Help! I’ve Been Content Shamed!

My account was under investigation. Or possibly in violation of Medium’s rules. That’s what my would be readers were told, in cold grey text right below a garish 410 error message displayed when they tried to follow the friend links I forwarded them to my most recent Medium article.

I’m not mad that Medium suspended my account, presumably due to my critique of a movie, published moments before my exile. (The movie shall remain nameless, as I suspect it may be on a list used to identify the sort of 2nd Amendment loving incels who spend disproportionate amounts of time sharing misguided ideas on the internet.) I get that algorithms control the entire internet, and some unfortunate combination of words probably triggered an intrepid AI bot to flag a “false positive.”

A part of me even kind of enjoyed the irony of one of my least provocative posts being the one that got me tossed in Medium jail, where probably due to the holiday slow down, I at least had a comfy cell to myself. (Though if we’re being honest, I kinda wouldn’t mind bunking with Jessica Wildfire.)

My issue is with the messaging. While I received no direct correspondence from Medium informing me of my suspension, anybody who tried to access one of my articles received the 410 message informing them, in the most ominous terms, of my investigation and possible flouting of rules. It…