Member-only story
Time to Come Back to Medium?
After three months away, I’m back, at least for now
A few months back I cancelled my Medium membership. At the time I was, I have to admit, pretty upset with the platform. The constant changes and inconsistent results grated on me, as did the general frustrations of using Medium’s editor and tools. Most of all, however, I was upset by a series of hateful and negative articles I stumbled across.
I am not normally a person to take offense at things. Generally speaking, I support the idea of free speech. What I could not accept, however, is how Medium was paying and promoting these hate-filled articles. Many, indeed, were deeply offensive towards my own identity, and were encouraging horrific comments.
At first I tried reporting them, but despite assurances from Medium that they were “looking into it”, I saw no action taken. As of writing, these articles are still available on the platform; their authors are still spewing out more toxic hate.
My first response was to cancel my membership. Medium may not wish to act, but I could, and I didn’t wish a single penny of my membership fee to go towards these writers. I could continue to write on Medium, I thought, but I didn’t need to pay.
The thing is, however, that Medium is actually pretty hard to use without…
