Ask HN: Is there a negative stigma toward articles written in Medium?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33223124

55 81 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hi,

I want to start a little bit of writing, for various reasons in which monetisation does not play a role.

I do myself dislike how Medium blocks access to articles, but read that you can exclude your articles from that. Does it affect how Medium "exposes" your article to the web?

I wrote two Medium articles as part of my job for my previous company and was happy with the overall experience, except this Freemium behaviour.

Will I/my articles get negativity within dev and tech communities because they are written in Medium?

Thanks

detaro• 4 years ago

Personally, yes, a medium.com link is negative signal that a post is probably going to be thin content marketing fluff.

kgwxd• 4 years ago

Same here. I’ve had medium.com disabled down to the link level (I don’t see links to it in my desktop browser) for years, along with Facebook, Twitter, and many other sites I already know I never want to visit, either because they suck or I know I’m going to hit a pay or sign up wall.

ninethirty• 4 years ago

This question should be a poll. I'll happily vote yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231804

theanonymousone3• 4 years ago

"Sorry, you need over 200 karma to create a poll." :D

LinuxBender2• 4 years ago

Here [1] you go

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33223222

pbw• 4 years ago

Medium is paywalled. Unless they are paying you a lot to post there, it’s a bad idea because many people will not be able to read your article. People can read X articles for free then it’s paywalled.

I don’t know how the “don’t paywall my article” works, but I run into paywalled Medium articles all the time.

holsta• 4 years ago

I don't click Medium links anymore.

Once they popped up a "Let's make it official!" thing that wanted me to create an account, because apparently I can't read text over HTTP without handing over my name, email address and manage a password.

I also found the amount of trackers disgusting.

rglullis2• 4 years ago

Medium to Scribe bookmarklet to the rescue. Whenever I find myself on a Medium-powered site (it doesn't have to be medium.com itself):

    javascript:(function() { window.location.replace( document.URL.replace( document.location.host,'scribe.rip') )})()

Though lately I've also been relying more on Brave's "Speed Reader" functionality for articles that are not code-heavy, as I am not a fan of its current stylesheet.

capableweb• 4 years ago

The problem with this bookmarklet is that we have to go to Medium first, then run it. So for Medium it's all the same, they get their views and data all the same.

What we really need is a bookmarklet that changes all found links to Medium articles instead, so you run it before you click. Or extension that does it automatically.

disadvantage2• 4 years ago

I don't click Medium links anymore.

I don't click Substack[0] links anymore, because it's the new Medium

[0] https://substack.com/

fknorangesite2• 4 years ago

HN's footnote culture is so weird.

CodeWriter23• 4 years ago

I avoid clicking them. And when I do accidentally click one, I'm like "why did they use Medium?" and click away.

alexbiet• 4 years ago

I'd go with Substack (https://substack.com/) or Ghost (https://ghost.org/).

Substack is easy (and free) to set up. You have the option to turn on subscriptions and monetise your content via Stripe.

Ghost gives you more flexibility / personalisation. You'll need some web coding/hosting skills or you can subscribe to one of their plans (starts at $9/mo).

Edit: typo.

paulgb2• 4 years ago

Unfortunately, substack has also started down the same path as Medium. You'll be reading an article someone sent you a link to and mid-way through you'll get a pop-up that obstructs the content requesting you to subscribe. Just let me read in peace!

If you just want a place to dump articles it's probably fine, but for people hoping to attract the HN audience, do us a favor and set up your own blog. These days, you can host it for free on Render, GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel... static site hosting is table stakes, and then you can fully stop pop-ups from annoying your readers.

pluc2• 4 years ago

One one hand.. damn do you guys sound entitled! There's a cost whenever you want to do something on the web, I'm sure I don't need to explain this to you. Are we really mad at Medium for attempting to monetize their infrastructure? I mean I get that ads/marketing is generally bad but how else do you suggest they make money to continue to operate a free service? Can you think of a truly free service? Even distributing flat files on a usb key or stapling printed sheets on trees has a cost, if you don't pay for the product you don't get to complain about how the product tries to stay alive..

disadvantage2• 4 years ago

Just let me read in peace!

Reader View to the rescue!

klelatti• 4 years ago

Could I suggest that a few words on what you liked about the Medium experience would be helpful. Is it the editor or the layout of the posts for example? Might help others to guide you to a suitable option.

z9znz2• 4 years ago

It’s not so much about medium or any other name, it’s purely a matter of a tease with no follow through.

