Society

Medium Interprets Story Links To External Sites As Spam

Perspectives on defining spam and necessity to redefine it for the collaborative spirit as a benefit to society

Introduction and Background

Freedom to share and free access to information are the raison d’etre of the Internet.

In the 1980's, I studied Information Management and Technology at the postgraduate level, learning the theory and practice of IM&T for society’s benefit.

As a developer for early adaption of the Internet, I contributed to the visibility of AARNet (Australian Academic and Research Network), the Australian version of the Internet since 1989.

I am inspired to write this story after Medium suspended my Happy New Year stories on my publications ILLUMINATION, ILLUMINATION-Curated, Technology Hits, and ILLUMINATION’S MIRROR judging them as spam as they have links to my stories on News Break.

My Happy New Year stories on my publications included links for my readers giving them an opportunity to read my content on leadership, health, mental health, self-improvement, and technology domains. They are high impact stories for society enjoyed by thousands of readers, free of charge.

I deleted them to comply with Medium rules.

Purpose

This story reflects upon my personal experience, thoughts, and opinions. It, by no means, intends to go against rules and regulations. I know Medium is trying to protect the ecosystem and appreciate the diligence. Therefore, I demonstrate full compliance in all platforms and ecosystems. I follow the rules of engagement and encourage others to do so.

However, if rules of engagement conflict with societal values, as a thought leader, my duty of care is to share my informed perspectives with logical rationale, courtesy, and professionalism.

The purpose of this story is not to criticize Medium. The objective is to add clarity on what spam is and what it is not.

With a healthy debate, I aim to redefine spam to operate on the same page. With this modest attempt, I aim to add order to a chaotic situation which may cause unnecessary suffering to writers, readers, and other platform stakeholders.

Coming from technology and science background, I see both sides of a coin and strive for win-win outcomes. While having full respect in Medium rules and policies, I want to share my informed personal views transparently as a contributor to this ecosystem.

Transparent communication is vital to collaboration, creating trustworthy relationships, and sustainable solutions.

I am not Anti-Medium.

Let me prove my claim with indicative data briefly.

I invested 12 months on Medium as a writer, editor, and evangelist of the platform.

Here are some specifics to give you an idea.

I introduced Medium to 300+ bloggers and helped them transition and transform to be storytellers on Medium by mentoring and coaching them.

I introduced Medium to 100+ Scientists and became a catalyst for Medium publications to be their preferred reading list. I also helped them to add original content to the Medium ecosystem.

I promoted Medium stories in large social and professional networks such as LinkedIn, Quora, Reddit, Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress.

I syndicated 100,000+ Medium stories using RSS on my personal website.

I syndicated 24,796 stories on Flipboard flipped to 13,873 pages. I have created several other customized Flipboard magazines, automatically sharing content from Medium to external sources.

My sharing of Medium stories created 60,000+ backlinks for Medium writers on search engines.

I tweeted 59,000+ Medium stories.

I helped 7,000+ Medium writers, the majority as beginners, to learn and write stories for Medium.

I created 4 Medium publications giving reading options for 70,000+ readers.

I created an external virtual platform with my own funds aiming to help new writers of Medium write, publish, and read comfortably by addressing the issues of Medium publication system.

I religiously followed Medium rules and asked my 56 volunteering editors to implement the rules to keep Medium safe from plagiarism, harassment, hate speech and other unwanted content.

We, as a team, invested hundreds of personal hours to present quality content for Medium readers. None of these invested activities generated a cent to our publication. Our editors are not paid.

Despite our contributions to Medium, we did not receive any acknowledgement for our contributions from Medium.

Instead, we had roadblocks. I had to remove my 20 editors from the system as the publication system cannot support more than 30 editors.

I am now juggling to orchestrate the load in my growing publications contributed by 7,000 plus Medium writers. And Medium is putting a restriction to my editors not publish more than 15 stories in the gigantic submission queue in a day.

I joined Medium for intellectual purposes and collaboration; not to make money. The income from my 400 plus stories for 12 months was a equivalent to a 2-hour consultancy fee I charge to my clients.

My achievements on Medium within the last 12 months are available in this story.

My rationale for sharing my external content on Medium

I am not a salesperson. I don’t sell anything on Medium and have no intention to do so. I have published books, papers, patents, and premium content for my paid customers. I never provided a link to my commercial content on Medium.

However, sharing my story links from other platforms does not look like selling to me. Correct me if I am wrong. My story links are publicly available and do not cost a cent to the readers.

Yes, I share my stories published on Vocal Media and News Break on my Medium stories. But accessing these stories does not cost my readers. They are not not sales and marketing pitch. I write to inform, educate, and inspire.

Vocal and News Break are open to the public. These two platforms allow their content to be read free of charge. Whereas, Medium charges for reading times for content in their platform. I respect Medium’s business model. I use “friend links” to share my Medium stories to give my external readers a reading chance.

