I Will Leave Medium If There Is A Paywall

Greg Ferenstein
1 min readFeb 6, 2017

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I have been an enthusiastic supporter of Medium since the beginning. I was one of the first writing brands to come to Medium and have been preaching about my extraordinary experience ever since.

Earlier this year, I had heard rumors of Medium’s flirtations with a subscription and expressed my deep reservations then. Today, Ev Williams announced that Medium is indeed building a subscription product.

I (and the Ferenstein Wire) will, without hesitation, leave Medium if content is paywalled.

Paywalls are terrible for the free flow of information. On top of moral objections, I cannot sustain my business if readers are required to login to read my work.

I am (an enormous) fan of Ev Williams and Medium. I hope this subscription model will not put up a barrier between writers and readers. And, I am optimistic in Medium’s ability to find a reasonable altervative (or maybe even invent something better than anything that has been tried before!).

But, if a strict paywall is put up, I will leave and not look back.

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