AGREE TO DISAGREE — THE DIARIST DEBATES
Did Medium’s CEO Lie To Us? — $$ And AI Are Ruling?
Low effort content is killing my feed, and why I am not getting paid?
On reflection 11th of April 2024, is Medium a utopian world?
It was July 2023 when Buster Benson in his blog promised a completely new utopian world for us at Medium. I call it utopian as money controls the rest of the world. Not thinking about money first is utopian these days. Being a forever optimist I was excited. I finally had a platform that focused only on quality writing, and it finally wanted to pay us here in India and many other countries.
The Promise:
It was clear that Medium wanted to be different from the rest of the Internet. When every other platform was focusing on more views, more clicks at any cost, Medium was striving to be different. There was also a major update to the Partner Program, many writers were waiting for. There was a clear promise of:
- Less clickbait
- Less of get rich quick
- Less of stories generated by AI
- More of stories that have human wisdom
- Partner program was coming to more countries
Over the last few years, our members have told us in no uncertain terms that they are tired of clickbait and content mills, want ‘get rich quick’ siloed into a constrained area, don’t want stories that are generated by AI, and, in particular, want to read human stories that deliver actual human wisdom.
— Buster Benson, The Medium Blog, Jul 19, 2023.
I was Excited
I could not resist it, or stop myself from really believing in what Medium promised. I thought I won’t not see articles like “I earned $$$$s in three months.”
I wondered if I could seriously pursue Medium as a side hustle?, Now that I will start getting paid for the knowledge of Data Engineering I share here.
I was so excited, and I poured my excitement out on LinkedIn too. I wrote three posts on the promise of Medium, encouraged others to become a member for the goldmine of knowledge that is Medium.
Promises should be kept
What happens when you can’t match expectations you set for others? What happens when you can’t keep your promise?
1st of August 2023, was the date they planned to roll out all the new changes, including the boost program, and releasing the partner program to new countries. The first part of the promise was rolled out on the 1st of August, but the Medium Partner Program never arrived for India and Brazil.
Now before we really dissect whether the promise of quality content, and no AI content was met or not, let us see what happened with the second one.
For a good couple of weeks since the 1st of Aug 2023, there was no update at all from Medium on whether the rollout was going to happen for India, and Brazil. Then only after a few weeks had passed, they added a note to the article Tony Stubblebine had shared earlier. They said, that they have scoped in all the work they needed to do, and that should not take more than just two months to complete.
The first part of the promise was rolled out on the 1st of August, but the Medium Partner Program never arrived for India and Brazil.
Why update your article so much Tony Stubblebine?
Sadly, I can’t show you a screenshot showing you their commitment of just two months.
The reason?
Keep reading.
People along with me, popular writers like Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles were again so excited on the 1st of October 2023, waiting for the rollout of the Partner Program to India — again. We were again kept in the dark for five days.
They updated the same article again on the 5th of October 2023, more than two months since August. And now there is no proof they had initially said it to be, “Not more than two months.” That’s why I can’t give you a screenshot of this claim.
Wait, wait, just as I thought I won’t be able to prove this, I got one screenshot from the comments section. Someone predicted the future.
So, on the 5th of October 2023, they just removed the reference to the two months commitment, and did not give any fresh dates. People kept asking questions, writing blogs and what not, yet there was no transparency.
The irony is Tony referred to the complexity of the rules, to be transparent. Yet he kept on covering it up with more lies, as he updated the blog to remove previous references.
If Medium really wanted to be transparent, the CEO should have kept a trail of all the promises they had made. As sensible readers we would have really appreciated their transparency then.
People kept asking questions, writing blogs and what not, yet there was no transparency.
While during the time it took for Medium to figure this out, a completely different platform not only ran a proof of concept, they started paying out to people in India and many other countries. Paypal has been doing this since ages.
There’s more lies:
If this was not yet sufficient, on October 24th 2023, Buster Benson again shared a blog with new Partner Program updates. He mentioned that the support for India and Brazil should arrive early in 2024. However, this time they did mention, they don’t want to share a hard date, because they have failed miserably before.
