Definitely and, the odd thing is, I don’t hate it on paper. I’ve been a major proponent of it for a long time now. But it seems like it’ll be hard to perfect. I hope they do, for everyone’s sake, but it feels like a very daunting task.
I agree that the boost program is stifling. :( For me, I've been flipping the other way and writing almost exclusively things that can't be boosted, lol. Such as serial fiction and erotica. Even started writing Pokemon fanfiction (unmetered anyway for copyright purposes). I also post these on places like Wattpad and Archive of Our Own. Sad to see that my story stats on Archive of Our Own, is miles better than my stats on Medium. Even though I'm a complete newbie to the Archive as a writer. (Ok fanfiction might be easier in a way, since readers are already familiar with and looking for certain characters they love.)
Hurray to focusing on Substack! Yeah Medium was well intentioned but sadly it wasn't executed very well. So it punishes the good stuff. (While AI generated stories still proliferate on the platform, where some even get boosted.)
I've lost count of the number of things you can't talk about, and watching other people talk about some things and not being able to respond is like opening up your feed to someone shitting on you, and you can't even say a word back about it. Not a good feeling.
You left at the right time. It is a complete disaster at the moment. Nothing is getting boosted (and even those that do make pennies). No communication...though they are hiring two new positions that pay a combined $500K with benefits. Think I'll be following you (and others) here to Substack. My work is worth more than 30 cents.
Feel free to shoot me a line sometime. My phone was stolen a month or so back and I lost all my WhatsApp contacts (apparently that was the one thing that wasn't backed up). Hope you're doing well man.
And yeah, we're definitely worth more than cents (or even dollars) and it's not really the money that bothers me, so much as my time is incredibly scarce, between so many projects. The time sink of investing so much in an article that goes nowhere, which was a response to the Boost program asking for higher quality, is just too much. I can't spend three days on an article (or, in most cases, it's more like weeks), only for some faceless person to shun it and it does a miserable death. When the Boost program was first launched, I told Tony this, even as I praised the program—that the non-boosted stories are too heavily impacted. Making cents and dollars for hours or even days or weeks worth of work is an insult of the highest order.
I'm not online as much anymore, but yeah, I'll drop a line, even on here perhaps since Substack's messenger is actually pretty schweet.
I have just written a similar observation for my newsletter. I, like an idiot, thought I would try Medium again to see if anything had changed. I poured my soul into an article and even with 9K followers only 19 people were shown it and 6 read it. Which possibly also sounds like a spoilt brat comment, until I found on the front page boosted massively what I can only describe as a pile of driveling rubbish, which I couldn't call an article because it didn't even contain that much information. So I am now moving all my articles and I am shutting my account down completely. Look forward to following you on here.
Yeah if you don't get boosted, you get hardly anything. My following is much smaller, only 3.1 K followers. But it's still sad that my latest article got 10 views and 4 reads. (6 people clapped, 4 highlighted, and 2 commented, lol.). I'm very far from a big shot, but even I would have gotten a lot more than just 10 views for an article before the boost existed.
All is correct, Joe. Medium is a social justice platform. They're shooting themselves in the foot with that attitude. I haven't fully stopped publishing on Medium but the transition to Substack is happening.
The irony is that even social justice articles, very left wing, very queer, get shot down more often than not. :/ Pretty much everyone gets pushed away now, regardless of political leaning or sexual orientation. That's one reason why I resigned as a boost nominator. Things got worse and worse for everyone.
I'm not sure, tbh. They launched a "features" yesterday, where pub editors can feature 4 stories a month, which will be shown more prominently to their pub followers (not to Medium at large). We shall see how this shakes out!
Two nights ago, I shut down my Medium for similar reasons. It was too much effort to add that time when I could post here and on my website (and also on X) and call it a day without interference.
I stopped writing on Medium because, despite having 6k followers, my content felt overlooked. I’ve shifted my focus to building my own website and writing on Substack instead. It’s disheartening to see the platform I once loved let so many creators down.
