Signal v Noise exits Medium

I’ve basically stopped reading stuff hosted on Medium. I hit the limit of my “free” articles way too quickly (often by following links from other platforms, or mailing lists), but the content hosted there is neither compelling enough nor unique enough to make me want to pay even the small amount of money they ask. I’ll click through based on an interesting headline or intro, but quite often the content doesn’t live up to the promise.

I also have no idea how much of that money makes it’s way to authors. A lot of stuff on medium seems to be available elsewhere (grab a sentence and google) so I’m not sure whether medium republished it, or whether authors/publishers do it themselves.

Either way, these things combined make me not want to pay, and I find medium increasingly irritating to the point that when I see links (for example on here) to medium-hosted content I often don’t click them. Particularly on mobile I can’t face the aggressive experience-hijacking that tries to force me to use their app. When I think about it I even find the “applause” mechanism somewhat smug and sickly, which probably also puts me off at a subconscious level.

No, I’m not going to “clap” for you: I’m not a sea-lion and I’m not a child. It reduces the whole exchange between author and reader to the level of kindergarten, and contributes - for me certainly - to content often feeling like cheap grandstanding, clickbait or “content for content’s sake”, churned out by content marketer hacks.

I happily pay for a significant number of publications large and small, and am a partner in a moderatley successful niche publication (successful in the sense that we have a relatively significant audience, paid editorial staff, cover our costs and continue to grow each year) so understand some of the economics of publishing online but have found no reason so far to pay money to medium. On the very occasional times that I’m desperate to read something and have hit my “articles limit” I’ll open a private tab, but too often I just move on.

I’m glad to see publishers are releasing that it’s maybe not a great platform to put stuff. It’s a shame that it’s not better.

No Cookie banner, no "hey why don't you sign up" message, no "read in app" button, no exit intent popover.

Just words. I like it.

Seems odd that these contrarians would have been on Medium in the first place.

Doesn't medium allow exports of comments?