Medium.com Has Failed Its Writers...It's New CEO Is At Probably Fault.

When I joined Medium in 2019, it was a lifechanging experience. I was about two years out from my mother's death and going through a sort of personal revolution. I was in therapy and looking for a way to use my experiences to help other people. As I hit publish on my first post, I didn't realize I was starting on a path that would lead to a full-time career and a personal brand.

Fast forward to 2023. It's August. A new CEO has announced significant changes, and I'm looking ahead with excitement and optimism. Why not? After all the changes in 2021 led to my biggest year on Medium. I made $4K in a month, doubled my followers, and was even approached by BBC about a potential podcast appearance.

Little did I know that the platform that had fostered my writing career, and set me on the path to become a coach who could help people, was about to burn to the ground.

Medium in 2024

Needless to say, Medium is an entirely different sort of animal from when I started writing here in 2019…and not in a good way.

In those days, we got a weekly email from the admin team, who filled us in on what was going on. They would tell us how much membership had grown, how many people were making more than $100, what the biggest payments were for the month, and the single biggest story.

I haven't held on to those emails, but if you search out the old monthly updates here on Medium.com, you'll see similar stats:

That transparency was excellent, but what was nice was the visibility. Anyone with solid writing chops and a story could find their place on Medium. Someone who had been unknown overnight could find themselves at the top of the pile, celebrated by thousands of followers who resonated with their words and experiences.

Medium is hardly that place today.

Now, someone like me, with 39,000 followers, can barely get 100 views on most stories I write. Articles don't seem to rank on Google (unless written before 2021), no matter how much SEO magic you work. Worse, you can't get help from Medium support, and stats (and earnings) are falling daily.

For a long time, I was beating my head against the wall. Trying to work harder to meet the *supposedly* rising standards the platform claimed to have.

In late 2023 - early 2024, I wrote some of the best and most high-quality stories I've ever written, including:

And of course...

And this piece...

None of the stories were featured, but several went viral or were featured on the front page of other platforms like Vocal. (My story on Alexander the Great's mother, ignored by Medium, received a front page feature from Vocal).

Imagine my chagrin, after writing articles like the one above, to see that the two of the biggest performing pieces on the platform were a story about boiled eggs and another unreadable wall of text about a Taylor Swift album…(both of which are now impossible to find on the platform despite garnering THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of claps and comments between them).

The real rub came because it seemed so at odds with what was promised by Tony Stubblebine in August of 2023. A platform that would seek out high-quality writing. A platform that would seek out personal stories and highlight organic talent.

Ah, how young we were and how hard we didn't realize we were about to get screwed…

The Coach Who Can't Tell the Truth

The reality is that what's happening right now on Medium comes down to one man. The CEO - Tony Stubblebine. Despite his promises of a better internet and giving everyone a fair shot, his comments off the platform seem to illustrate a very different reality.

Below is a screenshot of a comment left by Tony in 2023 on Hacker News. As you can see, it paints a very different story about his plans for the platform than anything told to users in August of 2023.

(Read the full-text evisceration here)

If we dissemble Tony's 2023 post on Hacker News, you can immediately see two huge problems in his logic.

1. Engagement Isn't Quality

Tony claims that when he came on board to Medium in 2022, the platform made the "mistake" of believing that engagement was equal to quality. According to The Coach, the way to remedy this was to return to a human-boosting standard. Using humans to vet stories that would then be distributed to readers.

A distribution team decides what readers want to read instead of basing their choices on the readers and their interests themselves.

Of course, the problem here is the same problem every autocracy has, and it's the same reason platforms like Instagram are struggling to keep up with giants like TikTok. Dictating what they personally believe readers should be interested in, instead of the other way around.

Tony may be fooling himself by thinking his personal hand-picked stories are what readers want to read, but he's not fooling users…who seem to be anywhere but Medium these days.

Users flock to platforms that cater to their specific interests. Humans are deep, complex animals with many different curiosities and interests. Engagement-based algorithms like Instagram don't work; Tony was half correct. Top-down algorithms alienate users within the narrow view of the individuals at the top.

But that's where Tony quickly makes his next big slip.

In revealing his bias against "content creators," he revealed his algorithm's weakness. Just stay with me here.