Definitely. And it's a delicate balance between "open, sensible discussion about a topic" and "not allowing lies to spread everywhere." You want to have open discussion, not a platform where everyone is parroting the same things with little variance (open discussion) but you don't want it to be so open that people are immersed in bullshit.
That said, I think Tony is a visionary and I think Medium's goal is noble, albeit poorly executed (and very difficult to execute, so, kudos to them for that).
Cool to see you make the move Joe. I left last summer and haven't looked back. It's somewhat gratifying to see great writers leaving Medium for a lot of the same reasons I left. Makes me feel like I made the right decision.
Thanks man, Yeah, I really do love the platform and, on paper, endorse their changes. But it's been crippling as a writer. It just feels like my time is being squandered when I spend days on a piece that goes nowhere for artificial reasons. It's doubly a slap in the face when that piece does astronomically well when I repost it on Substack.
I think it's a great idea, but poor execution; not 100% their fault—I'm not sure how on earth you'd find great "boosters" as that's a job they invented. Something tells me there aren't a ton of boosters on the market on LinkedIn. Cheers.
Sorry to read about your disappointment. I had similar observations. For example, the boost program looks good in theory, but it was not implemented well in practice, with a lack of transparency and huge bias against their own criteria. It caused more harm than good to the platform and a large part of the community. That's why I decided to resign from it despite my privileged position and focused my energy on more productive activities for the benefit of the majority. Thanks for sharing your valuable experience. I look forward to exploring your content here.
I wrote well researched pieces on the tissue engineering of vaginas, penises, and other organs. It was edited, and even had image permissions from the Lancet. It barely got any views or reads. Ridiculous fluff pieces get momentum there. I know, one of my filler pieces went viral. Very unfortunate.
Hello Karina, your experience is similar to mine. I am the editor of a Health and Science pub on Medium. Many qualified healthcare professional contribute to it. Most of well-written content by qualified professionals are censored. I transparently wrote about these issues. In my case my stories related to my research in cancer cells and dementia were suppressed.
I was boosted over sixty times and then suddenly, really overnight…. rejection after rejection. Very confusing. My earnings went from an average of $1,500+ a month to barely scraping $200. That’s crazy.
I literally just can’t afford to write there anymore.
I often have stories get rejected and it seems inexplicable to me. But if it's an important topic, I approach the same idea from a different angle. Sometimes I think it depends on the curator. At the same time, I think Substack is a wonderful option. Best to you and thanks for your work!
It took me 4 years to build up followers on Medium whose writing I also enjoyed. Many became friends and still are.
I write about:
- government and politics, opinions based on experience.
- cancer (my personal battle)
- personal non fiction stories
I left Medium as my main source because I have had my cancer stories blocked, have never been boosted while reading stories that could be written by a 5th grader, and watched the nonsense you mention.
I'm on Substack but it leaves much to be desired as far as reading due to the pricing requirements. I'm on SS, and about to get slammed with medical bills from cancer, from Paget's Disease, and heart issues. I can't pay to read though I paid to support Dr. Yildiz.
If I paid to read writers I like, it's cost me $100-$200 a month. That will not happen due to my circumstances.
I can't afford to write for 4 more years free. Substack is like writing in a morgue. Silence.
Glad to see that you are doing well on Substack. It’s a shame but Medium has fallen off big time. It’s like Medium took a bucket of white paint threw it in the air covering all of the colorful articles and writers that were there. Many writers are either not making any money or they are no longer showing up on the time line. Now don’t get the wrong the articles are still great but they are really BORING!
Even the articles that are boosted are boring and when you read them you quickly realize that the writer is holding back which is sad. I even cancelled my subscription to Medium because to me it’s not worth the money anymore. As far as claps and views for me are very low! I know I’m not a very good writer like you but this will make a newbie quit really fast.
Anyway glad to see that you are doing well and Happy Holidays and much success in the New Year!
The boost program is the reason why so many writers have left or are leaving.
Definitely and, the odd thing is, I don’t hate it on paper. I’ve been a major proponent of it for a long time now. But it seems like it’ll be hard to perfect. I hope they do, for everyone’s sake, but it feels like a very daunting task.
