Medium raised $157 million before tightening content moderation
medium was burning $2.6M a month when its union replaced the phrase "free and open" from the company's rules with "a safe, respectful, and welcoming environment." then came substack. the untold story of what should have been the next great publishing giant from @HarrisSockel https://www.piratewires.com/p/what-happened-to-medium
Positive users fondly recall Medium's early ease of use and beautiful design while negative users blame its decline on paywalls, union meddling, political shifts, and management missteps like Ev's decisions.
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medium was burning $2.6M a month when they replaced the phrase "free and open" from the company's rules with "a safe, respectful, and welcoming environment." then came substack. the untold story of what should have been the next great publishing giant from @HarrisSockel
Publishing platform Medium raised over $157 million, at one point burning over $2.6 million per month, in an effort to become something like the “Netflix of publishing” — the default destination for the best writing on the internet, all for $5/month.
That is, until it lost many of its best writers and market share...
@HarrisSockel recounts the rise and fall of one of the most influential platforms of the last decade, featuring new details on a failed union drive, the platform’s censorial speech policies, erotica on Joe Biden’s homepage (yes), and the battle of the business models that reshaped the internet.
Full story 👇
@micsolana @HarrisSockel Generational missed opportunity to title this piece “When Medium Became Small”
medium was burning $2.6M a month when they replaced the phrase "free and open" from the company's rules with "a safe, respectful, and welcoming environment." then came substack. the untold story of what should have been the next great publishing giant from @HarrisSockel
Publishing platform Medium raised over $157 million, at one point burning over $2.6 million per month, in an effort to become something like the “Netflix of publishing” — the default destination for the best writing on the internet, all for $5/month.
That is, until it lost many of its best writers and market share...
@HarrisSockel recounts the rise and fall of one of the most influential platforms of the last decade, featuring new details on a failed union drive, the platform’s censorial speech policies, erotica on Joe Biden’s homepage (yes), and the battle of the business models that reshaped the internet.
Full story 👇
@PirateWires I wrote an inadvertent series deconstructing Medium's business model and unsustainability. By the way, Substack is in the same boat.
@micsolana @HarrisSockel The sublime medium dick energy of "No Thank You Mr Pecker" should have launched them into the stratosphere.
https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146e3922310f
@PirateWires @ev is an outstanding person and one of the most successful inventors in all of media tech. Not everything succeeds. Medium helped personally with some writing projects and ev has done so much for many writers.
@PirateWires Is the lesson here simply that, in a world with an overwhelming amount of free content available, paywalled content needs to be consistently outstanding to be a viable business model, and few outlets are capable of producing content like that?
@micsolana @HarrisSockel “Safety” culture and union meddling turned Medium into another dying woke rag. Free speech built the platform; feelings-first HR bullshit killed it. Substack ate their lunch because talent flees censorship.
@micsolana @HarrisSockel Was a major leap forward for UI design, too. Done by Teehan + Lax. So much potential squandered.
@HarrisSockel This was great. I was a big fan of Medium from its earliest days and can remember tangibly feeling its collapse over time.
@HarrisSockel This post was so good and many lines cracked me up. “There were plants, jfyi.”
@PirateWires @micsolana I forgot all about Medium. I remember about a hundred years ago, Twitter shareholders were so desperate for upside, there was talk that Jack and Ev discussed merging their companies. Ultimately, they couldn't agree of course because they're both dickheads. $TWTR
@PirateWires An article about a company with paid access to content behind a paywall
@micsolana @HarrisSockel It was all tech slop and political rants. Substack is going in that direction already.
@micsolana @HarrisSockel Mike would love to discuss this privately with you if you have some personal insights
@micsolana @HarrisSockel Don’t worry Substack is guaranteed to troon out soon
@PirateWires Was sad to see the platform fall.
Read it here: https://www.piratewires.com/p/what-happened-to-medium
@PirateWires I published on medium because the platform was so easy to use. It was an opportunity to share writing with the world. It became a lot less interesting when they paywalled the content
I won’t even read this article because it is behind a paywall. I made the mistake of subscribing to the NYT-just to get some game if i remember a few years ago. When I did, I made sure to sign in to Apple News because it was annoying over and over again to follow a link only to hit a paywall. Signing in never worked, and I could never get to the link after I subscribed. Because of that, I actually stopped playing the game and cancelled the first chance I got.
