I Said Goodbye to My Paid Medium Membership Subscription in Less Than Six Months

Focus Blue
Aug 23, 2017 · 5 min read
Leaving Medium Paid Subscription. I took this photo, ask for permission here: jk3tree@gmail.com

On August 22, 2017, after 5 months of paying for a Medium Subscription I called it quits. I had hoped Medium would be better by paying for it, but it proved to be not much better. And I got tired of oh so many things about it. Here are the main reasons why I quit:

  1. It takes several tries to get on Medium because of the multiple number of 504 errors indicating a host error at Medium and after that the ‘retry for the live page’ comes up. Sometimes that retry works and sometimes it takes several retries. I’ve sent this issue to support and they claim they don’t see it. I’ve written about it on Medium and still nothing. I don’t think they will ever fix it.
  2. I had created a publication, but there are no tools to use in Medium to drive traffic toward it. And there are no clear instructions to create a publication — instead I had to hunt the net for tips on how to do it. That was a royal hassle. I did it and I wrote some articles on it, but in the end I dropped it. It just was’t worth it.
  3. Articles I marked that I don’t want to see would come up again on the next time I opened Medium. I’ve written support about it and got the standard reply that basically says they’ll send it to the team ….which in my book equates to the can. No updates, no questions, no nothing.
  4. Far too much bait and switch articles. I even wrote an article against such practices. Medium is starting to fill up with people who put up a title and then put up a link for the article….and they’re expecting a clap. They can forget that. Publications put up a tease and to read more I’d have to pay them for it. Tease loses.
  5. Far too many damn articles on how to write or what to write or what you need to learn to write better. It’s a blogging platform for crying out loud.
  6. Too many articles about hate, black struggles, white people, nazis, white supremacists, Trump hate, women’s problems, rape culture, software design, coding, programming, crytocurrency, politics, LGBTQ, and race. I’ve had enough too of Quincy writing about coding and his camp campaign to convince others they need to code. And each time I try to block the stuff Medium keeps putting these articles up. Sure, I’ve read some of it and commented, but I grew tired of it all. Medium has become a haven for people who write on these topics. And it doesn’t matter if I don’t choose such topics — they keep coming up anyway.
  7. The best of writers aren’t and neither is their content. There are far better articles to read elsewhere than on Medium.
  8. Audio might be good for the car or for those with smartphones. I use a laptop and it’s proven more distraction than value.
  9. Membership articles aren’t better. Part of the reason is because I have no idea from Medium why they are better. Noteworthy was a complete waste. And there is enough section splintering on Medium.
  10. If Medium wants to make it they need to be a site controlled by writers for writers. But currently, it’s designed and controlled by amateurs who think they know the world of good writing. I’m just not that impressed anymore. And the updates to the design and the content aren’t worth paying for it anymore.

So goodbye on the subscription. When Medium makes their site a class act worth paying for maybe I’ll return, but I’m not confident they can make that happen. Medium feels too much like a school project.

Update: November 10, 2018 — Decided to join again. I can hope I don’t see the reasons why I quit above coming back. I decided to rejoin because there are some member-only stories I wish to comment on. Will see how this goes this time.

Update: November 15, 2019 — Decided to quit the membership. Will no longer pay for Medium. Their conduct rules are at the point now where I have to be way way way too careful with how I comment or write stories. I got this today — and this is what led me to quit paying for a subscription with them:

“Publishing from your account is currently limited due to account age, incomplete profile, or inactivity. Please complete your profile, and use Medium more to unlock publishing. Any posts or responses have been saved to your draft folder and will be available when you’re able to publish.”.

Yea, that! My profile is complete. Notice they didn’t say how much more I have to use Medium to publish. This isn’t how to run a platform. And they should allow opinions not in line with an OP. Commentators and bloggers should not have to feel they have to be of the tip toeing around with what and how they want to say what they do.

The metered wall thing — being on or off it, that message that says the ‘distribution setting is off ‘— and you get the box that says “learn more” instead of the box it should have ‘click here to turn the distribution on’. But when I attempted to turn it on — yea, that’s not available.

So I am quitting the subscription. Medium subscription isn’t worth it with so many rules, policies and code of conduct. I am tired of the articles that clearly are advertisements because Medium permits stories to be reprinted on it that came from other professional sources like the NY Times, Huff Post, Washington Post, etc.

Update: November 17, 2019 — The day before I did sent a support request to ask about the limit issue — can’t publish issue. They quickly responded and lifted the limit, but didn’t say what the limit is. So all I can do is hope not to reach that limit or get put back into it if it happens again.

I don’t know if I, at this point will cancel my cancel and subscribe — will wait I think. In the meantime I’ll be a little more careful. But I really do not like that Medium allows so many activists and journal/diary folks using Medium to blast at various people and genders, but not allow folks to comment against just activism.

Update December 12, 2019 — Turns out that non-members have practically NOTHING to read because the home page is all loaded with starred articles. So I have resumed my membership once again. I guess Medium marketing is more or less forcing folks to be members. Nice going.

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Focus Blue

Written by

Love Seattle, write comedy, do road trips, cook, love my girl, listen to techno, fine dining, cheap eats, email: jk3tree@gmail.com

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