Why Does ‘Medium’ Curate Such Crap?
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m pretty jaded toward what the algorithm “recommends” to me
Many of us who frequent Medium are fed up with the algorithm. Whether it’s the weekly “digest” emailed to us, shitty articles that get auto-recommended, or many of the questionable “Staff Picks” displayed on our dashboards — we’re subjected to tiresome rants, social-baiting, and lectures-disguised-as-“education.”
Certain “Top Writers” appear to thrive from finding infinite ways to reword their bigotry into endless variations of the same damn article.
Let me make one caveat, here: I’m not painting the entire Medium staff with the same broad brush. Clearly, they’re trying to figure out how to balance perceived quality with profitability. It isn’t an exact science for them.
Furthermore, most of us probably don’t understand many of the mechanics that make Medium’s algorithm run in the way it runs. If this assumption of mine is correct, much of what gets curated might be auto-recommended based on clicks, subject tags, and/or an author’s breadth of followers.
That doesn’t make it any less exasperating to watch cruddy editorial pieces get boosted and promoted…while so much high-quality content languishes between the…
