Medium Took Away Over 1,000 of My Followers Last Night

Shock and dismay don’t even come close

Photo by sk on Unsplash

I’ve worked hard at building a genuine following here on Medium. I don’t play the follow-for-follow game. I don’t unfollow people after they follow me.

Here’s how I got to 3,547 followers:

I write.

I also read and interact with a lot of content on the platform. I look at who else has clapped and highlighted things I have also enjoyed and I check them out. If I like what they write, I follow them. The exceptions are people without profile images and profile bio information. I’ve always figured that helps weed out following a fake account.

The only unfollowing I do is a monthly purge of anyone I’ve followed who is not a member. I feel very strongly that we support one another on this platform, and those who aren’t paying for membership are not supporting anyone. I realize sometimes people have financial issues that force them to cancel their membership, but I honestly believe the majority of the non-members are simply not here to support the community.

Anyhoo, imagine my horror when I noticed my carefully cultivated number this morning has plummeted to 2,924.