What “Follow-For-Follow” Really Is

And why making it against the rules is a bad move

Image by geralt on Pixabay

As you may know, I’ve been working with Jennifer Barrios Tettay recently to prepare the October interview. (Thank you so much, btw!) While finalizing things for the full interview to be posted on Patreon, she sent me a somewhat alarming response from Tony Stubblebine on Vritant Kumar’s March article on “follow-for-follow:”

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My Initial Response

I’m somewhat of an idiot. I knew Ev Williams had stepped down and a new CEO was going to take his place, but I forgot the guy’s name. So when I saw this comment, I assumed it was another writer threatening people again.

It’s happened to me before.

And since that previous interaction led to me directly confronting Medium about whether I was doing something wrong or if this writer had gone off the rails, I felt pretty confident that this Tony guy was all talk.

Sigh.

Well, you probably already know, but clearly Tony’s the new CEO. Which means it’s not a threat; it’s a promise.