Why Have So Many Medium Accounts Been Suspended Lately?

A lot of innocent people were caught in the investigatory net

**NOTE: this story was last updated on 3–9–2024.

It all began around March 5, 2024, when I tried to access my Medium friend RC Hammond’s profile page to see his latest articles. I got the dreaded ERROR 410 screen.

I was immediately perplexed. Anyone who knows RC knows he’s one of the coolest, most dedicated, and most supportive writers on here.

I later found out Emika Oka, another very talented and prolific Medium writer, was also on the “investigation” list. Then I learned a lot of other writers’ accounts were suspended.

I got a very uneasy feeling because I know many of these writers are well-known and very respected in the community. I did some digging because I also know bad news travels fast, especially in a community as big as this one.

I found a few articles that shed some light on this dilemma.

The best article I’ve seen so far is by Nancy Santos. It’s called Missing People on Medium. It has a list of some of our “missing” comrades (and those who returned) and links to other articles related to this predicament.

Perhaps the best part of her article is her comments section, which has an explanation for this puzzling event from Medium’s Buster Benson. Buster is the Principal Product Manager at Medium. Here’s what he had to say about the mass account suspensions:

We’ve been ramping up some new anti-spam and anti-fraud measures and want to assure you that we have no intention of permanently suspending legit accounts. We are repairing accounts that appeal and help us understand how their accounts were incorrectly flagged.

If anyone feels they have been unfairly suspended please write in to https://yourfriends.medium.com with details about your account. We will be reviewing and restoring appeals over the coming week.

This has been necessary as fraudulent actors have been on the rise recently, as I’m sure some of you may have even noticed. But we are going to make sure that accounts improperly picked up in this will be rectified. That said, some of the actions of fraudulent actors may not always be readily apparent on the surface, and it may sometimes appear that we are suspending accounts without reason. I hope you will understand that is not actually the case, and in general for reasons of privacy, etc., we can’t always get into all of the reasons for suspension of specific accounts.

Medium is aggressively cracking down on spam and fraudulent accounts, but a lot of innocent writers have gotten caught in this broad investigatory net. If anyone you know has had their account suspended and you have their e-mail addresses, you can have them e-mail Medium at https://yourfriends.medium.com to try to get their accounts restored.

UPDATE on 3–9–2024: I’ll start with the good news. Medium and Buster have kept their word about reinstating the accounts that were accidentally suspended. I know of at least 14 people who got their accounts suspended and have recently gotten them reactivated. I don’t know the total number of accounts that were suspended and subsequently reinstated.

RC Hammond is among the exonerated.

Now the bad news. Although their accounts were reinstated, some of the victims of this overly-broad investigation are understandably upset and this may negatively affect how they interact with this platform. RC Hammond received the following information from Medium regarding his account suspension:

We have detected suspicious activity related to your account and have determined that it is in violation of our Rules: https://readmedium.com/medium-rules-305502c4eb4

• Performing a disproportionately large number of interactions, particularly by automated means. This includes bulk or indiscriminate interactions, such as following of other accounts (follow spam) clapping, highlighting, leaving notes, or flagging content.
• Using deception to generate revenue or traffic.
• Registering accounts, posting content, or interacting with users or content automatically, systematically, or programmatically

As such, it has been suspended.

If you have an explanation for what’s happening, please reply with any details.

Medium says they want us to engage with other writers and build a strong community, but when writers like RC engage a lot, their accounts appear to be in danger of getting suspended. This sends out a bad and potentially dangerous message to many people on this platform.

We all know there are a TON of AI abusers on Medium. There are a lot of other scam artists who are attempting to game the system with other underhanded tactics, too.

Hopefully this ordeal will be a good opportunity for Medium to learn how to strike a balance between getting rid of the bad actors while protecting the good ones.