Live data from Hacker News

Ending our Medium integration

write.as

21–30 of 382 posts

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#22
post #2

I think some things are more suited as not-for-profit entities. Blogging is hard to monetize without coming off as evil or desperate, so why bother? But then again, you still need to fund servers and such.

Real news might be another. What we have now is 90% "entertainment news" that is pretty heavily biased. And not always biased politically. Sometimes just biased on what will get clicks $$$. We are ironically worse off now than we were 20 years ago when it comes to access to unbiased news. Less was more.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#23
post #17
post #4

Personally, I was excited by Medium all those years ago. Now I think twice before clicking a medium.com link. I really hate the obnoxious UI and usually close the tab before reading the article. Anyone else feel this way?

While some interesting and insightful articles still exist on the site, the majority feels like someone trying to explain me what they read on Wikipedia this morning.

Yeah, TEDx Talks in text format

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#24
Services exist if you pay for them with:

1. Labor

2. Cash

3. Personal Data/Ads

With a few exceptions (I can't think of any, but presumably you might) you have to pay through one of these methods.

If you don't like Medium, you can use Blogger (3), Ghost/Svbtle (2) or self host (1 + less 2).

To put it another way, are we annoyed at Medium or just the inevitable friction in the world. No matter what they promised, they can't sustain giving away a free service without 1,2 or 3.

Edit: write.as looks like an interesting one because it lets you toggle between 1 and 2. I assume everyone knows about wordpress.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#25
post #4

Personally, I was excited by Medium all those years ago. Now I think twice before clicking a medium.com link. I really hate the obnoxious UI and usually close the tab before reading the article. Anyone else feel this way?

I feel that way about most bloggish sites, until I hit the readability button. If they block that then I give up.

Funny how these things go in circles. I remember the time where many webpages were unstyled, letting you freely choose the font, size, colors, etc. in browser preferences. But that was considered ugly and non-user friendly. Now with various readability buttons we're just moving back to that.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#26
post #2

I think some things are more suited as not-for-profit entities. Blogging is hard to monetize without coming off as evil or desperate, so why bother? But then again, you still need to fund servers and such.

Subscription fee seems to be the universal solution to this problem, which works in practice for many news outlets.

Free trial or limited number of articles to get people onboard.

Hire people directly initially, then later on reward them according to people's feedback to split subscription fees.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#27
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run my blog with Lektor on Netlify (no affiliation with either, except I recently became a Lektor co-maintainer) and deploying literally gives me happy feelings. It's amazing to be able to just deploy your blog wherever you want, and Netlify have done a great job at being a deployment target.

I used to live lektor, but thought it died. Hope to see it start moving again.

I don't think it died, plus it's pretty feature-complete as is, I've never had difficulty doing anything. The upside is that it's much easier to use than Hugo, which I never managed to get running. I haven't played with many other alternatives, if anyone knows of a static site generator that isn't specifically blog-oriented (i.e. something with an agnostic model), please let me know.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#28
post #17
post #4

Personally, I was excited by Medium all those years ago. Now I think twice before clicking a medium.com link. I really hate the obnoxious UI and usually close the tab before reading the article. Anyone else feel this way?

While some interesting and insightful articles still exist on the site, the majority feels like someone trying to explain me what they read on Wikipedia this morning.

I've noticed this myself. Also, of late it increasingly feels like I'm reading the Op-ed section of the NYT or the Guardian.

I'm all for opinions on current affairs (I have loads!) but it's not what I came here to read, nor is it what your title suggested.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#29

Services exist if you pay for them with: 1. Labor 2. Cash 3. Personal Data/Ads With a few exceptions (I can't think of any, but presumably you might) you have to pay through one of these methods. If you don't like Medium, you can use Blogger (3), Ghost/Svbtle (2) or self host (1 + less 2). To put it another way, are we annoyed at Medium or just the inevitable friction in the world. No matter what they promised, they…

I definitely agree with you, and this is one of the reasons that I don't like it when people complain so much about ads. It feels entitled in a way to demand completely free access to someone else's stuff.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#30

Services exist if you pay for them with: 1. Labor 2. Cash 3. Personal Data/Ads With a few exceptions (I can't think of any, but presumably you might) you have to pay through one of these methods. If you don't like Medium, you can use Blogger (3), Ghost/Svbtle (2) or self host (1 + less 2). To put it another way, are we annoyed at Medium or just the inevitable friction in the world. No matter what they promised, they…

> If you don't like Medium, you can use Blogger (3), Ghost/Svbtle (2) or self host (1 + less 2).

FWIW you can also use write.as now.

I finally made a paid account the other day after wanting to for a long while. (You can have free ones as well but paid offers a few benefits and as a bonus it also felt great to support open source and pay for hosting at the same time.)

As others has mentioned it is part of the fediverse and there's also a lot of other details to like about it (like not having to give away your email address if you don't want to).

Post reply on HN