Why Is Medium Letting Other Writing Platforms Profit From Our Hard work?
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While gaslighting us into thinking that our work isn’t as qualitative?
Internal views are down.
And earnings are down too.
The veterans of this space are complaining about their numbers quite vociferously and I am one of them too.
At times like these, you make the decision to fight or take flight.
Unlike a number of folks here, I made the decision to stay and fight, while taking the necessary steps to reinvent or pivot successfully.
But I have noticed something rather strange too.
Medium, under Tony Stubblebine and Ev Williams, allows our stories to be hosted on other platforms such as smartnews.com and flipboard.com with readers of those spaces taking full advantage of our creativity.
Smartnews.com is a Japanese owned Silicon Valley based organization which has its own partner program for its internal readers.
And flipboard.com is also a prolific site which hosts articles from a number of players.
So why is this such a big deal?
Thousands of reads are being generated on these platforms and these spaces take full advantage of the traffic that our articles generate for their own benefit.
But what do we get in return from these players?
Nothing.
It is already bad enough being shafted by your own platform when your stories aren’t being distributed but being screwed by an alien platform is very hard to take.
It shows neglect on the part of our beloved establishment; it is one thing to have external views from every day folk but it is another to have another player host your hard work and not be compensated for it.
Medium enjoys several advantages from having its articles posted across rival pages. Writers only get to enjoy these advantages when these external readers choose to become members.