Good to see ya, Tim.
I agree that the boost program is stifling. :( For me, I've been flipping the other way and writing almost exclusively things that can't be boosted, lol. Such as serial fiction and erotica. Even started writing Pokemon fanfiction (unmetered anyway for copyright purposes). I also post these on places like Wattpad and Archive of Our Own. Sad to see that my story stats on Archive of Our Own, is miles better than my stats on Medium. Even though I'm a complete newbie to the Archive as a writer. (Ok fanfiction might be easier in a way, since readers are already familiar with and looking for certain characters they love.)
Hurray to focusing on Substack! Yeah Medium was well intentioned but sadly it wasn't executed very well. So it punishes the good stuff. (While AI generated stories still proliferate on the platform, where some even get boosted.)
I've lost count of the number of things you can't talk about, and watching other people talk about some things and not being able to respond is like opening up your feed to someone shitting on you, and you can't even say a word back about it. Not a good feeling.
This is why I'm so happy to help engineer a new backend for XChatFans.
You left at the right time. It is a complete disaster at the moment. Nothing is getting boosted (and even those that do make pennies). No communication...though they are hiring two new positions that pay a combined $500K with benefits. Think I'll be following you (and others) here to Substack. My work is worth more than 30 cents.
Feel free to shoot me a line sometime. My phone was stolen a month or so back and I lost all my WhatsApp contacts (apparently that was the one thing that wasn't backed up). Hope you're doing well man.
And yeah, we're definitely worth more than cents (or even dollars) and it's not really the money that bothers me, so much as my time is incredibly scarce, between so many projects. The time sink of investing so much in an article that goes nowhere, which was a response to the Boost program asking for higher quality, is just too much. I can't spend three days on an article (or, in most cases, it's more like weeks), only for some faceless person to shun it and it does a miserable death. When the Boost program was first launched, I told Tony this, even as I praised the program—that the non-boosted stories are too heavily impacted. Making cents and dollars for hours or even days or weeks worth of work is an insult of the highest order.
I'm not online as much anymore, but yeah, I'll drop a line, even on here perhaps since Substack's messenger is actually pretty schweet.
Thanks, man. Yeah, I started this back in 2021, so I'm glad I got ahead of the curve years ago. I saw the writing on the wall even back then.
I have just written a similar observation for my newsletter. I, like an idiot, thought I would try Medium again to see if anything had changed. I poured my soul into an article and even with 9K followers only 19 people were shown it and 6 read it. Which possibly also sounds like a spoilt brat comment, until I found on the front page boosted massively what I can only describe as a pile of driveling rubbish, which I couldn't call an article because it didn't even contain that much information. So I am now moving all my articles and I am shutting my account down completely. Look forward to following you on here.
Yeah if you don't get boosted, you get hardly anything. My following is much smaller, only 3.1 K followers. But it's still sad that my latest article got 10 views and 4 reads. (6 people clapped, 4 highlighted, and 2 commented, lol.). I'm very far from a big shot, but even I would have gotten a lot more than just 10 views for an article before the boost existed.
You really would have, it is so demoralising.
All is correct, Joe. Medium is a social justice platform. They're shooting themselves in the foot with that attitude. I haven't fully stopped publishing on Medium but the transition to Substack is happening.
The irony is that even social justice articles, very left wing, very queer, get shot down more often than not. :/ Pretty much everyone gets pushed away now, regardless of political leaning or sexual orientation. That's one reason why I resigned as a boost nominator. Things got worse and worse for everyone.
What are they doing, really? What’s the long-term strategy?
I'm not sure, tbh. They launched a "features" yesterday, where pub editors can feature 4 stories a month, which will be shown more prominently to their pub followers (not to Medium at large). We shall see how this shakes out!
Amazing read
Two nights ago, I shut down my Medium for similar reasons. It was too much effort to add that time when I could post here and on my website (and also on X) and call it a day without interference.
I stopped writing on Medium because, despite having 6k followers, my content felt overlooked. I’ve shifted my focus to building my own website and writing on Substack instead. It’s disheartening to see the platform I once loved let so many creators down.
