Medium Writer Earnings will Go UP — Exciting AI Policy announced!
Medium just announced a new AI policy for Monetization, which will benefit genuine Writers!
After the Great Medium Purge© from March 2024, many Writers have been uncertain about Medium being a viable platform for Monetization.
We have seen many seasoned writers arguing that mistakes caused by AI-determined blocking of people will hamper their objectives.
A few determined folks have even gone down the path of building out their substack community and mailing lists to safeguard against Medium outages.
History of the Great Medium Purge©
So, what exactly is the Medium Purge? If you are new to this, then read the following (the rest can skip and move to the next section):
The Medium Purge was to remove bad actors, and AI accounts that essentially tried to boost people's earnings.
It was against policy, and Medium took an approach to block such accounts and eventually restored accounts with good faith.
Official Medium Updates in March
Medium published official updates on the Purge and discussed upcoming changes to block the Monetization (or paywall) of AI-generated content.
They also shared steps to identify such content, its challenges, and potential misses from their end.
Read about their changes here:
Improvements in April
Starting on 1 April, many writers (including me) reported much better distribution and daily earnings.
There was consensus that Viewership/Readership had increased and potentially higher Earnings Per Read (EPR).
Read about that here:
New Guidelines Effective 1 May
Let’s get down to the basis of the post.
We have just heard from Medium about their policy to block AI-generated content from the paywall (or Earnings).
Beginning May 1, 2024, stories with AI-generated writing (disclosed as such or not) are not allowed to be paywalled as part of our Partner Program.
There are 3 clear call-outs:
- DO NOT submit AI-generated (or even AI-manipulated) content for Monetization (or paywall).
- DO NOT have any existing AI-generated stories behind the paywall — you can continue to have them non-earning.
- DO NOT submit AI-generated content without full disclosure — I assume they’ll allow a tag to indicate AI-generated content in the post.
Failure to do these may have the following outcomes:
a. Temporary suspension
b. Permanent suspension from Medium Partner Program
c. Loss of Medium account.
My interpretation of these Policy changes
The Good
- Increased Earnings pool for Writers (as AI-generated content that was earning was removed)
- Better distribution of original content (higher Viewership and higher EPR)
- Better discovery of content as users can easily distinguish AI-generated and original content.
The Bad
- People will try to figure out how to manipulate AI content and turn it into original-looking.
- Plagiarism may increase, and we may see a lot of repetition of content.
- There may be increased debates on the distinction between Original and AI content.
The Ugly
- Medium Algorithms will likely have a lot of mistakes flagging AI-generated content.
- Many user accounts may be temporarily banned in error, disrupting momentum.
- Many user accounts may be lost due to errors, and good writers may never return.
Overall, I’m excited about these changes, and the potential to find better content and earnings is increasing!
References:
You can read the full message in the screenshots below.
What do you think about these changes, and how do they affect you?
Cue a few people to start the conversation: Carl Jeffers | Bin Jiang | Lucian Ioan Chirilă | Mike Sansone | Charlie J 🕊️ | Barbara J. Martin | Sara Flower | Francisco Iglesias | Rajesh Poovathum Kadavil |