Great piece Jonathan. I think you have identified the canary in the coal mine. Medium is failing to uphold what it used to stand for. This is understandable, since, at the end of the day, it is a business that needs to show ways of making money and show growth potential/profitability to investors.

I had this same feeling when the Medium Partner Program rolled out and started incentivizing paid consumption — also fair and understandable in the business standpoint (we shouldn’t always expect content on the Internet to be free! People gotta eat), but damaging to the core mission of Medium at the time.

Medium should now be used as a platform that you can jump start your writing career. It should be a place where you put out content, make connections with other writers and readers, and ultimately direct them away from this site to yours.

Maybe it’s always been seen that way, but I think people are becoming a little too dependent on the platform to keep everything just the way they like it. It’s true, Medium doesn’t care about us, but not necessarily in a malicious way — the business employs people who need to feed their families and pursue their own interests and goals. If Medium can’t make money because people are demanding the platform and access to its content to stay free forever, then it cannot sustain its workforce, or the very people who try their best to continue the mission of Medium and make it the great platform it is today.

Maybe I’m going off on a tangent. I know your argument is tackling the hypocrisy of Medium, that it is going against what it says it believes in. I know I may be seen as a hypocrite, seeing that I am not supporting Medium through donations or joining the MPP.

Even so, I love the platform for what it has allowed me to do and for what it continues to allow me to do for free. I love being able to write here and share my thoughts and interact with other people — people who are dispossessed but talented and armed with a platform to speak to the world. Where else can we find such a place? Medium is the best we’ve got for now, but you’re right in deciding to put the problems on the table and saying we need to address it.

This was a great and thought provoking post. I think I went on a bit of a ramble here but I loved the ferocity of your post. Just another reason why I love Medium — to find people like you who bring up interesting topics and share their thoughts and feelings passionately.

Thanks again Jonathan!