I agree with you. It can be frustrating to read some articles that have become clickbait with minimal fact-checking or solid references.
Definitely. And it's a delicate balance between "open, sensible discussion about a topic" and "not allowing lies to spread everywhere." You want to have open discussion, not a platform where everyone is parroting the same things with little variance (open discussion) but you don't want it to be so open that people are immersed in bullshit.
That said, I think Tony is a visionary and I think Medium's goal is noble, albeit poorly executed (and very difficult to execute, so, kudos to them for that).
Cool to see you make the move Joe. I left last summer and haven't looked back. It's somewhat gratifying to see great writers leaving Medium for a lot of the same reasons I left. Makes me feel like I made the right decision.
Thanks man, Yeah, I really do love the platform and, on paper, endorse their changes. But it's been crippling as a writer. It just feels like my time is being squandered when I spend days on a piece that goes nowhere for artificial reasons. It's doubly a slap in the face when that piece does astronomically well when I repost it on Substack.
I think it's a great idea, but poor execution; not 100% their fault—I'm not sure how on earth you'd find great "boosters" as that's a job they invented. Something tells me there aren't a ton of boosters on the market on LinkedIn. Cheers.
Sorry to read about your disappointment. I had similar observations. For example, the boost program looks good in theory, but it was not implemented well in practice, with a lack of transparency and huge bias against their own criteria. It caused more harm than good to the platform and a large part of the community. That's why I decided to resign from it despite my privileged position and focused my energy on more productive activities for the benefit of the majority. Thanks for sharing your valuable experience. I look forward to exploring your content here.
There is no transparency, mate.
I wrote well researched pieces on the tissue engineering of vaginas, penises, and other organs. It was edited, and even had image permissions from the Lancet. It barely got any views or reads. Ridiculous fluff pieces get momentum there. I know, one of my filler pieces went viral. Very unfortunate.
Hello Karina, your experience is similar to mine. I am the editor of a Health and Science pub on Medium. Many qualified healthcare professional contribute to it. Most of well-written content by qualified professionals are censored. I transparently wrote about these issues. In my case my stories related to my research in cancer cells and dementia were suppressed.
I was boosted over sixty times and then suddenly, really overnight…. rejection after rejection. Very confusing. My earnings went from an average of $1,500+ a month to barely scraping $200. That’s crazy.
I literally just can’t afford to write there anymore.
I often have stories get rejected and it seems inexplicable to me. But if it's an important topic, I approach the same idea from a different angle. Sometimes I think it depends on the curator. At the same time, I think Substack is a wonderful option. Best to you and thanks for your work!
It took me 4 years to build up followers on Medium whose writing I also enjoyed. Many became friends and still are.
I write about:
- government and politics, opinions based on experience.
- cancer (my personal battle)
- personal non fiction stories
I left Medium as my main source because I have had my cancer stories blocked, have never been boosted while reading stories that could be written by a 5th grader, and watched the nonsense you mention.
I'm on Substack but it leaves much to be desired as far as reading due to the pricing requirements. I'm on SS, and about to get slammed with medical bills from cancer, from Paget's Disease, and heart issues. I can't pay to read though I paid to support Dr. Yildiz.
If I paid to read writers I like, it's cost me $100-$200 a month. That will not happen due to my circumstances.
I can't afford to write for 4 more years free. Substack is like writing in a morgue. Silence.
Duncan,
Glad to see that you are doing well on Substack. It’s a shame but Medium has fallen off big time. It’s like Medium took a bucket of white paint threw it in the air covering all of the colorful articles and writers that were there. Many writers are either not making any money or they are no longer showing up on the time line. Now don’t get the wrong the articles are still great but they are really BORING!
Even the articles that are boosted are boring and when you read them you quickly realize that the writer is holding back which is sad. I even cancelled my subscription to Medium because to me it’s not worth the money anymore. As far as claps and views for me are very low! I know I’m not a very good writer like you but this will make a newbie quit really fast.
Anyway glad to see that you are doing well and Happy Holidays and much success in the New Year!