There are so many criticisms that can be levelled at Medium that it can be hard to know where to begin… and I largely don’t for fear that, if I do, I’ll never stop because there are just so many.

Suffice it to say that my experience in IT inclines me to draw certain conclusions about their competence and, as a result, have not yet considered it prudent to give them any financial data (not even the address of a Bitcoin wallet): f it hasn’t happened already then it’s surely only a matter of time before the hack occurs (and I’d be extremely surprised to learn that is hasn’t already and wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn, later, that the only reason we haven’t yet heard about it is that they’re too incompetent to have noticed.

Livejournal was already more sophisticated a publishing platform in 2001!

I’m not sure any of them are actually all that technical, frankly. They might know how to develop using the frameworks and APIs du jour, but I’m not convinced any of them understand Design (whether from the perspective of application development specifically or Ergonomics in the large) any better than do Apple ¹.

If you look at how Medium works/functions, there’s a distinct hint of web-app about the desktop site that, to my mind at least, is born out by their delivery of a very limited ‘HTML editor’ for the purpose of creating/editing posts: an HTML editor delivered via a web interface might seem like a sophisticated idea, if you have little IRL experience, but anyone with appreciable experience will tell you before you write ’20: GOTO 10' that it’s a bad idea that will result in a poor ability to deliver under load and a poor user experience even at the best of times — there’s a reason for native apps: performance.

—
¹ Who do Style … not Design.