“HackerNoon is leaving Medium, but also trying to take rights for people's work”

I guess I just don't read enough clickbait swill. I had never even heard of "HackerNoon" until 30 seconds ago, and the fact that people refer to it as "HN" (just like Hacker News) is a bit confusing and annoying.

At any rate, there doesn't appear to be anything too scandalous here. Some "brand entity" was curating content submissions, hosted on Medium. The curator decides to start hosting their own CMS site, and asks submitters for permission to re-publish submissions at the new place. Submitters obviously don't have to grant this opt-in if they don't want to. The end. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The only noteworthy item here is the sillyness of "brand entities" trying to use someone else's "platform" to bootstrap themselves. If you start off as a Facebook page, or YouTube channel, or whatever... it could be bumpy when you reach the scale of wanting to self-host your own site instead. That's the trade-off for having used that original host for its "foot traffic" benefits at the outset.

However, while Facebook/Reddit/etc makes sense for bootstrapping meme content, and YouTube makes sense for bootstrapping video content... for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone NEEDS Medium to get a print blog off the ground. It's PRINT, for goodness sake! The easiest and cheapest thing in the world to self-host. Does being on Medium really give you that much in the way of foot traffic or networking effect? I always find Medium posts by way of links from Hackers News or Reddit. I don't think I've ever gone to Medium simply to browse around and stumble across things.

The issue is that there is no “part of Hackernoon”. There’s just Medium. Hackernoon used Medium as a publishing platform, but really they’re just a grouping of Medium content with no special ownership or rights over the content. An unfortunate position for a publisher to be in.

“We’re just not all that good with webserver config, or coding, or tinkering, or...”

‘Aren’t y’all hackers?’

Reminds me of Bojack Horseman:

“Sorry, I’m just not suited for these therapy sessions. I’m not good at using words to express conditions or emotions.”

‘Aren’t you a professional writer?’

yeah, there was nothing about a rights grab in that letter from Hacker Noon at all, wtf.

I've seen links to HNoon semi-regularly here on HNews for the past couple years, fwiw.

I posted this thing on Twitter, but just to be clear about what's going on here: they've replied and said their terms of service were not really intended to be harsh, they don't want your content, and that they'll revise them (https://twitter.com/ow/status/1105462220517969920). One day when Twitter actually implements tweet editing, these types of threads can start with a bit more clarity.

That said: Medium, as an independent writer, has supported me more than any news organization ever has. They currently pay top-of-market rates, on time, and pitch me stories/opportunities regularly. I haven't had a positive relationship with a media company like this in a long while, and it really seems like the work they're doing is making positive moves in the community/content you see as well.

It's hard to know who to side with here, because betting on a platform as a business is a really bad idea, and Medium has pivoted _a lot_ in the past, but at least they're trying to build a better model for both the reader _and_ the writer of the content.