This cost me a story? Really? You yourself are a publication now and I have to pay for a subscription? You've been here too long methinks ,,, this isn't fiction, poetry or humour but a blog entry and I feel that charging me for it is bit off ... and taking on the Medium mindset.
But, provocative pseudorants aside (you expect it of me and who am I to disappoint you?) ... I have to say that I am increasingly approaching the point where, in the not too distant future, I suspect I'll be of the opinion that I'm about done with Medium.
From their unprofessional sanctimony
https://whereangelsfeartotread.medium.com/courting-the-kangaroo-in-the-chamber-of-stars-f582b9d3333c
... through their appalling grasp of how to design a proficient UI, resulting in an ever deteriorating UX
... to the increasingly banal content
... I find ever fewer reasons beyond habit to log in; really the only reason I do any more is so that I don't miss any replies or PMs and don't, therefore, give people the impression I'm snubbing them — pretty much the only reason for my being here these days is to keep up with those of you who are worth chatting with rather than because there's anything groundbreaking on Medium itself (it's increasingly a Farcebook type experience).
Freecodecamp saw the <ahem> writing on the wall before most and <ahem> decamped a long time ago. I've increasingly noticed other publications doing likewise in the not too distant past.
Four years ago already, Forbes was already saying that Medium didn't matter any more ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/theodorecasey/2017/08/14/why-medium-doesnt-matter-anymore/ ) ... and only recently The Verge published a piece on the mess at Medium ( https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/24/22349175/medium-layoffs-union-evan-williams-blogger-twitter-subscription )
Whilst I'm the last person in the World to begrudge creatives making a living from their efforts ... and that goes for publications too (editors' kids gotta ea too) ... it seems to me that, more and more, the people I liked to read are paywalled. But, whilst I have no objection to paying them for their work directly, nor the publication either, it seems to me, from what I've read, that it isn't the authors or the publications that are making the return, when people pay to play here.
Nor am I sufficiently impressed by the technical side of Medium to risk supplying them with my financial details.
Alongside my careers in Education and Psychology, I have been in IT for forty years (longer even than the other two).
In my time, I have been engaged in every aspect of Computer Science from assembly programming, driver development, firmware, hardware (including, CPU, memory, storage and networking technologies), hardware/software systems integration at scales from a single room to entire towns, application development, UX/UI design, intranet design/build/management, international project management, multi-site/multi-business IT systems management ... you name it, I've been professionally engaged to make it happen. I've worked on projects from one-person business endeavours selling hand-crafted products door to door through to multinational financial information services provision across the globe.
And in all that time, I have only once before seen so amateur a provision of UX/UI as is provided by Medium (Geocities in the 1990s) and have *never* seen anything so unprofessional as the progression thereof, with neither rhyme nor reason as to the way things work, just a consistent reduction in features and flexibility. ... constant change seemingly for the sake of change, with none of it for the better.
Although I've no evidence of any breaches, my long-term experience tells my gut that if I were to sign up and create a paid account, my details would get lifted or exposed one way or the other, sooner rather than later .... and that's just not a risk I'm willing to take. If the recent breaches of Solarwinds and MS Exchange are anything to go by, I wouldn't put my faith in either Medium's technical capabilities or capacity to choose a competent third-party — if players that big can fail so spectacularly, what hope is there for a bit-player the size of Medium?
So, given that The Junction does indeed host some very fine fiction, poetry and humour indeed, I can't help but wonder to what extent it's worth your while to endure having Medium decide what is worthy of promotion according to some obscure decision making process that seems to have little more consistency of direction than do its technical decisions.
Of course, we might both simply be railing at the tide: today it seems that individuals are more interested in managing their 'brand' than being curated as part of something larger, like a publication and that audiences either prefer that or (more likely?) simply don't know any different and can't imagine why they would want things otherwise either.
Hey ho ... good luck with it, whatever your decision.
</just some thoughts>
