Medium is done as a platform. If you still post content there you need to look for an alternative. It will not get any better. The management shows zero will to recognize the issues and to solve it.
As soon as a company resorts to dark UI patterns (which medium has done for some time now) it is always downhill from there. Just in the last few weeks I have found 5+ regular authors that does NOT intend to post premium articles but have been tricked into doing so through a misleading/dark UI.
Kind of a shame since it used to be quite good as discovery platform and it had promise but it is not anymore and I spend zero time on the platform apart from reading articles that I click from my Twitter feed.
Medium pressured freeCodeCamp to put the articles behind the firewall
61–70 of 71 posts
Re: Medium pressured freeCodeCamp to put the articles behind the firewall
#62Archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20190531170114/https://twitter.c... Stop using Medium. Seriously, what will it take to get people off this terrible platform? It's bad for readers, bad for content creators, and doesn't even have the audience people claim to be benefiting from anymore. If you just want dead simple publishing (which was what Medium was supposed to be originally before it became terrible), try…
If that goes dead, here are the 2 screenshots of it: - The tweet: https://bluetide.pro/EOVchT - The img in the tweet: https://bluetide.pro/X6qAyN
Full tweet and screenshot text below:
--------------------------------------
@oleg008:
"Wow, @Medium pressured @freeCodeCamp to put articles behind the firewall:
'They have pressured us to put our articles behind their paywalls. We refused. So they tried to buy us... We refused. Then they started threatening us with a lawyer.'
Can't believe this is real."
[SCREENSHOT TEXT]
Hi Oleg,
Thanks again for publishing on freeCodeCamp's Medium publication.
freeCodeCamp is the biggest publication on Medium. Our open source community sends Medium about 5% of their total traffic.
But over the past year, Medium has become more aggressive toward us. They have pressured us to put our articles behind their paywalls. We refused. So they tried to buy us. (Which makes no sense. We're a public charity.) We refused. Then they started threatening us with a lawyer.
It's not just us. They are doing this to a lot of publications. And a lot of high profile people from the developer community are leaving Medium as a result.
Medium is a corporation founded by a billionaire who also accepted $132 million in venture capital.
freeCodeCamp is just a tiny donor-supported nonprofit.
I tell you this not because I want you to be angry. I'm not angry. I just want to help people learn to code.
So together, the community made plans to leave Medium. We built freeCodeCamp News as fast as we could.
freeCodeCamp News is a place where you can share your blog articles. It's free, it doesn't have ads, and it's open source. There are no "sign in" popups or paywalled articles. According to Google's own Lighthouse Score, freeCodeCamp News is faster than Medium, has better SEO than Medium, and is more accessible than Medium.
And in just the past 48 hours, hundreds of thousands of people have read articles on freeCodeCamp News. So we have a growing audience for your articles.
This said, all of your articles are still on Medium where they were before.
The articles you submitted - which we edited then published in freeCodeCamp's Medium publication - are now on freeCodeCamp News, too.
You can read more about freeCodeCamp News - including my detailed FAQ - here: https://www.freecodecamp.org/forum/t/279929
On a personal note, I wrote more than 500 articles on Medium. I built up a following of 155,000 people on Medium over the years. It was hard to leave Medium. But I have no doubt that it was the right thing to do.
I'm optimistic that all of us in the developer community can start our own blogs on the open web, then use community tools like freeCodeCamp News to raise awareness of them.
I'm looking forward to reading more of your writing in the future.
Best,
Quincy Larson The teacher who founded freeCodeCamp.org
[/SCREENSHOT TEXT]
Re: Medium pressured freeCodeCamp to put the articles behind the firewall
#63Why is this post still here? The original author of the email - Quincy Larson - said it was a private email. Sure the tweet is already available at archived links. That doesn't mean we can't be respectful of the wishes of the original author of a leaked private email. Especially someone who has put so much time and hard work into running a small non-profit helping people learn to code.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect Partially this. And while it's possible this post will go down, there's also a worthwhile discussion to be had about Medium. Some things are bigger than Quincy might want them to be (I say this as someone who's a HUGE fan of FCC and what they do).
Fair point about what the effect might be. I'm talking about the ethics of the YCombinator community and company in particular and not the internets at large. If someone asks me to delete something that was private, I just do it.
