Sociopaths Of Medium
Clone Moan
Regular readers will know that I have written about the sins of Medium. You know, the mildy annoying things like the single clappers (whom I have realised often don’t even know that multiple claps are possible), the clap and runners who damage your read ratio, the mass taggers (worse still the invisible taggers) or the strategic highlighters who only want to get notice. There is more about the sins on this link if of interest:
The sociopaths — cloned accounts
But what about the downright sociopaths? The ones actively scamming people on Medium. If you have been on Medium for a while, as well as becoming jaded and cynical(!), you will have come across this issue.
It often happens if you comment on the article of one of Medium’s stars, you know, the people with squillions of followers. Some time afterwards, you may get a reply from someone pretending to be the star.
When it first happened to me, I was quite flattered. It was an author I really admire. The person using the cloned account used the star’s name and even their photo, outrageous when you think about it, to actually use someone else’s photo in this way.
They suggested a collaboration on an article and wanted to connect on “WhatsApp” which I did. It is rare to get a lucky break as a writer. However, after a few exchanges, they mentioned that they dabbled in crypto currency and had made a small fortune. That was when I got suspicious, as my view of crypto currency is that 99% of them are a complete scam in themselves. When they suggested sending some money to make an investment, I immediately smelled a rat worthy of Hamelin, realised the approach was not genuine, and broke off communication. I reported the cloned account to Medium and escaped with nothing more than a sense of intrusion and disappointment.
A ”special” group of writers
More recently the cloning of accounts seems to have become more frequent. The scammers seem to be particularly targeting certain authors to clone for some reason, Jason Provencio and Will Lockett, though no doubt there are others.
The current approach involves an invitation to join a Telegram group. For those not familiar, Telegram is an encrypted communication App similar to WhatsApp. If you follow the link on Telegram, you are then invited to join a “special” group of writers to get coaching and writing advice, and you have to pay $70 dollars. Of course, many of us on Medium are keen to progress a career as writers, and may be tempted by the offer of coaching from someone doing very well.
Some people on Medium have sadly fallen for this and actually transferred money on PayPal. There are no doubt variations on the scam, but that is how it generally seems to be happening.
What can be done?
The first thing is to be aware of the scam and watch out for the signs. The obvious giveaway that the account is a clone is that often they have a tiny number of followers, sometimes none at all. If you spot a cloned account it is recommended to report the comment containing the approach, and the account to Medium, using the “report” feature. The more people that do this the better.
How I was cloned
The problem is not only happening to Medium “stars”. A few months ago the same thing happened to me, with someone using my name and photo. To be fair to Medium, when it happened with someone cloning my own account, they acted within 24 hours. However, it was really unsettling, thinking that genuine readers on Medium might be taken in by someone pretending to be me.
Medium’s response
Some have queried why Medium is not more effective in stopping such cloned accounts from being registered in the first place, and some with technical knowledge say there should not be a problem doing this. Of course, there can be people with the same name, but it does seem that there should be some way of identifying if the same photo in a profile is used more than once, though I don’t have the expertise to know about this.
What I do know is that this is an increasing problem on Medium and it is spoiling some people’s experience on the platform, so I hope that Medium will do all it can to clamp down on cloned accounts, and perhaps let us know what they are doing about it. There might be a special channel or method to report them, to make the process easier.
Do share your views or experience of this issue in the comments.
Further reading:
This is an excellent article by Babett Eichler on her experience of being scammed by a cloned Medium account: