The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

700 Articles: what I have learned after 16 months on Medium

After around 16 months on Medium, I thought it would be good to review what I have learned on the platform so far.

700 articles represents an average of over an article a day, and this, along with numerous comments and extensive engagement with other writers, has given me a reasonable chance to assess what works and what doesn’t, and also get a feel for the “culture” of the community.

Every organisation has a culture of some kind, from the sclerotic bureaucracy of local government, with its red tape and stifling procedures, to the cool and edgy buzz of a tech start-up with beanbags and ballpond.

So it is interesting to lift the bonnet of the Medium SUV, open the toolbox, and pick up on the cues and clues that give a sense of what makes Medium tick. Are we nurturing a culture of penicillin or botulism? Though at my age, some Botox might not be a bad thing!

The Good

Community — Top of the list, this is one of the best things about Medium: we have a friendly, inclusive community. It is not perfect, but there is thankfully little of the vitriol of the external world over factional politics, or the wider culture wars that have been stoked by some sections of the press.

Things like trolling or abuse are rare, at least in my experience. The community has been a hugely unexpected bonus of the platform, the mutual support, the sharing of lived experience and expertise, making connections with a huge variety of other writers from different nations and backgrounds. I first came here just to publish articles, not knowing that there is far more to Medium than just hitting the publish button.

Free and helpful advice — There is some great advice from others on Medium. So for example I was guided towards using Grammarly, as a very late adopter. Similarly, a couple of other authors showed me how to tag people properly. There is also a considerable volume of other advice on writing, though to be fair, one has to be discriminating as it is of mixed quality!

The Bad

The Medium company and communication — It feels rather unkind to Medium as a company to include this comment in the “Bad” section, but I think this inclusion does reflect what some other authors feel. I do understand that there are only around 85 members of staff working for the company, who must be incredibly stretched, so I hope this constructive criticism is taken in the spirit it is intended.

An example of the communication gap, is the suggestion I have made several times to Medium, by email and in the unofficial Facebook groups, that there might be a “Writers’ Panel” where volunteer authors on the platform could meet Medium staffers regularly on Zoom, or a similar virtual platform, to discuss issues of concern or ideas for improvement, and improve two-way communication. As it is, the senior staff at Medium feel rather remote, and communication is erratic, at times very good, at other times very lacking.

To start with an example of when communication works well, in August 2023 there was an amazing “Medium Day” online event, which was a miracle of organisation and technological wizardry, with some brilliant online presentations, talks and discussions.

However, not long afterwards we had the Autumn 2023 episode of faked and manufactured engagement by bots draining income. There was no proper communication from Medium about what was going on throughout late September and the whole of October, many weeks of radio silence.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) — One of the most annoying things on Medium is the volume of undeclared AI-generated content, which drains and steals income from real writers. Medium as a company has been consistently behind the curve in dealing with this issue, perhaps rightly blaming the difficulty of detecting accurately what is AI-generated. The detection tools available provide both false negatives and false positives.

The AI generation and detection programmes are locked in an “arms race”, with AI getting ever more sophisticated and clever at emulating human styles of writing. After being initially bland and repetitive, it seems that AI-generated text is getting better at faking emotions and lived experience. AI represents an existential threat to the platform, and to the writing hobby and profession that brought us all here in the first place. We need to collectively drive all AI content off the platform or face annihilation.

Fake engagement — There are dangers in monetising normal interaction between people. Doing this turns friendly everyday discussion, into yet another way to commercialise something. So the act of Medium making engagement part of the earnings formula has had the perhaps unintended consequence of creating lots of fake engagement, where some are engaging purely to make money.

Monetising engagement also creates a situation when one is never quite sure if engagement is genuine or being done for financial reasons. I would suggest that for this reason, it would be much better to take engagement out of the earnings formula without delay, and revert to reading time.

Using reading time as the sole metric encouraged more high-quality, expert articles. Some authors like Jessica Wildfire and Umair Haque left the platform or greatly reduced their input, seemingly partly as a result of the changes to the formula. Similarly, some writers on quite technical subjects, who wrote long articles for a niche interest, saw dramatic drops in their earnings.

Cliques, Publications and the Boost — This is just a personal rant. The Boost is in theory not a bad idea. However, the selection would be better done solely by Medium staff. The present system of using publications means that authors have to jump through two sets of hoops, first to meet the publication guidelines, and then also the Boost criteria. This stifles creativity and original writing. Making editors the Boost nominators is sadly also wide open to nepotism, and this is detracting from what is a principle a good concept but in practice is not working except for an inner clique.

The Ugly

Where to start with this one?! Sadly there are scammers among us.

Cloned accounts — with these, the scammer sets up a Medium account with the same name as a well-known author (or with a tiny variation on the name), sometimes with the audacity to use their photo, and then messages in the comments, inviting you to join a WhatsApp or Telegram group. They will then seek to get you to pay for writing advice or invest in cryptocurrency or similar.

Fake accounts using AI to post at scale — In the last couple of weeks an outside website/organisation has been setting up industrial numbers of Medium accounts and posting AI-generated articles, sometimes half a dozen or more a day. Somehow these accounts have managed to garner thousands of followers in a matter of days. This is presumably draining considerable money out of the earnings pot, and risks destroying the platform unless Medium gets to grips with dealing with the issue. Again Medium has been largely silent about what it is doing.

Fake accounts using AI to engage — Many will be familiar with comments in our articles which seem to have been generated by AI, bland summaries of the article, or trite comments like “interesting article” or “nice story.”

Conclusion

To conclude, my first 16 months on Medium have been hugely enjoyable overall. There have been highs and lows, such is life. To succeed financially on Medium, at least in my experience, takes considerable hard work, and determination to push through the troughs.

If you are interested in my thoughts on how to make Medium work financially, a couple of articles that may be useful are below:

Facebook — To finish on a positive note, a final few comments on a happier theme. If you haven’t discovered them, there are several Facebook groups in which writers can interact in a different environment. They are of mixed quality, some just “reciprocal reading” groups, some more useful, and CEO Tony Stubblebine sometimes dips into one of the larger ones, called “Medium Writers and Genuine Readers”. There is more about using Facebook groups on this link:

Mastodon — Personally I dislike X, Twitter, or whatever it is called this week. There is a lack of proper moderation, and I have grave doubts about the ethics and politics of the platform. So I would encourage Medium mavens to make use of a more ethical alternative which Medium is promoting. It has yet to achieve critical mass, so the more of us that use it, the better chance it has of becoming viable. More on the links below:

Discord — Finally, it is a real shame that Medium does not have a proper chat feature. This would be one of the main proposals I would suggest if a writers’ panel is ever established. We can meet in the comments section of individual articles, but this is a fragmented, incoherent, and poor substitute for what could make the platform even better.

In the absence of a chat feature being integrated into the platform, I would recommend some of the Discord groups. The chat can be a bit of the “locker room” variety at times, but it is well-natured banter, and a chance to engage with some of the other most active users of Medium. I would recommend this one:

As always, thank you for reading, and to anyone supporting my work. Only a month to go to retirement, from when I will be writing on Medium full-time!

To join a new Facebook group “Medium Matters” where writers can support each other and share articles.

Mastodon- you can find me here