Re: Medium pressured freeCodeCamp to put the articles behind the firewall
#64Hopefully someday we'll start recognizing the pattern. Sites built on large amounts of venture capital are literally too good to be true. They're able to lose tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year providing completely unsustainable services, but they can't keep doing it forever. When they start monetizing, they have to use methods that are far more aggressive than would have been needed originally, beca…
Hi Deimorz, are you the same /u/Deimorz who used to be an admin on reddit? I'm very interested to read this perspective from you. Do you think there is a viable third way forward for companies like Medium and reddit?
If you're looking for a replacement to reddit - there's https://saidit.net/ - it's still fairly new, and if you sign up (well, happened to me - maybe it's changed since a few weeks ago?) they subscribe you to all of the subs (so you have to manually unsub from those you don't want to be in - and yes, several of the "ugly" subs from reddit migrated there after the last "great purge").
I don't know how sustainable it will be or can be, if it will stay ok or devolve into a weird "4chan-like" mess, or go the same way as reddit (if it gets popular, gets money, or what). I'm not even sure who's really behind it (that probably isn't a good thing).
But - it's one option that I know of (and if you find out more about it or others, let me know if you can or want to).
Re: Medium pressured freeCodeCamp to put the articles behind the firewall
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect Partially this. And while it's possible this post will go down, there's also a worthwhile discussion to be had about Medium. Some things are bigger than Quincy might want them to be (I say this as someone who's a HUGE fan of FCC and what they do).
Fair point about what the effect might be. I'm talking about the ethics of the YCombinator community and company in particular and not the internets at large. If someone asks me to delete something that was private, I just do it.
If it's posted publicly, it's public. They can't really do anything about that.
Re: Medium pressured freeCodeCamp to put the articles behind the firewall
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi Deimorz, are you the same /u/Deimorz who used to be an admin on reddit? I'm very interested to read this perspective from you. Do you think there is a viable third way forward for companies like Medium and reddit?
If you're looking for a replacement to reddit - there's https://saidit.net/ - it's still fairly new, and if you sign up (well, happened to me - maybe it's changed since a few weeks ago?) they subscribe you to all of the subs (so you have to manually unsub from those you don't want to be in - and yes, several of the "ugly" subs from reddit migrated there after the last "great purge"). I don't know how sustainable it w…
[deleted]
Re: Medium pressured freeCodeCamp to put the articles behind the firewall
#67Archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20190531170114/https://twitter.c... Stop using Medium. Seriously, what will it take to get people off this terrible platform? It's bad for readers, bad for content creators, and doesn't even have the audience people claim to be benefiting from anymore. If you just want dead simple publishing (which was what Medium was supposed to be originally before it became terrible), try…
Their https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ is indeed even better. Loads images without JS!
Re: Medium pressured freeCodeCamp to put the articles behind the firewall
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get his concern as well, but at the same time... why would ANYONE share something you might regret (like on this case) if the content is made public?
you've never told someone something in confidence?
Yes, because telling someone something in confidence is the same as sending a fucking email. You are reaaaaaaaally making an effort to look obtuse.
Re: Medium pressured freeCodeCamp to put the articles behind the firewall
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> including being entirely user-supported with no investors or ads What are your plans when user-supported revenue is not enough to keep the servers running?
I’m still surprised that I can’t donate my resources toward a distributed DB/web server for this kind of content. E.g. by subscribing, I automatically start serving content and/or augmenting other mirrors. As some channels I subscribe to become stale, I automatically start re-assigning my resources to keep it alive. Basically a BitTorrent/Tor-like decentralized system for distribute DBs with a web front end. The amou…
Ha, I’m working on this. It’s called Aether: http://getaether.net. You contribute bandwidth / cpu / storage by being a peer on the network. It’s less Medium and more Slashdot / Reddit though.
Re: Medium pressured freeCodeCamp to put the articles behind the firewall
#70It's not a single case. The whole company is built on an exploitive and nefarious business model. https://hackernoon.com/why-is-hackernoon-com-leaving-medium-... https://praxis.fortelabs.co/why-im-leaving-medium/
Hackernoon was also on the sketchier side, injecting ads and huge subscribe/tweet/etc buttons on 3rd party posts. Published once there, never ever gonna use a Medium publication again.