Missing the point Medium at $5 per month
In a world where every single thing, thought, idea, and word can be enclosed, sold, and owned, no one can be free. — Mike Essig
Looking at what everyone has had to say, whether for or against paying $5 per month to access Medium, virtually everyone whether for or against has by focusing on the $5 rather than the implications has entirely missed the point.
To put the $60 per annum in context, 40 euros for Standart, a quarterly journal on coffee culture, £30 per annum for Dark Mountain, two hardback volumes.
Dark Mountain is an anthology of essays, short stories, poetry and art. Launched through crowd funding, now funded through subscription, originally an annual publication, now twice yearly. Contributors do not get paid, they receive a free copy of Dark Mountain.
Standart is an excellent quarterly publication on coffee culture, well written beautifully illustrated, can be found in coffee shops, or subscribe, 11 euros an issue, 40 euros per annum. I do not know how the writers are paid.
The $5 per month, $60 per annum, is only the start.
Many publications have been enticed onto Medium. The carrot, they too will be able to charge their own access fee.
It is useful look at what was the intention when Medium was founded five years ago.
So, we are shifting our resources and attention to defining a new model for writers and creators to be rewarded, based on the value they’re creating for people. And toward building a transformational product for curious humans who want to get smarter about the world every day.
It is too soon to say exactly what this will look like.
No mention of paying writers, no mention of charging for access.
By all accounts, according to Ev Williams, Medium has been a huge success, it has attracted quality writing.
This has all been achieved without paying writers a cent.
Writers write, because they have something to say, because they wish to be read.
I am one of the privileged few, who have been invited inside the fenced-off ghetto, to be paid, apparently because I am a popular writer of quality writing.
I have declined the offer.
What has been created whether intentionally or not, is a de facto commons.
Writers and readers, the commoners, freely collaborate, writers provide the content, readers draw upon that content, often writer and reader are one and the same, or as we see here, one article leads to another article.
The real issue at stake is enclosure of the Medium commons.
Pay to access, paying writers who never asked to be paid, is a red herring.
The payment is to satisfy the insatiable greed of Vulture Capitalists, not to reward writers.
I will cite in detail the very valid points made by Ricardo Mendes:
Medium didn’t started as a commons. it started like Blogger started : to bring a technical solution to an emerging ecosystem.
The vision was never to create a open source federated writing platform with built-in #indieweb protocols so to honor the principles that the social network, the community IS the Web itself and not a private walled garden.
Ev Williams could do this anytime but it’s not in the vision, mission & core principles of Medium.
Instead what should be done in my view is : stop relaying on vultures induced innovation to shape the future of the web.
#indieweb protocols are in my view practical steps anyone can take or learn to take to de-privatize web actions we all adopted in the last 2 decades and give them back to the Open Web : Retweets, Share, Like, Reply, comments ; interactions that create value that are owned by the platform themselves, while the users creating the value are seen as commodity or products or targets.
This cannot be the vision for the future.
Nothing is impeaching the open source community to launch and open Medium where users can create value, own the platform, own their value & get value in return for participating.
But would this project be born anytime it would need to include from its inception the values that will shape its mission. it will have to evade the vulture capitalist from day 1 and it will have to show that another sustainable funding model can be brought into existence because the community wants it, not because the board X or Y.
Ultimately I think what should be kept of Medium is the recommendation, suggestions, series, collections features that Allow writers to participate in each of these niche without having to change their tool.
my point is how to abstract the best of Medium and make it platform agnostic, make it work for the web, the whole web? what if Medium was a community of great writers but without the centralization of the platform?
isn’t that already what the Web is or could be if we focus more on the Web as a network instead of the Web as a competition for platforms where users are commodities?
Proposals have been put forward how we maintain the viability and long term future of Medium as a collaborate commons, but no one at Medium appears to be listening.
- an open source open coop platform
- collate collections, provide the tools, print at local nodes
- an option to pay, the reader decides
- use faircoin and fairpay card
Elsewhere I have expanded on these points.
I considered launch of an on-line magazine The Little Bicycle Coffee Shop devoted to coffee culture, something similar to Standart. There has been interest, Medium seemed the ideal platform, now I am having second thoughts, anywhere but Medium if Medium is to be turned into a fenced-off ghetto.
And let us not forget, that exclusive access is measured by those excluded, not those who are allowed in. Do writers really wish to bar readers from accessing their work, what worth a pittance for your words if no one reads them?
And a final point, which should all be concerned at what appears to be according to Wiki Vic censorship of these discussions:
Have you noticed that this post has been removed from all the selected tag? Same is for my translation. They are now very difficult to find on Medium. Kind of censorship…
Whether readers wish to pay or not, all appear to support the existing concept of Medium as a collaborate commons.
Therefore please fight any attempt to enclose the commons and tell Medium and Ev Williams to think again.
And no, I will not be paying $5 per month to access an enclosed, fenced off commons.
