Medium is on its Route to Go Down...
Revealing a massive Medium account farming scheme. This time it's for real...
This is not another “Medium is dead” story.
And I’m not a hater.
I perfectly understand the situation Tony is in right now trying to make this company profitable fast, when no one succeeded for decades before. With writers being the highest cost, I anticipate more changes are coming and none of them in favor of writer’s earnings increasing.
Here’s what I mean.
Latest changes on the platform
We faced major changes in the distribution system in June. As I wrote Tony Stubblebine announced on his social media account on Threads (not Medium!) they changed a lot with recommendations being a huge part of it.
Looking at “who to follow” sections on Medium, you can now see a lot of publications instead of writers. I and many other writers I read, were on those lists but now we’re not.
The consequence: most writers reported a decrease in views, reads, and earnings. Some writers’ estimations show July’s earnings are gonna be at June’s half or less!
It’s a trend.
The fact that earnings payments were delayed in June only shows how severe the cash problem is right now.
The shift towards publications is a clear message where Medium is heading…
A strategic direction toward the boost program
It is now officially communicated that the boost program will be one of the main priorities for Medium, because of few reasons:
Increasing the quality of the platform and getting rid of AI-generated trash
Making readers happy so more paid subscriptions for Medium
This is all good.
I see just one problem: Medium thinks they know what readers want to read. They point to human stories, but when I look at the boosted stories I see only this:
Personal essays or memoirs, all about life lessons with nothing business-oriented (there are rare exceptions)
Big chinks of hard-to-read unformatted text
Polished writing, yes, engaging and highly emotional. One that provokes thought and presents different angles. But also filled with a lot of complex words most people don’t get.
This is the style of writing Medium now dictates to writers. It’s killing other types of highly valuable content like:
short form
tech reviews
educational content
problem-solving oriented writing
medical and other expert content
Why?
Because Medium now shifts towards manual curation through the boost nomination program.
Are readers happy?
I doubt it. My observation: people read mostly to learn something.
Busy people love short and concise content.
No one’s goal is to get influenced by personal emotional essays unless we’re talking about the mediocre level of emotional intelligence here.
But that’s just my personal biased opinion.
What about writers?
All we have left now is to aim for a boost. I see a lot of writers starting to adapt their writing style towards what Medium wants!
This is wrong! We need to stay authentic!
What’s more: taking a direction to work on something you’re not will only bring frustration. It will not improve your writing. It will make it more attractive to Medium, but once you get that extra cash, then what? Are you happy? Are you you?
Full disclosure here: I am aiming to get into the boost program as an editor with my new publications. I want to help other writers. But I don’t want to lose myself for some extra cash. So I won’t change my style. The risk: Medium might not accept me because of that…let’s see…
As a writer I focus on using Medium as a vehicle to grow my emails list. The problem is I still need to recover views and reads for that. So I’m figuring it out, but that’s a topic for another story.
What’s behind all the AI hatred?
The better question is WHO.
And the answer is dead boring: Tony!
Here’s what he wrote on threads two days ago:
It makes no sense to reject new technology when you’re the one being disrupted. With that kind of mindset, you’re only set to go down inevitably.
There are so many examples - Nokia, Blackberry, Xerox, Kodak….all refused to follow new tech trends and died.
If I was in Tony’s shoes, I’d lead the change. Not fight it. I’d implement AI to improve writing and help writers write better. I’d use it to improve profitability and optimize efficiency. Because if I don’t do it, while all other competitors are already doing it, I’m good to go!
Instead, Tony is publically showing the weaknesses of Medium on LinkedIn:
And on Threads:
I mean…really!?! How “funny” that type of conflict of interest can be when your company is struggling to survive?! In my 9-5 this is considered a huge breach of the code of conduct and people are being fired for this. But I live in the real business world.
To me, Tony looks like a weak spot for Medium right now. Good that there are other investors who have common sense. This makes me feel there is hope for Medium.
But it’s not Tony who’s taking Medium down. No, he’s actually doing his best to make it profitable.
It’s something else…
How Medium is going down?
What Tony is running away from is coming after him right now. And I bet he doesn’t even see this.
A few main catalysts:
Moving towards human moderation instead of algorithmic opens a huge potential for growth hackers.
Refusing to implement AI opens an even bigger opportunity for growth hackers.
Those two together result in this: The priceless “human stories” that Meidum aims for are so easily replicated by AI if you know how to train it well. I bet most programmers (especially those who suffer from loss of earnings on Medium) know how to do that.
But there’s more:
A policy that pays more to writers than what Medium earns - the new Friend of Medium tier has 3x higher price and pays writers x4 more. Makes no business sense.