Please, Medium, Please

Mike Essig , you have hit the Medium nail on the head. Medium is so hyper-focused on only one specific demographic. It may be the largest demographic but Medium ignores all other demographics in favor of the one. Their focus on this demographic is only becoming more laser-focused with each passing month and the new home page clearly demonstrates this. Medium’s extreme tunnel vision is pissing off a lot of people but they don’t seem to care because they are sticking to their agenda no matter what.

From recent changes it is becoming obvious that there are two main aspects to Medium’s agenda. First is the goal of turning Medium into yet another biased, agenda-driven, popularity-driven, corporate, mainstream, non-fiction, news platform. Perhaps this is why they hired the former editor of Time Magazine to head up their curating staff. Medium wants to look just like and be just like all the other corporate mainstream sites. In that regard she is already very successful. The new home page clearly makes Medium seem more like all those other corporate mainstream sites.

The second extremely obvious aspect of Medium’s agenda is to take away any control Medium readers have over what “content” is being surfaced for them. This has been going on for some time. The control we have over what we want to see and read is shrinking and shrinking.

I’m looking at my home page which I have opened in another window. Going to the section called, “Based On Your Reading History” I see an article about dance. Huh? I don’t recall ever reading an article about dance in the two and a half years I’ve been on Medium. I don’t follow any “Dance” tags or topics. Why the hell is that being served up to me?

Then I see an article about finance. I don’t follow any tags or topics in relation to finance or business or entrepreneurship and I don’t read any of that stuff. Why is it being shown to me as though it was something that I would be interested in?

Then I see an article about right-wing conservation opinion essays. I’m not a right-wing conservative, I DO NOT follow the “Politics” tag! I never read that stuff. Why is it there? It makes no sense whatsoever.

The phrase, “Based On Your Reading History” is a total lie. It should be entitled, “What Our Curators Want to Forcefully Cram Down Your Throat.”

The “Featured” section at the top of the page is the one section that NEVER has anything that I care to read. Every day I quickly skim through those headlines and it’s the same shit by the same authors every single day. Nothing ever appears in that section that is not focused on that one demographic Mike Essig talked about. It is always business, tech, entrepreneurship, design, How To Become a Billionaire articles, and there are way, way too many articles from the big corporate publications (which I never read). And there are way, way too many articles with the names, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Warren Buffet in the title. If the name of a billionaire appears in the title of an article I won’t read it and I’m sick of those articles being forcefully crammed down my throat.

The “Top Stories For You” section actually has two articles by people I follow. This must be an algorithm mistake or something. The other 3 stories I had no interest in. Why are we only shown what is at the very, very top? Why is popularity more important than quality? I don’t give a damn what’s popular. I want to read quality writing in genres that I am interested in. But Medium insists on taking full, complete control over what I read. If I want to read something that they are not forcefully cramming down my throat I’ve got to go on a diving expedition to find it.

Then there’s the “You Might Like” section. Sorry, there’s nothing in there that I might like. It’s just yet another section of stuff that the curating staff is trying to forcefully cram down my throat that meets their demographic agenda and has nothing to do with what I might like.

Then there’s the “Basic Income” section which has become a permanent fixture on the homepage. It’s not that I’m for it or against it, I’m just sick and tired of the endless tens of thousands of articles about it that Medium is forcefully trying to cram down my throat. Enough already! Why can’t I see some of the topics that I am interested in?

Because Medium wants total control over what I see and read! That’s why. They want their biased and agenda-driven curating staff to make all my reading decisions for me. Screw that! I have a brain. I can make decisions for myself. But Medium is making it harder and harder for me to find what I want.

That row of topic links at the top of the page is a joke. It clearly shows what demographic Medium is exclusively focused towards. I have no interest in any of those links in that row. All the topics I am interested in are hidden. I have to dig for them because they do not fit into my demographic. I am so sick of this.

The one and only saving grace of the new home page is the “New From Your Network” section. Yes, it has been seriously shrunk in order to minimize it and show its lack of importance in Medium’s agenda, but thank God it’s still there. It’s the one and only section that we still have a tiny bit of control over. We can choose to follow an author or publication and there’s a fair chance of them showing up in that feed. That is about the only control we still have over what gets surfaced for us. Of course, even that feed has been altered and not everything and everyone that I follow are showing up in that feed anymore. I’ve checked with some authors that I follow and I see that not everything they post shows up in that feed. So Medium is forcing me to manually go to specific author’s profiles in order to find out what I’ve missed that did not appear in the feed. I don’t have time for that. I want a feed that shows every single solitary thing that is posted by every single author and publication that I follow. Sadly, this goes against Medium’s agenda of controlling everything that we read.

With the home page shrinking, feeds shrinking, and links to topics that we follow hidden from view and rarely ever appearing on our home page, Medium is looking more and more like a corporate mainstream news site focused exclusively on only one demographic and forcefully cramming down our throats content that is exclusively targeted at that one demographic. One of the things I’ve always loved about Medium is diversity but that diversity is being edged out in favor of Medium’s agenda. The diversity is shrinking and shrinking quickly. Medium, please bring back that diversity instead of shrinking it and please stop focusing exclusively on only one demographic and please, please, please introduce some “discoverability” to the platform (discoverability that we can direct rather than what the curating staff “discovers” for us) and please return to us some of the choice of what is surfaced on our home page and other pages. Please.