Any site which teases you with content and then slams the door in your face is obnoxious and aggravating. Sites that aggravate me get negative goodwill.

Eventually, as with Facebook, I avoid them entirely as a matter of personal principle.

My hope is that people with interesting things to share will start to see the decline of their platform and move elsewhere to less user hostile places.

I know companies need revenue, but there are ways of getting revenue without being obnoxious or deceptive.

gofreddygo• 4 years ago

I know companies need revenue, but there are ways of getting revenue without being obnoxious or deceptive.

100% agree. Can't take consumer market customers for granted like you can enterprise ones.

Best option for them was to drop their costs to bare minimum and show some ads.

Have popular content creators spread the word enough.

wizofaus• 4 years ago

"there are ways of getting revenue without being obnoxious or deceptive"

If you're including only allowing a certain number of free articles a month, or only showing the first few paragraphs before requesting payment to read the rest, I'm not sure what alternatives you'd think would be non-obnoxious (and what's the deception exactly?). My concern is that there's still no good way to make easy essentially anonymous micropayments to sites with content that you want to read - if there were I doubt there'd really be much issue with just having a simple button to confirm that you're happy to pay a small fee (say, 50c) to read the rest of the article. And if the rest of the article turns out to be crap, you just avoid that site. But 95% of the time I end up reading an archive.ph version of an article is not because I don't think it's worth paying money for, but because I'm expected to provide far more info than I think is relevant and then hand over credit card details in a way that likely will result in ongoing recurring charges. I'd actually prefer it if there were simple mechanism for agreeing to have the cost of viewing pages from particular domains added to my monthly internet usage bill. Are there any ISPs that offer such a facility?

z9znz2• 4 years ago

anonymous micropayments

At some point we have to trust some online service to keep our data safe, and that service could theoretically provide an anonymous payment proxy.

Ignoring whether one believes that Apple is a good custodian of one's privacy, they already have the email anonymization feature. They could do the same for anonymous payments. That would really only work for small payments which could not be refunded, because the refund process would likely need to expose some personal information.

For me, the concern is not anonymity. It's purely a matter of how much extra noise and email crap I have to suffer if I sign up for "free" access. The user experience once signed in is often just as bad, but differently so.

As for paying for an article, the issue is that most of these sites hide so much of the article that you really don't know what you're paying for. And frankly speaking, most "articles" nowdays are just fluff to raise the visibility of some developer or the company they work for. In some cases, I think that university students from certain parts of the world are being required to generate a certain number of posts per period (as part of their training?). So the signal to noise ratio is continuously getting worse.

fxtentacle• 4 years ago

Yes. I avoid medium links.

sokoloff2• 4 years ago

I am less inclined to click on a medium.com link than even a LinkedIn link.

Why? Because of the limitations on articles per month and my skepticism that I either: want to bother with being blocked (negative reinforcement is a thing) or, even if I’m not blocked on this one, how do I know if this article will count against my monthly article limit (FOMO-maybe I’d better spend that token on a different article; can’t take the chance)

I’d be more inclined to read an article linked to me from theanonymousone.com. (Others would be more likely to stumble across it on medium.com, though. Top of funnel is better on medium; conversion rate from mid-funnel to read is better off medium.) Maybe publishing twice covers both bases?

clnq2• 4 years ago

Medium used to be great for me as an author because I didn't need to care about hosting, spam filtering, tinkering with themes, keeping wordpress up to date and similar things. I could just write. That was in contrast to managing wordpress on my own web server.

But I've always had fewer reads on Medium than on my own blog even if my articles seem to have about as good SEO, which makes me think there is a stigma.

Also, my more technical articles that dive into the subject matter more deeply have attracted some feedback that they're boring, too long, and too technical on Medium. I have not received such feedback when people were reading the articles on my own wordpress site.

Medium seems to have a stigma for shallow content, but some of its readers also could have an expectation for that style of content.

It's unfortunate that Medium has developed this perception of it. Migrating content between platforms takes time and is difficult. Maintaining my own blog CMS and web server also involves time associated with infosec and fixing technical issues when they arise. But at least my own website will never become "another Medium" unlike any other mainstream platform I could go to, I suppose.

forgotpwd162• 4 years ago

That was in contrast to managing wordpress on my own web server.

What about hosting it on wordpress.com?

lupire3• 4 years ago

That's too Web 1.0. Medium is modern and on trend.

sdenton4• 4 years ago

Yeah, still have my blog on WordPress. There is no drama and no account wall. Just keeps serving my 0.75 new blog posts per year, like a champ.

clnq2• 4 years ago

Yes, that would be a good solution too. And there are also other good platforms.

