it trying its best to stay afloat? Are things going well and these are just signs that the competition is increasing and taking more readership away from Medium?

Maybe someone smarter than me can put the pieces together.

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