Medium Support Told Me That These 10 Actions Will Get You Banned
This is the reason why many writers are unknowingly banned from the Partnership Program.
Medium has caught many genuine writers in their bot spam filter in response to stop spammers and false engagement.
Majority of writers have no idea what can get them banned. So most writers have cut back on engagement and activities on Medium to avoid being the next victim.
Also, there are too many false conspiracy theories and that is why I decided to ask Medium support myself.
This was their response.
Hello,
Thanks for writing in.
For privacy reasons, we aren’t able to comment on the status of specific individual posts or accounts.
In general, when it comes to engagement, our basic rules for spam apply
Spam or Site Misuse We do not allow spam or misuse of Medium. All spam or misuse will be immediately removed from Medium without notification. Examples of spam or misuse include:Posting content primarily to drive traffic to, or increase the search rankings of, an external site, product, or service
Scraping and reposting content from other sources for the primary purpose of generating revenue or other personal gains
Posting duplicate content, whether from a single account or across multiple accounts
- Medium allows for multiple accounts, but you can’t engage with your own accounts or post the same content from one of your accounts on another account.
Stories where the content is clipped with the purpose of linking to the rest of the article on a different website
- If you don’t complete your articles, and readers have to click on an external link to access the rest of the article, you are likely to be banned.
Performing a disproportionately large number of interactions, particularly by automated means. This includes bulk or indiscriminate interactions, such as following of other accounts (follow spam) clapping, highlighting, leaving notes, or flagging content
- This is where a lot of writers get it wrong. Many writers who get banned might be guilty of following 125 people every day, clapping, highlighting, and commenting everywhere. This will make the spam filter bot flag you as a spammer.
- As much as possible, ensure your engagement is reasonable in numbers and not disproportionate. You don’t have to follow 125 people every day, and you don’t have to comment 100 times daily.
Repeatedly using responses, mentions, or other interactions as a method of promotion or marketing
- Many writers are guilty of this. Some writers tag too many people in their posts just to generate traffic. You might escape notice if you do it once, but a repeated pattern might get you flagged.
Participating in bounty campaigns or brigades to artificially inflate rankings for posts, accounts, businesses, or products
- Writers should be careful of Facebook groups. You might be doing it out of the sincerity of your heart but Medium considers this as spam.
Use or re-use content templates with slight modifications across multiple posts and accounts
Using deception to generate revenue or traffic
- I read somewhere on Medium that a group of writers, numbering up to 30, interact with each other daily. They form a sort of reading club.
- Unknowing to them, Medium regarded this as a deceptive way of inflating earnings.
- Medium does not consider this an organic way of generating traffic, so the majority of them were removed from the Partnership Program.
Registering accounts, posting content, or interacting with users or content automatically, systematically, or programmatically
Medium spam is a robot and not a human, so it can make mistakes because it cannot perfectly differentiate between a human, a bot, a genuine interaction, and a deceptive interaction.
It relies on a trained algorithm. Therefore, even if you are genuine, your activity can get you banned if it looks like the pattern in which it was trained.
This post might not totally shield you from being mistakenly flagged by Medium’s spam bot, but it will reduce the likelihood.
