Medium’s Algorithm Reveals President Biden’s Favorite Erotica
“A” is for After Dark, “E” is for Election
Day 2 at Medium: Log on to perform official government business, get served two scoops of erotica
President Biden often faces criticisms about his uh, performance, but this time really wasn’t his fault.
On The Verge
Medium is a powerful platform. The ecosystem attracts as many writers as readers — some say more. People have a lot to say. Medium gives them a voice.
The most powerful voice in the world is arguably the President of the United States. POTUS, for short.
After a single post on Medium contributed to Biden’s 2020 presidential victory over the Man In The Golden Tower, the White House sat down to discover what else Medium’s platform could offer the presidency.
The algorithm arouses the unexpected
Though Medium is run by a small team of people, the platform’s algorithm — think of it as a kind of artificial intelligence — also learns by mining each user’s data. The power of an algorithm is in its ability to respond quickly and accurately to a user’s preferences.
Google’s algorithm is why it long ago won the Internet Search Engine Wars (offsite). Hard to remember, but there was a time when people were more likely to search “why does cucumber taste like shampoo” not by Google, but via Yahoo, AltaVista, and AOL.
The internet will never cost less than a scoop of ice cream
In the earliest days, AOL charged $20 an hour for the privilege. Medium only charges $5/month. I refuse to believe former Medium CEO EV Williams didn’t stand his ground and send POTUS the bill. Just like I refuse to believe Biden didn’t send Williams back at least one green-faced Lincoln (expensed, of course).
Seems like things were fine. Biden’s first post on Medium is still up.
Then President Biden visited Medium a second time and all hell broke loose.
Here’s what happened when President Biden came back to Medium
The first time you visit Medium, the algorithm has no idea who you are or what you want. At your meet-cute, the vast majority of stories delivered by Medium’s algorithm come from publications or are manually curated by a human being working for Medium.
But the second time, the algorithm sees into your goddamn soul. The algorithm doesn’t care about your morals. It doesn’t care about your life goals or what you had for breakfast.
The algorithm tracks your claps and your reads. It learns what hooks you at your basest level.
So when the White House returned to Medium, the algorithm proudly delivered the top article recommendation for President Biden’s official Medium account.
What. The. Eff. Just. Happened.
“A is for After” is a love story by Bella Cooper about a woman turning her husband into a cuckold. Medium’s T&C forbid graphic imagery, but the story does include graphic descriptions of sex and profanity.
Was that recommendation a glitch? Or was the algorithm just doing what it was supposed to do?
Unfortunately, feeding the algorithm by reading more political content from the POTUS account didn’t help. The algorithm’s next recommendation for Biden was a taboo erotica story about step sisters called “Getting a Piece (and Some Pizza Too).”
The best algorithms can see into your goddamn soul. Was Medium’s algorithm spilling state secrets?
The truth was simpler — and stranger — than anyone thought.
Inception isn’t possible — unless you’re an algorithm
In an article for the Verge, Casey Newton discovered the flaw in the algorithm: Medium had somehow added Biden as a writer on several publications.
Including one for erotica.
Thank god the person behind the prank that’s now part of presidential history wrote a Medium post to explain what happened.
Cracking that nut wide open
The algorithm, yes, is powered by your views, reads, and claps. But it’s also powered by how you interact with other parts of the platform, such as whether you are listed as a writer for a publication.
Describing the simplicity of his prank, Hogan Torah said, “Hit enter and boom. The President is now a writer for my Boneyard pub. I did that weeks ago. I also added Jeff Bezos and chrissy teigen. Now I can put on my resume that I owned a publication that the President of the United States, The founder of Amazon, and some model who says dumb shit on Twitter were writers for.”
The impact the prank had on sex writers at Medium
Before the prank, sex writer Sarene B. Arias wrote that though she only had 2,500 followers, she could “count on non-distributed pieces about sex or sexuality to earn a minimum of $100, with some earning 10x that amount.”
The steady earnings came from writing content to hook Medium’s biggest audience: White (71%), Male (55%), and earns $100k+ annual (53%). We had a shot at changing one of those categories for POTUS. Instead, we elected Medium’s status quo.
Those demographics explain why Tech, Money, and Sex are the hottest topics to write about on Medium. Probably always will be.
Those of us who publish in sex and sexuality often chuckle at the hemming and hawing of new Medium writers about being “curated” or “distributed.” We know first hand that the algorithm is far simpler and far more powerful than a single distinction given by a single bot or human reader, deeming an article worthy of “further distribution.” — The Biden Account Debacle and Its Impact on Sex Writers by Sarene B. Arias
Medium’s waning libido
Having said that, top sex writers like Joe Duncan lamented changes in the platform affecting the genre’s most frequent writers.
At one point, he explained why he ultimately canceled his monthly subscription payment, asking, “Why am I going to pay $5 per month for broken English, served up by a broken algorithm and low-quality articles?
Countless other articles discuss how often people feel frustrated — sometimes horrified — at what Medium’s algorithm recommends. What will it spit out next?
President Biden got sent erotica, but unless the problem is fixed, next time he might be sent a recommendation for poop.
A Medium-sized future
Much has changed at Medium since Sarene Arias clapped back at the ripple effect from Hogan Torah’s prank on President Biden. It turns out the leak Torah had exploited was hiding an even bigger flaw.
Medium’s problems were so bad that since the last round of funding from 2016 onward, EV was personally paying to keep the lights on.
EV Williams stepped away as Medium’s CEO just as Elon Musk stepped into — some would say was ultimately pushed into despite his very loud regret — his role as new Twitter CEO. And Musk has now spent the last week button mashing Twitter into oblivion.
But the $8 Verification Scandal isn’t Elon Musks’ fault. He just put a price tag on the problem.
EV Williams — the same founder of Medium — was also co-founder of Twitter. So it makes sense that Medium would face the same fake problem threatening Twitter. A new algorithm promises infinite potential, but as defunct search engine AltaVista discovered, unless you know what to do with it, you may as well be a DeLorean running on an empty gas tank.
Mr. Fusion can’t do everything.
Note: After reading a different kind of update from Sarene, I still have hope
Additional reading
Ev Resigned. But The New CEO of Medium is One of Us! by J.J. Pryor
Leak of Internal Medium Turmoil is Incredibly Eye-Opening by J.J. Pryor
Breaking Down the Medium Algorithm by Analyzing the Medium Homepage (Zulie Writes)
How Much Money is 1,000 Views Worth on Medium? (Zulie Writes)
The Biden Account Debacle and Its Impact on Sex Writers by Sarene B. Arias
Medium Has Become a Mean and Ugly Place by Sarene B. Arias
Does My New Medium Strategy Work For You? by Sarene B. Arias
I Added Biden as a Writer to My Garbage Pub And Made Medium Show Him Porn by Hogan Torah
Don’t Feel Bad, the Algorithm Hates EVERYONE by Lon Shapiro
Why did Medium’s algorithm offer porn to Joe Biden? What a mystery! (Alt House)
Medium had an internal panic after its algorithm kept recommending erotic stories to the official POTUS account used by Biden, report says (Business Insider)
The mess at Medium (The Verge)
The other mess at Medium (Platformer/Substack)
I Don’t Even Know What the Hell I’m Doing On Medium Anymore by Shannon Ashley
AltaVista Search Engine History Lesson For Internet Nerds (Digital.com)
