MEDIUM | THE PURGE | THE MISSING WRITERS

Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance

Or how Medium created a disaster out of a crisis

Unless you’ve been off the Mediumsphere for a few days (and honestly, that seems quite an attractive choice right now), you’ll know that the chief Medium Tech Geniuses (like Apple Geniuses but with less tech and no bar and really, we could all do with a stiff drink), have implemented a take-down of AI-scam-bot accounts (“Bad Actors”) and caught a whole swathe of innocent bystanders in the process.

I know at least one of these innocents is, well, innocent because we chat off the Mediumsphere, out in the heady atmosphere of Ordinary Life, where there’s actual oxygen instead of forced air. As of writing this, they are still persona non grata around here. I hope this gets remedied soon — they are really upset and bewildered. I’m sure the vast majority of the names I am familiar with are all in the same, rusty spaceship, just waiting to be returned. It’s lonely out there. Major Tom lonely.

I’m not writing a CTA as such but wanted to raise another issue.

Here goes.

We know the Bad Actors have been around for a long time and have become increasingly apparent during January/February, in my experience. We’ve been writing about it. We’ve been scrutinising our new followers who have written nothing but have thousands of followers or have written hundreds of stories in just a few days. It has been common knowledge. So, we assume that Medium has been doing something about it, although it has been crickets on that front from anyone on the Medium payroll, as far as I know.

Assuming that they have been working on a way to combat the Bad Actors, in my experience it would have been sensible to run their shiny new algorithm that was developed (or purchased!) in a test environment first. I know it can be done — I used to work with people who did this as part of their job (they were true Geniuses). It doesn’t require massive financial or time resources to set up your test environment (my company had neither), but what it does require is planning. Pay attention to what’s coming over the horizon and get your weapons ready. Don’t leave taking action to the last minute and then F it all up at the click of a button and regret your life choices afterwards.

Of course, I’m just a lowly writer here and don’t have the inside track on Medium. I don’t know that a last-minute rush job is what took place at Medium HQ, but that’s sure what it looks like, and in business, the optics are everything.

If I don’t know what’s going on, what do I have? I have experience of being part of a team that ran a business dependent on paying clients. You can’t ‘play’ at running a business. You can’t take your clients for granted because soon they’ll get wise to it and walk away. You can’t lock them out of their investment (and yes, we paying members have invested our money in Medium).

Talking of taking your clients for granted — communication is key. All we have had is a comment from Buster Benson on a heartfelt story from Nancy Santos ‘explaining’ what has been happening. Where is the official statement? Where is the reassurance? Where is Coach Tony? The silence is deafening and speaks volumes. And I understand this isn’t the first time.

Crickets.

I’m biding my time, but I’m hacked off beyond measure. What a shitshow.

Ground control. Can you hear me?