Medium Has Become a Mean and Ugly Place

Here are 5 practices I’m taking on to bring back the love

As the buds of spring began to replace the chill of winter, I made my best decision yet in my short Medium career. I took the month of March off of the platform. Did you miss me? I missed you!

Though I had read the writing on the wall, Ev’s concerning March 24 “Editorial Team Update” validated my analysis. Medium is in a state of upheaval and writers are paying the price. Rather than striving to keep reading algorithm tea leaves, chasing reads as views were tanking, I invested my time in my other endeavors for the month and saved myself a heap of heartache.

Happy Medium writers write first for love and only then for money, and I did miss the daily motivation to weave words into stories. But, what I missed most in my month-long hiatus was you, my beloved writer’s community.

If you’re curious, here’s what I was up to…

The best part of Medium is the community of writers who pour out their hearts and souls on its pages. With the algorithm so wonky these days, I’m taking matters into my own hands, being proactive to improve my own Medium experience as a user. In the meantime, these five strategies can’t help but teach the algorithm which writers are indeed near and dear to my heart.

Like many of us, the first place I really found a home on Medium was Illumination. Whether you love them or hate them, the foundation of Dr Mehmet Yildiz meteoric success (Illumination crossed the 80,000 follower mark in its eleventh month in existence) was his conviction that Medium thrives as a community. What is so bizarre is that in those early months, his account was regularly suspended, and when reactivated, it was with the on the condition that he refer to Illumination as a “publication,” not a community.

In a world that is so isolated and isolating, and on a platform that is designed for sharing personal narrative and in-depth analysis, Medium is at it’s best when it’s a community.

The pandemic and Medium’s “pivot to relational” only reinforce that fact.

Until the wonky algorithm eLearns it’s way out of it’s kinks, here are my five strategies for putting my writing community at the center of my Medium experience:

50 Claps

I’m a sharp-shooting, occasionally overly critical person. Face to face, I want you to know that if I compliment you, it’s because I mean every word. But, these days on Medium, if I read your work, I’m going to give you 50 claps, no matter what. Because, we’re all hurting and we can all use the boost. (Thank you Galit Birk, PhD who was the first to nudge me from din to hesed on that one).

Read My Readers

I’ve put the relational back in my own Medium user experience by aiming to read at least one story of those reader who take the time to read and comment on my work. Doing so primes the algorithm, reinforcing my connection with my readers, but more importantly, reading my readers helps me to get to know them. For me, Medium is my dream mixer, where instead of small talk, when I meet someone new, I get to hear about their talents, passions and deep dark secrets. Committing to reading my readers brings that to life for me.

Ditch the Algorithm

Related, and essential these days, I no longer make use of any Medium recommendations. To the contrary, after having to search for my favorite writers too many times, for now, I can trust that if the algorithm is recommending content, I likely won’t like it. Instead, I dedicate my leisure Medium reading time to reading my readers, searching for my favorite writers, and perusing publications.

Follow Publications Not Writers

If my aim is to put the humanity back in Medium, then the very best place to invest is in small Medium publications. Unlike the poor souls who just got bought out by Ev, the thousands of self-run publications on Medium are curated by unpaid humans with a great deal of personal love and care. While I’ve written elsewhere cautioning against submitting to small pubs, if what you’re looking for is distribution, these days, they are all that I follow. I trust these hard-working editors to vet and select great new writers for me to enjoy in the topics I like to follow.

Link Twitter and Medium

These last few months on Medium have been so rocky because the platform is rolling out non-stop new features and updates. There is a new App interface in beta now (I’m not such a fan…hopefully, Medium will incorporate our suggested improvements before the full launch). Additional, one great upgrade that came out in February is increased integration between Twitter and Medium. Whereas Ev’s newest baby has always sorely needed its curt big brother Twitter, with the unrest at Medium, they need one another now more than ever. Whereas Medium can’t be trusted to share our work and identify our preferences these days, growing your Twitter network can. With this new upgrade, you can now have Medium recommend to you work from those you follow on Twitter. Here’s how to set it up:

If you want to understand more about what’s going on behind the scenes at Medium, this is a must-read expose by Casey Newton and I personally found the piece by Shannon Ashley about these last months on Medium very comforting.

In life and on Medium, change is the only constant. As we ride the waves of it all, at least we have each other!