Guess what is meant as early in 2024? January? February? March? It was already April and yet they did not have any update. Interestingly Buster also said, if we still have questions about the Partner Program, we can ask them in the comment section. So people asked, me too. And again, they did not have any update. It’s almost ten months since they first made the promise, and we are still waiting for this.
Ok, they didn’t keep the promise, but can we call this a lie?
Well technically no, they did not lie. They possibly could not foresee this. But were they transparent enough? Did they respect the author’s excitement and anxieties?
Along with the promise of launching the Partner Program in India, they made it mandatory to become a member by committing to paying every month.
Now, I may be wrong, but here’s why they can’t make a promise of a specific date. They will loose all those members that paid, only to become a part of the Medium Partner Program.
It was just yesterday ( at the time of me writing this) that Medium reached a critical milestone of 1 Million members. Congratulations Tony Stubblebine you and your team are doing great to keep the platform alive.
But can you really look at yourselves in the mirror and say,
“We were completely fair to writers in India and Brazil, and other geographies that are expecting the program to be rolled out?”
How tough can this be that a global cooperation of your scale, with readers and writers all over the world, can’t figure this out?
Is stripe the only option?
What would happen if tomorrow Stripe goes down for some reason? Will Medium stop existing?
On quality content and no click bait?
Now that the first and major part of my rant … opps sorry “reflection” is over, let’s investigate the promise of quality, promise of no AI, and no click bait.
I still see people writing hundreds of articles on, “how I earned $$$$$s writing on Medium.” A major portion of my home feed is taken away by articles that only focus on how to earn writing online, and how to earn on Medium.
Hardly any of these are really nuanced human stories. Chances are a lot of them are just written by AI. These articles are so low quality they are almost templated content, needing minimum effort from the writers.
One of your most prolific women writers even sent out a newsletter, how a low effort silly piece of content is raking in the money. Yet her quality content does not work. She is down from eighteen blogs a month to four –five blogs per month.
It seems click bait still works, it seems shallow content still works, it seems people are discouraged putting in the effort to write good content.
Technical content no longer has an audience:
Buster Benson again hinted in one of his blogs that technical content (and some other categories) will probably loose out on the new algorithm. They probably believe it’s only human stories that are worth the money, and attention, on Medium.
They can’t be more wrong. I pay for the Medium membership, only because I get to read many technical writers here.
A lot of my favourite writers have already moved their quality content to other platforms. They only use Medium share shallow content to get free eyeballs.
It seems click bait still works, it seems shallow content still works, it seems people are discouraged putting in the effort to write good content.
If this continues, soon I will not have enough writers to read from.
Saving an article to a list isn’t engagement:
Medium has laid out many guidelines on what makes a good article on Medium. They have also shared many resources on how users reading more than thirty seconds, users clapping, highlighting, or commenting are the signs they look for to pay out the money.
They have also said:
“Boosting can significantly impact the chances of reaching more people.”
What they have not told us is boosting is still being gate kept — by some editors and nominators.
Without a boost a technical article does not even reach my own followers any longer.
Also, a sign of engagement on a technical article is that people save them to their reading lists, or library lists. People don’t read a blog start to end before saving. They find something interesting, they skim through the content and then they save it to read or consume later. This is specifically true for tutorials and technical contents.
Why then is saving to a list not a feature of the qualities of an article to boost?
Am I being too critical? Hope I am not muted:
Thankfully the platform hopefully is still democratic. I hope I can voice my frustration via my reflection on what’s happened, and yet not have to face any sanction later on.
I might be overly critical, however it’s also true that we can only criticize someone we assume would do better.
Tony Stubblebine at the end of the day, we all love Medium so much that it hurts when we are not kept in the loop. We care so much, only because we love the platform and we only want it to do better.
I promise, I will not leave Medium, unless I am forced to. I am sure there are many others who simply are in love and awe of Medium. We just expect a little bit more empathy on the way you handle your communications.
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