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Comment by heyyyouu | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why they wouldn't have done their own Website to start with. It's not hard, at all. This arrangement put way, way too much power into a partner's hand. Also not clarifying rights before you publish something is just a seriously rookie move. Rule of thumb is that nothing gets published until you have the author rights agreement signed.

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The reason why is because Medium used to have a messaging feature for publications. You could request a story be apart of your publication.

Many publications would promise they'll promote your stuff, etc. So after messaging hundreds of people you start getting free content and bigger reach, etc.

So existing platform + ease of poaching content for views is the real reason.

Medium's pitch was that they would drive traffic from other sites/publications/etc. in their network to yours. So by being in the network, you would get a free promotional boost you wouldn't get by setting up a standalone web site.

(Of course it eventually turned out that the size of this boost was not as big as many anticipated it would be, which dampened the appeal of being in the network somewhat.)

“We’re just not all that good with webserver config, or coding, or tinkering, or...”

‘Aren’t y’all hackers?’

Reminds me of Bojack Horseman:

“Sorry, I’m just not suited for these therapy sessions. I’m not good at using words to express conditions or emotions.”

‘Aren’t you a professional writer?’

hahaha

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