Medium Earnings Issue: Solved
Here’s what happened…
Our earnings dropping quicker than panties at a Drake concert left many of us freaking the fuck out. In my article yesterday I explained why I wasn’t worried, which included some context for Coach Tony’s (Medium CEO) comment and an explanation this wasn’t a major shift, just a ‘big whoopsy-doopsy-something-fucked-up-poopsy.’
I promised at the end I’d update you fine motherforkers as I heard more. Unfortunately, if I update that article nobody will see it, so here I am, again, with news from the Medium Gods.
So yesterday, I relayed info from Medium that “We’ve heard of the problem, and it should be smoothed over this week if the problem is what we think it is.” To which I said “Maybe someone adjusted some algorithm and as tech things often do, something else broke.”
I was right about it being temporary (phew), but I didn’t quite nail the details of that kerfuffle-inducing clusterfuck.
What Happened
I’ve gotten more gospel from the Medium Gods, and it looks like it was a bigger problem than I thought. It was a fraudulent attack on the earnings program. I’m assuming an attack by ninjas, pirates, or zombies, because that’s a much cooler mental image.
Here’s how they phrased the news:
“We recently discovered organized fraudulent activity impacting payments for September/October Partner Program writers.
We found fraudulent activity from accounts targeting our program to specifically divert funds. If you’re a Partner Program writer, you may have seen a decrease in earnings from on or around September 25th. Our team has removed these users and we’re taking action to mitigate the impact to Partner Program writers.To be clear: This is fraudulent activity at scale and it’s specifically prohibited on our platform. Medium’s rules disallow systematized bulk engagement for the purpose of generating revenue, as well as registering accounts, posting content, or interacting with users or content automatically, systematically, or programmatically. We’ll share more information as we work to resolve this issue.”
Eek. So, that’s horrible news to hear — but, they have found the problem and are fixing it. Huzzah!
And now Tony’s comments about inauthentic engagement that people were so upset about make a little more sense. He was in the middle of a shitstorm of digital pirates.
But in his comments, he wasn’t talking about us. So don’t worry about your authentic engagement on this platform. He was talking to the large-scale earnings-eating zombies.
‘Am I one of them?’
No, you’re not. Unless you’re spamming thousands of shitty comments a day and have a buncha moolah in your earnings account. But as long as you haven’t been craving brains or shouting “Yarr” and “Land ho!”, you’re fine.
I’m going to keep engaging exactly how I have, authentically and exactly how I darned-tootin’-well want to.
So, Medium’s been dealing with quite the clusterducking shitstorm lately. An official update from them is assuredly upcoming. I wasn’t going to write this, and just wait for the update. But I didn’t want anyone to pass out from holding their breath or have a coronary from stress in the meantime.
That’s it.
Mystery solved, we can all get back to just having fun now.
~Robin Wilding, reporting from…a military-grade bunker (filled with confetti) to stay safe from Medium earnings hackers.