The New Medium Dashboard

Summary

The author expresses dissatisfaction with Medium's new dashboard, which reduces the space for stories and prominently features 'Recommendations' that the author finds to be low-quality clickbait.

Abstract

The article discusses the recent update to Medium's dashboard, which the author reports has not been well-received by all users. The new design dedicates a significant portion of the screen to white space and 'related articles', while the actual stories are confined to a smaller area. The author prefers a full-screen view for stories and is critical of the intrusive 'Recommendations' that are difficult to avoid. They express a desire to support less popular stories and read about topics beyond Medium itself, but the current recommendation system does not facilitate this. Upon reaching out to Medium for a solution to revert to the original interface, the author receives a generic response indicating that user feedback is being collected, suggesting that the ability to opt-out of the new interface is not currently available.

Opinions

The author is annoyed by the new dashboard's layout, which prioritizes 'Recommendations' over the main content.
They consider the 'Recommendations' to be poor-quality clickbait and would prefer to have control over what content is featured.
The author values diversity in content and wants to support non-viral stories, which the current recommendation algorithm seems to overlook.
The author is seeking a way to disable the new interface and revert to the original Medium layout, indicating a strong preference for the previous design.
Medium's response to the author's feedback is seen as a polite dismissal, without any immediate solution or option to change back to the old interface.

Have you been upgraded yet?

Screengrab by author

I hear that not everyone has been upgraded to the new Medium dashboard. So let me enlighten you. Here is the new look — and it means that 50% of the screen is taken up with white space and ‘related articles’, while the stories themselves have to squeeze into a narrow band left of centre.

It’s annoying because I prefer the stories to take up the whole screen. And also, the inability to avoid those shitty clickbait ‘Recommendations’ every time I login is quite poor.

I want to support people whose stories have not gone viral, and I want to read outside of the topic of Medium itself. The Recommendations are crap, so I chose a travel story to feature above.

I’ve asked Medium, “Can I turn the new interface off and revert to the original?”

They replied: “Thanks for taking your time to share your thoughts about the recent product changes on Medium. We’re in the process of collecting feedback from our users, and we have now and passed your message on to the product team.”

I guess that’s a ‘no’ then.

Have you been upgraded yet?