Medium, your mass ban yesterday left me confused.

You deleted several great members of the community.

Yesterday started like any other. I posted my article and then began curating.

Then, I got a notification on my first response. I smiled when I saw it was Leonard Tillerman. I’m able to identify with the man on so many levels. He writes from his heart, and to know him is to love him. His comment section bore that truth out.

Then I got another notification of a response. It was from yet another who is a great friend to Medium users. Mr Money Maker. The shock part came when I saw the highly respected Leonard was now deleted user.

I’ve seen this frequently in my short time here. Sometime over night deleted user would leave a comment I couldn’t see.

But Leonard?

Leonard is one of those rare treasures who always leave you knowing his day was brightened by your participation in it.

A rare breed, unlike most of those on the follow list who never read one thing you write, Leonard is a true curator. A true dude to his heart.

I quickly found the area to give Medium feedback and implore them to check his account. Surely this was a mistake. I assumed it has to do with all of this cloning crap going on.

So I point them to my article on Leonard being cloned the other day, and attach the screenshot of the fake Leonard.

I wasn’t sure if I’d get a response, but I got one quickly stating Leonard was in violation of the rules and no mistake had been made.

I sat there stunned before going back into Medium.

Only to be more stunned when I see Mr money maker is now deleted user too.

What is going on here?

It pretty much took the wind out of my sails. I spent a lot of time weeding through fake niceness and pretend interest to find these two quality gems. All for nothing.

The worst part?

From the outside looking in, there’s nothing in these folks conduct that could appear bad.

So I’m thinking, at what point am I next? Or perhaps the next folks I connect with.

It makes it questionable on spending so much time trying to build a community if the decent folks are shoved into the deleted user category.

I’m unsure how to proceed here. I figure I likely made about .02 per hour for my time building my community so far.

It just got set back to almost the beginning.

I definitely can’t see the logic in staying on a merry go round to nowhere.

It was a mass ban yesterday.

Desperate to make sense of this, I continued searching and found several articles yesterday wanting to know why others were banned in this net that was thrown yesterday.

Leonard mentioned again in one of them. He really is the salt of the earth.

Here are the links to the other articles I found last night on this.

I implore Medium, as I did in my help ticket, to please reinstate the two users I mentioned. Leonard Tillerman and MrMoneyMaker.

I’m assuming perhaps the others in those above articles are great folks too, or they wouldn’t have written on their behalf.

I don’t know them, so can only say I know the two I mentioned are great members of the community. They make many like myself look forward to writing here, interacting here. Being a Friend of Medium.

I also now question the purpose of my having the FOM membership. I got it because I wanted those like the two I mentioned to get more for their work when I came around.

If those I pay for this benefit aren’t going to get it, it doesn’t make sense to pay for it.

And that’s just common sense.

I do hope that accounts swept up yesterday had a large error involved, and this will be rectified quickly.

Regardless, it leaves regular folks like myself questioning many things that I’ve put to words here.

May you have the day you deserve.

Regards,

Jason