Partly the reason why your Medium reader stats are dropping?! Holy Cr*p!!!
Plagiarism at its worst, is happening right here. Do you want to see it? Read on…
Medium, the fantastic writing platform for writers new and old and a platform that pays if you’re in the Medium Partner Program (MPP), is, unfortunately, getting abused easily.
So, you spent a whole day writing a detailed article in your niche and publish it on your Medium profile or a publication where it fits. It’s performing well for a few days, and then you notice that your articles are not performing that well. You ponder if your content’s quality is dwindling or if there’s an influx of newer, better writers.
Do you know what I discovered?
Some (really crooked) people are copy/pasting your painstakingly written content in a minute. They even carry the same headline and the same images. And worst of all, post it as “their” content. I had read a few members posting that some website in their niche is hijacking their posts. While they credit the author, the readers won’t bother coming to Medium to read it because it is on the website anyway.
Some users are not even hesitating in copying your best performing or trending articles on Medium and use it like their own. And few users are copying articles from external websites and posting them on Medium under their profile.
Want Proof?
Look at the screenshots I took of these articles presented with the same headline and same read time. It is not a surprise that those articles match word-to-word. Someone tell me this is not true, or I am missing something?
How did I find this out?
I’m a blogger in the home automation space and recently penned an article on Amazon’s new Sidewalk feature on my blog and published it on Medium as well. Call it a hunch or just curiosity; I searched for the term “Sidewalk” on Medium as I wanted to see other articles on the same topic.
After I saw a few related posts, I saw the same titles of articles in a row as I scrolled down. I clicked a few of them and saw; they have precisely the same content. They are different Medium users. I couldn’t think of any other reason than they are stealing and cashing in on it. I see all those articles have links pointing to other posts that belong to a major tech website. I looked up that article online, and as expected, I see that article published on that website. Pity they forgot to remove the hyperlinks on the post.
“Medium! Wake Up!”
I can report those posts to Medium and forget about it, but I also want us “real writers” to be aware of such incidences. Like me, you might be keen to import your articles from your website on to Medium, but watch out! Your content might get misused, not just on Medium, but even outside of Medium by ravens trying to drive traffic to their website but cannot produce content themselves. Such apathy!
P.S — Search the titles of your best articles and see if you find them duplicated on Medium or elsewhere. And leave a comment with — “I found a copycat!” with the copied link of your article if you find one. Let’s stop them, shame them, and get them kicked off Medium before they savage the spirit of this beautiful platform.
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Also, feel free to read my other most-loved articles on Medium.