You see, platforms like TikTok thrive because they aren't based on top-down algorithms or biased human distribution teams. TikTok thrives because it uses an interest-based algorithm that forgoes all of the above to focus on the individual interests of its users. It's also an equitable platform where anyone with a strong voice and solid information can gain massive traction.

The user tells TikTok what they want to see, and TikTok shows them more of that thing and additional interests that spiral out from the original. One minute, you may be watching a baking recipe, and then the next, you're watching a chemistry demo from a PhD chemist. Basing their algorithm on interests is how TikTok thrives and where Medium fails miserably.

When The Coach boldly, and with his whole chest, proclaimed that they were going to kill off engagement-based algorithms (which they didn't do because the scammers continue to run mutual engagement scams in almost every Medium Facebook group) in favor of his personal distribution team, he was essentially saying "I'm going to stop showing people what they want to read and tell them what to read."

Bad business in a world where platforms like TikTok are king (and faithfully paying their creators on time).

2. Personal Biases

The truly glaring thing that stuck out to me in Tony's plans was the personal biases he revealed about content creators.

You see, according to The Coach, content creators aren't "doers". They don't live lives worth talking about; they don't add value to the average user's life.

Never mind that, a few weeks ago on TikTok, I listened to a 9-minute video essay from Amber Flannery Field, who took me on a tour of a legendary queer space in NYC. At the same time, she completely blew my mind and single-handedly shifted the entire conversation around straight men in lesbian spaces. (I would have embedded it, but that feature no longer works for TikTok videos on Medium).

Never mind that Portia Noir has taught me more about decolonizing and disseminating the microaggressions and biases ingrained in me since birth. What is she doing? She is making videos about Black issues, specifically the issues of Black women. Not a doer at all, according to Coach Tony.

Or Hand Luggage Only, who spends his life literally traveling the world and documenting his experiences. His videos bring millions of viewers joy and have inspired me when I'm down and trying to remember what I'm doing it all for. Not enough of a doer for The Coach.

And, of course, Coach Tony was talking about Dr. Fatima Daoud, who uses her content creator platform on TikTok to create videos that educate women about their bodies, birth control, and all other aspects of feminine health. According to Tony's claims, in 2023, none of these individuals would be welcome on his high-quality human distribution platform. (I'm sure they're fine with this because TikTok is paying them well and on time.)

Tony reveals himself in his comments and reveals the biases that are now undermining the success of his platform. He can't grow with the times, so Medium shrinks with his small-mindedness.

I'd say I hope he gets with the times, but those with closed minds rarely do.

BONUS: Elitism

Now, I've had a sneaking suspicion since Tony took over, but it was confirmed in his post on Hacker News (in my opinion).

In the post, Tony comments about a story written by "a new programmer with zero experience or context." At first, this seems reasonable. And it is as if the advice written is truly horrible and harmful. However, when you look at the ongoing changes on Medium, coupled with this comment, it could paint a different picture.

Specifically, elitist biases within Tony's outlook.

Medium used to be a place that went out of its way to champion the uncommon writer. That is not the people who headed big companies. The ones with deep ties to Harvard or Oxford. They were the average person. You and me. Working class, people who had a voice and something to write about every day.

This did wonders for spaces like Mental Health and Relationships, which had *for years* been waterlogged by the same outdated therapists touting the same outdated information. Many readers couldn't resonate with the information because they were being talked at, not talked to, by people who had lived the experience like them.

For myself, I've seen a return to this trend on Medium.

Preference is given to people with expensive qualifications and stale, outdated information and perspectives. All of which are, frankly, somewhat out of touch and out of reach for the vast majority of readers.

By centering his platform on what Tony deems to be "experience" and "doing," he's centering it only on people with the luxury and privilege of access to these things.r Ignoring the fact that these institutions have been proven, time and time again, to fail the greatest majority of those they should serve - including but not limited to Black women, LGBTQ+ people, disabled communities, etc.

When I see a return to favoring only those with the most glittering and unreachable qualifications (especially for the masses), I see writers getting left out. I see writers like 2019-me never getting a chance because one man's biases got in the way of him doing his job and protecting the craft that has made Medium.com what it is.

Could I be wrong? Absolutely. But next time you're looking for mental health, relationship, or parenting content, take a gander at who is getting the most distribution and who's not. You may see the pattern too.

