Let me get this straight.

Even though Medium supposedly doesn’t want to become a social network, they do the following:

  • They treat comments on stories as freestanding stories of their own, equal and in fact identical to the original story.
  • They list your replies on your personal home page, giving you no option to hide them, further erasing the distinction between original content and replies, further devaluing journalism by overvaluing the peanut gallery.
  • They go so far as to mix your replies and original content in your metrics making it impossible to tune out the noise, devaluing real content still more.
  • They use bullshit touchy-feely social media verbiage like “followers” instead of “subscribers” and “stories” instead of “articles”.

Then they decide that these elements have made their product into a social network, so they add dark patterns to the user experience which harm content creators but do nothing to keep the product a serious content platform.

Of course, if Medium is set up by the same people as Twitter, that might explain their flailing incompetence.

    Jason Clauß - UX Renegade

    Written by

    I am bad design's worst nightmare. Clausscreative.com.