I am looking to migrate from Medium to bearblog.dev. The markdown format should make any future migrations easier, and also let me write articles offline, without any hassles associated with maintaining a server or the too many (in my opinion) bells and whistles on wordpress.com.

Medium was good until it developed this perception problem though. Although maybe highly technical articles never did fit it very well.

kkfx• 4 years ago

I do not care much about who host a generic article, I do care a bit about the author though. After the click if the site load without js/works with Firefox Reader I read, otherwise I quit.

In the past I've seen valuable publications here and there, I prefer avoiding prejudice on a specific platform/business model.

pryelluw• 4 years ago

I do tend to avoid visiting medium links because it feels too much like LinkedIn. There’s too much nonsense wrapped up in a shitty and invasive user experience.

There’s some good stuff there for which I use a laptop to browse. The mobile experience in iOS sucks thanks to a lack of proper browser plug-in support (fuck you, Apple). I feel hostage within my own device.

PaulHoule• 4 years ago

Last time I used LinkedIn I thought the quality of the articles was better than Medium but maybe it went downhill.

lupire3• 4 years ago

Reading LinkedIn for the articles seems less plausible than reading Playboy for the articles.

mistrial9• 4 years ago

some Americans in the (often impoverished) math and science corner of certain specialties seem to repeatedly, pointedly, publish their "industry influencer" manifesto and/or technical overview/brag articles on Medium (e.g. Planet). Its odd and directly counter to lots of intellectual reasoning about how and where to publish. As noted here, Medium itself has become more intrusive over a few years. The whole combination feels onerous. Like some papers of record in capital-S Science itself, Medium gets clicks, but under protest and yes, negative stigma.

bilsbie• 4 years ago

Why not consider substack?

Markoff3• 4 years ago

Substack is literally Medium no.2

I don't click Substack links as well anymore.

Might as well skip that step and rather host your own stuff on own domain.

Waterluvian2• 4 years ago

This feels like a standard playbook.

1. Focus on the goal, make a good product, attract customers.

2. Think, “we’ve done it!”

3. Need to make money somehow.

4. Money making attempts demonstrates that no, you didn’t do it, you were just selling dollars for fifty cents.

5. Product decays into garbage as you harass the user.

6. Substack et al. lines up to be next rider on this roller coaster.

sdiq• 4 years ago

7. Rinse repeat.

nullc2• 4 years ago

Was medium ever a good product? I think as a reader-- certainly not. Megabytes of Javascript, long rendering times, just to display a kilobyte of text?

kevincox• 4 years ago

I feel like it was back in the day. They had a focus on simplicity, great typography and overall reader experience. Once could say that they were focused on being a good medium.

Waterluvian2• 4 years ago

Yeah it was pretty good. For a while there the top search results of Medium articles were generally worth reading for a topic. Good UX.

solarkraft2• 4 years ago

It was! It was light weight (visually anyway) and had a ton of great content on the front page. The writing experience was great and the reading experience had the killer feature of being able to highlight stuff (something I now do all the time via hypothes.is). Oh right, and claps! My favorite way to measure appreciation (just enough effort so mean something)!

FatalLogic• 4 years ago

Apart from the tracking and soft paywall issues that you and some comments mention, there's another problem with sites like Medium and Substack (and Linkedin and others, too)

Publishing on those sites requires minimal effort. As the userbase grows, those sites attract more and more low-quality creators. Although there are many excellent writers on Medium, there is naturally also an increasing proportion of spam.

This flood of low effort content harms the perception of the entire site, so today when we see a Medium.com link perhaps we hesitate to click.

lupire3• 4 years ago

How is medium.com link less trustworthy than the alternative, a domain name you've never seen before in your life?

Markoff3• 4 years ago

I don't associate unknown domain with low quality articles and soft paywall.

gneray• 4 years ago

Seeing this is reminding me that I need to migrate my blog from Medium...

djwinter• 4 years ago

I paid the yearly fee for two years up until 2020. There were a handful of authors and topics I liked on Medium. Those authors have since left the platform. The topics I’m interested in kind of dried up with not much worth reading these days.

I don’t care so much about the paywall. It is the low quality of content that pushes me away.

Writers saw an opportunity to make money on Medium. This gradually dragged down the overall quality of writing on platform, and likely the reputation of the platform itself.

