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Can we all stop using Medium now?

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Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#221

Post by icdsoft »

srrr wrote: post #189
fiala__ wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with YouTube specifically, is that while blog posts are easy to host on pretty much anything that has a CPU, self-hosting videos at scale is essentially impossible. So while Medium only added a marginal amount of convenience for your average blogger, YouTube straight up enabled the kind of content it hosts.

Is it really Impossible to selfhost videos? My 5€ webhosting has 250GB storage and unlimited traffic and every decent CMS has video capabilities. I think the hosting is not the problem. But the social features that YouTube provides are not easily replaced...

It is quite unlikely that the "unlimited" traffic you are paying for is truly unlimited. There is always a catch with such "unlimited" offers.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#223

Post by neop1x »

Your page still won't display in built-in webview of Materialistic Android HN client. And it has trouble parsing HTML. Just like Medium and many other modern (=broken) websites full of javascripts and ads.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#224

Post by corobo »

mikro2nd wrote: post #216
corobo wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately everyone (including GDPR laws) is scared of p2p

Care to elaborate? I find this rather a sweeping statement and quite inconsistent with the level of activity and progress being made in the p2p sphere.

Fair comment. Unfortunately (for me!) I'm going to have to look like a bit of a wally. I can't elaborate on it and my stance has changed in the time since I posted (while looking up my former 'facts').

1) Based on the GDPR comment. If you're really careful with how you do things the IP address could be argued to not be personal information (never let a user associate IP with any other PI - e.g. if a user can ban another from their channel something, don't let them see the underlying IP ban in place. Not sure how IPs are handled across ActivityPub).

2) People scared of p2p.. I'm still on the fence a little. For instance the opt out issue at Peertube[1] displays a snippet of p2p-fear however it should be noted that a feature to opt out of the p2p part is implemented in Peertube specifically now so may just be a non-issue. p2p fear needs to be determined with a simple "do users use this opt-out" before I can sway one way or the other

[1]: https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/685

Thanks for calling it out, I might not have found out that what I knew was outdated otherwise :)

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#225

Post by nickjj »

Jerry2 wrote: post #151
55555 wrote: post #65

I was writing on Medium because it ranks well in Google. I wrote nearly a dozen really great articles on primarily health and dietary supplement topics. After 2 months they started to rank well and were getting daily readers, as the content was really great. Then I wrote an article on a 'research chemical' and they banned my account overnight. I lost the final edited versions of all content. They did not send me a zi…

> When you write articles on Medium keep in mind you're writing on someone else's website and they don't give a damn about you. You are subject to their opinions about what is appropriate and what isn't. Same can be said about other platforms like YouTube etc. When you produce content for all these mega-platforms, you're nothing more than a sharecropper... a digital one. [0] You really have no rights and you're at th…

> Same can be said about other platforms like YouTube etc.

One big difference with Youtube is you don't create your work on their platform directly. You would record a video offline and then upload it to Youtube so you have a copy of your work by default.

With Medium, chances are you wrote the article directly on their platform so now if it gets removed from their site you probably don't have a local copy of it so it's gone forever unless it got scraped somewhere.

In either case I think Medium is really bad and I wouldn't use it.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#226

Post by larkeith »

jscholes wrote: post #54

> If you enjoy reading on the web chances are you’ve been forced to login to Medium at some point in the last week. I've never once logged into Medium. I see a "Pardon the Interruption" notice every time I want to read something, but I just hit Escape and move on with my day. If I had to pick a side, I'd probably say avoid Medium. But I don't know under what circumstances it forces you to log in just to read somethin…

Yet another reason to disable Javascript - no awful login popups.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#227

Post by nickjj »

dickeytk wrote: post #42
regnerba wrote: post #7

I don't publish anything ever really so I don't understand the appeal of using Medium. Can anyone explain it to me? Is it just the ease of use? Write some text, click button, it's available online?

I used to write on medium. The editor is the best. Nothing I've used is as good. The stats are also incredibly well done. Some people are saying authors use it for the built-in audience. I can't say that was an appeal for me—or that I got very many readers from within medium anyways. I started my own blog with hugo/netlify (though notably I don't post things very often). The main reason I switched is because so many…

> I used to write on medium. The editor is the best. Nothing I've used is as good.

What about a local code editor with live reloading on a local copy of your site running in a browser?

This is what I do in Jekyll. I write everything in the same code editor I wrote code in, and on save, I see a 100% replicated live view of my site in about 1 second (even with 200+ posts). Both windows sit side by side. To me this beats any alternative set up.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#228

Post by thefounder »

55555 wrote: post #65

I was writing on Medium because it ranks well in Google. I wrote nearly a dozen really great articles on primarily health and dietary supplement topics. After 2 months they started to rank well and were getting daily readers, as the content was really great. Then I wrote an article on a 'research chemical' and they banned my account overnight. I lost the final edited versions of all content. They did not send me a zi…

>> I have no doubt if an alt-right voice wrote on Medium and were controversial enough in their views they'd be deplatformed. But also the way they handle it is just rude. Fuck them.

Well fuck alt right too! They can get their own website after all. Why should Medium or any other company have to host their shit? People act like they have some kind of right to have their crap hosted by someone else. Companies are not public services after all.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#229

Post by jasonvorhe »

> You know. That old internet that used to be open and free.

This is bullshit. Medium is free, you're free to use it, it's open (unless an author explicitly asks for a paywall for compensation) and you're free to register an account to have your own content published there.

Medium isn't using a proprietary protocol nor does it require a licensed client to access it and everyone has a browser, so I really don't get the issue with publishing there.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#230

Post by spiderfarmer »

coldtea wrote: post #219

> When did reading stuff on the web become pay to play? At the moment authors wanted to get paid. When did somebody else's writing became a free for all? If, as you say, that [Medium] is where "all your favourite content lives" (which means you appreciate the content), then it's troubling that you don't want to pay for it. > Just so we are clear. Medium takes your content, rolls it up into a pretty SEO friendly packa…

I agree. Publishing things online is easy, if you have the knowhow. If you don't know how to set up your website or blog it is hard. And gaining an audience and eventually getting paid for all your work is very hard.

Medium makes these things easier. At an expense, I agree. And there might be better ways for them to do that. And there might be better alternatives, but the reason Medium exists is because they fill a need.

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