Summary

The recent removal of the "chosen for further distribution" tag on Medium led to a significant drop in views for some writers and caused concern about the value of putting effort into in-depth research and well-written content.

Abstract

The article discusses how the recent change in distribution tags on Medium drastically affected the views for some writers, including the author. The author invested a lot of effort and time in researching, citing experts, and writing quality content, motivated by the possibility of a wider distribution. However, after Medium removed the "chosen for further distribution" tag in September, the author's views dropped significantly, reducing the motivation to continue expending such effort. Despite reaching out to Medium for an explanation, they did not receive a proper response. The author questioned the sudden change and was open to hearing theories for the cause. The significant drop in views led writers to focus on other platforms, like substack or newsbreak, and impacted the quality of future articles published on Medium.

Opinions

The author expresses the opinion that:

Medium's sudden change in views has negatively impacted motivation to put effort into thorough research and quality content production.
In response to the change in views, the author's focus has shifted away from Medium to梦 growthlodge.com.
They predict a decrease in published quality content on Medium due to the lack of reward for effort.
The author enjoyed writing on Medium and hopes that their future Medium articles will be faster, less-research-intensive opinionated pieces to avoid disappointment over poor performance.

The article also mentions that:

Medium's value to writers is affected due to unexplained changes.
Multiple top writers are likely to withdraw from Medium and focus on other publishing platforms.
Although the change affected some Medium writers negatively, others had their best performance in September.

The article concludes with a question to the audience, asking about their viewership experiences and invites them to try out AI services for cost-effectiveness.

Why Medium’s Removal of Distribution Tags Can Ruin the Platform For Good

What really happened to Medium in September?

The presence of excess low-quality content has always been a problem on Medium. Now it’s about to get worse.

Before the recent update in September when they stopped showing the “chosen for further distribution” tag on articles, I put a lot of effort into my writing.

I’ll do research and cite experts because I know that whenever my articles get distributed, it will be worth the effort.

But something happened to Medium in September. All of a sudden, my articles were barely getting over 200 views. And even the ones that did well barely crossed 500 views. No article went over even a thousand views. My stats drastically went from this:

To this:

I emailed Medium about it and all they could tell me was that they were removing the “chosen for further distribution” tag in September. They couldn’t care less about the sudden drop in my views.

But there’s also another side to this. From the look of things, this drop didn’t affect all the writers on Medium. Just as I’ve seen some writers complain about the drop in views, I’ve also seen some have September as their best month so far.

As revealed by an email I read from Illumination, even though a lot of writers complained about a drop in their stat in September, the publication stat has remained steady.

So it begs the question, what really happened to Medium in September?

I don’t know. And if you have a theory, I’m very open to hearing it.

But here’s the thing

The sudden change in the views without any explanation from Medium is going to change things for a lot of writers.

For starters, I can’t waste my time going into research and citing experts when I’m going to get 200 views on that article.

I’m now focusing on building my site (growthlodge.com). It receives around 25k views per month even if my priority has always been on Medium. I imagine I’ll get a significant boost in traffic if I just put a little more effort into my SEO.

And it’s not just me.

I’ve seen many top writers say they’ll be withdrawing from Medium — they may not stop publishing entirely — to focus on other platforms like substack, newsbreak, etc. This is nothing new.

Medium has once received a wave of good writers and big publications checking out because of their unecessary changes that always affect their writers negatively. And if they continue making this kind of changes, then they’re just a few changes away from closing the platform.

And those who wouldn’t leave Medium will probably stop putting that much effort into publishing well-researched content because of the lack of reward for quality.

I still enjoy writing. But now, I’m afraid most of my articles are going to be opinionated pieces I can draft within a few minutes to an hour. That way I won’t get mad if my article doesn’t go anywhere.

How did the change in September affect you? Did you receive a boost? A drop? Or is your stat indifferent to the change?