I want to point out to new writers that if I share a story link from Medium as-is, my external readers cannot read my stories hosted on Medium. I must sacrifice the earning of my stories on Medium. That is fine for me. Earning is not my main goal. My goal is to make my content visible to as many readers as possible. However, if I share a story link to my stories on Vocal and News Break on any platform, everyone in any part of the world can read them. I don’t have to sacrifice my story earning on Vocal and News Break.

Sharing content and creating valuable information is a societal duty for writers. For example, Medium superstar Tim Denning shared a fascinating story titled “12 Life-Changing Ideas from Smart People I Have Never Met“ on News Break linking Medium profiles of legendary writers enriching my reading list including Thomas Oppong, Niklas Göke, Cammi Pham, Kristine Levine, Zdravko Cvijetic, Ayodeji Awosika, John P. Weiss, Matthew Boutte, Benjamin Hardy, PhD, Michael Thompson,, I am grateful to Tim for his smart cross-pollinating platforms. This particular story is worth mentioning as I cherish it as a treasure trove.

More interestingly, based on mentions from Tim Denning and a few other Medium writers, News Break even created a unique Thomas Oppong tag linking his Medium profile. As a contributor to my publications, I closely follow insights of Thomas both in my publications and several other platforms. Any message from Thomas is like music to my ear for good reasons.

I observed hundreds of Medium top writers now writing for News Break within the last two weeks. Thousands of readers enjoy their stories. These top writers are shining in this new platform.

I came across many legendary writers whom I closely follow. For example, I recently consumed remarkable stories from Matt Lillywhite, Crystal Jackson, Tom Kuegler, Tim Ebl, Julia E Hubbel, Tree Langdon, Karen Madej, Jeffrey Keefer, Ph.D. Roz Warren, Shannon Ashley, Darryl Brooks, Sinem Günel, Trista Ainsworth, Claire Splan, Gayle Kurtzer-Meyers, ◦•●✿ Christina M. Ward ✿●•◦, Jim Woods, Jennifer Geer, Fatim Hemraj, Desiree Peralta, Rose Bak, Jessica Lynn, Tom Handy, Debbie Walker, Kim McKinney, Michelle Marie Warner, Kiran Yasmin, Jordan Mendiola, John Cousins. These writers are a few from my memory. There are so many more that almost 99% of News Break featured stories are from the writers I follow on Medium.

What I liked most was by one of my favourite writers, Matt Lilywhite, who linked to a remarkable story by Kirstie Taylor on PS I Love You, a Medium publication. I was proud of Matt to create visibility to inspiring Medium stories on his outstanding News Break profile (514K views).

Should News Break see Matt’s cross-pollinating story as spam? Hell no, in my book! They should not because it is not a spam. Matt is not selling anything that some people don’t want to. He is kindly and generously sharing his knowledge and expertise by creating awareness for important messages that can attract a broader audience.

I closely follow legendary Tom Kuegler on Medium. However, finding Tom’s viral stories on News Break added extra value to my reading experience. Tom’s few recent inspiring stories received 111K views.

As mentioned in my previous posts, I started writing for Vocal Media. In every story I submitted to Vocal I provided links to my original stories on Medium. Vocal moderators were cool with that, rather than judging them as spam, they encouraged me to create links to my Medium stories. Their rationale is to ensure the content I re-purpose is not plagiarized. While Vocal moderators were protecting their platform, they were protecting me as a writer. I loved this open-mindedness and care for writers by Vocal Media moderators hence will undoubtedly continue to contribute to their platform.

Conclusions

I am surprised Medium characterized my stories with links to my external stories as spam.

However, to comply with the platform’s rules, I deleted four stories Medium informed as spam.

If you have links to my Happy New Year stories, you will see this error. Please don’t panic. It is my personal choice. This is my first time deleting stories on Medium. Sadly, they coincided with my happy New Year messages for my beloved readers to cheer them with my optimistic and hope generating content.

I don’t care about the earning from these stories. They bring only a few dollars to my charity funds; in fact, an amount that one cannot even purchase a coffee.

My primary point in this story is that writers should be able to share their valuable content in any platform without being labelled as spammers.

My understanding of spam is unwanted and undesirable content. I do not see creative, inspiring, and insightful stories of writers as spam. Especially if they are from publicly available information sources!

Therefore, I propose redefining spam on Medium and add clarity to the situation for writers. There are thousands of links, particularly in curated stories generously linked to external sources.

I now exaggerate to make my point; if links to my News Break stories are seen as spam on Medium, all other links to the external information sources on millions of other Medium stories should be treated the same.

Can we call the writers of curated stories spammers? I leave it up to your judgement.

As an information management and technology professional since the 1980s, my dream is to access information freely and easily. We are still struggling to achieve this dream in the 2020s.

Thank you for reading my perspectives.

Please comment.