The Turmoil Continues

Of course, the two huge and glaring holes in Tony's logic above aren't the only problems facing Medium. As of this writing, a laundry list of complaints has been made, many of which can be found on this list. Below are some of the common ones I've seen reported by Medium members:

• The CEO hiding comments that are critical or questioning
• The CEO ignoring comments on his posts in entirety
• The CEO attacking critical writers on social media (ask me about my convo with him on X)
• Medium support ignoring and failing to answer support tickets
• Medium failing (for two months running) to pay writers on time with no tangible explanation
• Suspicious non-member traffic activity that Medium claims it "cannot trace"
• Numerous 404 error messages when users attempt to use features or contact support
• Expired security tokens that make it impossible to access certain pages
• Falling member traffic on stories
• Substantially decreased earnings

It's anyone's guess why a platform who received $31 million in venture funding in 2021 is seeing such failures in basic development, practices, and security. Problems that didn't seem to exist, not at this capacity anyway, before the end of last year when Tony's time as CEO was made official.

I have my own hair-brained theories on why we're seeing so many problems. None are mutually exclusive, but several fit the potential pattern of decline we're seeing. (Note: I'm not saying any of these are true; I'm just working on pattern recognition and vibes.)

1. The company is not doing as well as we've been told it's doing

This makes the most sense when you take a step back and take an overall look at the decline in Medium's position and quality since 2019. This site used to host publishers like The New York Times. Writers like me used to get 150K views a month, with a quarter of those being paid-for reads. Compared to 2019 Medium, which could see you fielding calls from the BBC, this new place is a low-quality dumpster fire.

2. This is the plan to cash out for investors and close up shop

Let's suppose that Tony has told us the truth and Medium, in the last couple of months, has added on 1 million new paying members. If that's the case, where is the money going? Couple that with the rollout of the Friends of Medium launch, and the circumstances become even more suspicious. If Tony is cutting $500K in server costs and raising membership, why aren't writers getting paid quality rates for their work (or getting paid on time and at all)?

I wonder if this isn't Ol' Medium's last scramble up the hill. The numbers haven't been looking good for a while, and Tony said he has investors to make happy (see his post from Hacker News above). Could the rising costs of Medium, combined with their corner cutting, be a cashout and run in the name of investors? You'll have to come to your own conclusions there.

3. Someone at the top has seriously overestimated their understanding of the internet and their abilities as a leader and programmer

There's another interesting possibility that many haven't considered. Around 2021 or 2022, the then-CEO of Medium came in one day and basically fired the whole staff. Some 29 people were basically put on redundancy and told "thanks but no thanks," - including some of the team working with writers to include their books on the platform. (Which I know for a fact, because that team member told me.)

Medium skirted in panic, reassuring everyone that people were helped to find new jobs and given whatever money they were owed. But it set an interesting precedent…

We know this platform has already minimized its teams. Could we be seeing that again?

My biggest conspiracy theory is that maybe an overzealous former programmer bit off more than he could chew. He, perhaps, overestimated his abilities and thought that he alone had what it took to deliver Medium back to the glory of its former days (which he wasn't there for).

After being high-fived for cutting $500K in server costs, he may have thought, You know what? I edited programming books once. I bet I can run every aspect of this platform myself. I bet I can run a skeleton team because I'm just that good.

Unfortunately, I don't think that worked for the Wizard, and it doesn't really seem to be working on Medium in 2024 either.

Of course, this is a completely wacky theory. And I'm sure it bears no merit…except…

Some of the responses that Medium users are receiving through Medium Support have a similar ring to my own experience speaking with The Wizard, who told me Medium has "no way" to show their analytics and "What did I expect? A tour of the office?" (Again, you can go and look these exchanges between myself and The Wizard up on X. I have blocked him from contacting me there as his responses are increasingly unhinged).

***

What's really going on with Medium? Sadly, I don't know. Just like the rest of you, I'm in the dark without the ability to find an honest answer anywhere on this site. It doesn't look like that will change any time soon. Medium under Tony Stubblebine continues to be a confusing place, with about as much transparency as a 6-foot-deep block of marble.

I would say I hope that things change, but I've never known a corporation to do the right thing after they have cut costs and spent so long doing the wrong thing with the wrong people.

Here's to hoping it changes or, at least, The Wizard does.

© E.B. Johnson 2024

I am a writer, artist, NLPMP, and podcaster who helps people build creative lives after trauma. In my free time, I have a passion for fresh bread, history, and all things watercolor. Learn more about me here. Join my mailing list.