These days whenever I do click through to a Medium article, it rarely delivers on its title.

dev_0• 4 years ago

Too many click baits articles

calibas• 4 years ago

I read it sometimes, but I'm getting sick of the click-bait "joke" articles, like the recent "Python 3.14 Will be Faster than C++".

replwoacause• 4 years ago

I avoid Medium and Quora at all costs. Both are viewer hostile.

drakonka• 4 years ago

I don't think they'll get negativity so much as people will just be less likely to click on them. When I see a Medium link I often just skip it, expecting to see either some paywall/registration popup or maybe a lower quality self-promotional article.

lynndotpy2• 4 years ago

Will I/my articles get negativity within dev and tech communities because they are written in Medium?

In short: Yes. Medium has earned a negative reputation.

This is due in part to the low-quality Medium articles which rank high on Google and DuckDuckGo. This builds in "ignore Medium articles" as a useful heuristic.

More importantly, I cannot be sure if I will be allowed to read a Medium article without making an account.

Their pricing model is unclear and their ToS is unagreeable, and so far, nothing has incentivized me to compromise here and make a Medium account.

forgotpwd162• 4 years ago

I cannot be sure if I will be allowed to read a Medium article

True. Every time I've clicked on Medium link the question that I've in mind, higher even than the "will I waste my time?", is "will it allow me to read it?".

lynndotpy2• 4 years ago

Yes! And what’s worse, is each article counts towards some free-article limit.

I would only click on a Medium article if I was referred to it directly from a trusted source, and I save them to PDF before I continue reading them

Markoff3• 4 years ago

I avoid Medium and Substack, questionable content quality plus some odd patterns always baiting to sign up or subscribe to something or whatever.

nullc2• 4 years ago

The medium is the message, and it's probably not the message you want to send.

roydivision• 4 years ago

I just find the content dull and it never lives up to the quality they imply. I usually just shut the tab if I realise it's Medium hosted.

ivanmontillam• 4 years ago

It used to be true that Medium gave you exposure much like TikTok does it nowadays where you post* a video and it's instantly put in front of thousands of people. Medium had great network effects, but today you can even rank lower.

Also, once you post on Medium, that content is theirs to use freely.

My advice is for you to use your own blog. It's harder to build traffic that way, but all of these traffic is yours. In my opinion, a blog well put together is far better that Medium or any similar 3rd party blogging platform.

You may not have the same network effects starting out, but that traffic is yours to keep.

EDIT: Clarity.

worstestes• 4 years ago

I personally block all medium links for my search engine results. The amount of low quality spam content on sites like medium and quora make it not worth the effort to sort through.

joshxyz• 4 years ago

yes they are slow, full of trash links, and generally low quality content compared to what was there years before

xnx• 4 years ago

Medium, Forbes, Nautilus, etc. It's rare that I read anything off of those sites that isn't a waste of time. The only exception might be posts from companies that use medium as their official blog.

taubek• 4 years ago

I've read a lot here that medium and dev.to have negative stigma here on HackerNews. So I've taken a look at hashnode and substack. So I now I have accounts at substack, medium, dev.to, hashnod and wordpress blog. It is time to consolidate that :)

solarkraft2• 4 years ago

I find dev.to to have a lot of good content while Medium is a lot more spammy, both in the content and the site itself.

joeman1000• 4 years ago

The site feels too ‘fat’. Too much noise vs. content. Also the barrier to entry is very low so the quality is not guaranteed.

CM30• 4 years ago

Well there's definitely a stigma, though for the most part it's more towards the content on Medium than the site and its structure. The average Medium article is often a poorly disguised marketing pitch, a waffling political piece that goes nowhere, or some other paper thin 'thought leader' type stuff. It's become the place where people looking for a quick buck off their writing post online, and there's a certain amount of scepticism towards stuff posted there for that reason alone.

But will it affect your articles? Eh, probably not. Some people will refuse to click, but so long as the topic sounds interesting and you actually deliver on an interesting read for those that view it, you'll probably get past the initial stigma there.

nokya• 4 years ago

I can only share a personal opinion.

Yes, I tend to be defiant when clicking on Medium links.

Although I found really interesting authors at the beginning (maybe they were lured or recruited?) the platform has grown enough to attract users that play the clickbait game with attractive article titles, good presentations of issues, often followed by a poor analysis/conclusion that just leaves me frustrated to have clicked the link.

I pay much more attention to HN comments on a Medium article though :)

labarilem• 4 years ago

I usually try to avoid Medium and Medium-like platforms, but it's not a strict rule. I've found some very good articles there.

Ask HN: Is there a negative stigma toward articles written in Medium?

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