Member-only story
Medium’s New Algorithm Is Amazing
…at making me seriously consider other platforms
I joined Facebook three weeks after it exited university-only mode.
The first message I ever received was from my now-wife of thirteen years:
What is a “poke?” I don’t get it.
The following year, Michelle and I started a charity to fight human trafficking and began to build a pretty serious following on Facebook.
We invested thousands of dollars and grew our audience to nearly 20,000 followers, which was a big deal fifteen years ago.
Everything we posted on Facebook received thousands of likes and hundreds of shares.
Until one day it didn’t.
Facebook changed its algorithm, and suddenly, posts received 1/10th as many likes and just a few dozen shares.
Then Facebook started asking us, “Would you like to boost this post?”
We scratched our heads. Why would we pay money to reach an audience that we already paid to reach?
It was the first time we experienced the social media bait-and-switch.
I thought Medium would be different.
If the product is free, then the user is the product. But since subscribers pay…
