Is Medium Now Creating Glitches to Earn More by Paying Less to Writers?
Is anyone else noticing that on Medium? Now I Don't Get Notifications for Comments…
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Today I was checking my recently published stories when I saw this one.
It had 13+ comments I didn’t read or answer!
That’s a lot!
And I can tell you: I check at least twice a day my comments to answer them.
So when I saw this, I checked some other stories as well — the one from the next day had 3 or 4 unanswered comments!
Then next got a few too.
Others from this month were fine…
But this makes me wonder…what about older stories?!
I can’t physically check on a regular basis all of my stories! And I want to answer every comment!
Medium now makes it impossible…
This is just another “glitch” this month, and no wonder views and reads are so low! I’m not going into the negativity spiral, but I’ll share just a few other glitches from this month:
claps are now black on all stories regardless if you read them or not. So if you didn’t read a story, you can easily make a mistake thinking you did! And what do you do? You don’t read it! => Less views and reads for everyone!
the reading time has disappeared, you have to open the story to see the reading time. And what would readers who are not into long reads do? They open and don’t read => Lower read ratio for everyone!
now comments notifications are missing…as we all know this is a major view and reads generator. But when you don’t get a notification you can never know someone left a comment. And what do you do? You don’t answer and you don’t read the other writer’s stories => Less views and reads for everyone!
I don’t know for sure if there was an algo update, but…
These three convenient glitches alone are just enough to save some costs for Medium from the writer’s earnings!
Is anyone else noticing that on Medium?
What do you think: is Medium now creating glitches to earn more by paying less to writers?
This only makes me think I made the right decision and start writing on Substack. I shared my honest opinion about Medium, you can read it here.
Thanks for reading!
Yana
👉 DOWNLOAD my FREE Writing Tools I use to make consistent money online.
[This story was initially published on Medium.]
Yes, I noticed it too, again. This is not the first time it's happened and with all the problems we've encountered in just a couple of months, I feel exactly as you, but came up with the conclusion myself. It's become increasingly difficult to keep momentum as a writer because Medium keeps throwing all these hurdles in our path so we make less money. And nothing is ever explained. That's it for me. I've moved to another platform where the payment rules are clear. It's really a shame because I enjoyed writing on Medium but I'm not giving it away free. I don't need to. I "met" some great people there but it's no longer worth my time
My guess is the read time disappeared because the Medium elites don't like the fact that short reads earn more money than someone endlessly pontificating fluff they consider "good" writing.
The claps make no sense at all.
And I fully believe the people running Medium are intentionally making it harder to earn there so they have to pay out less.