Ask HN: Is there a negative stigma toward articles written in Medium?

I don't click Medium links anymore.

Once they popped up a "Let's make it official!" thing that wanted me to create an account, because apparently I can't read text over HTTP without handing over my name, email address and manage a password.

I also found the amount of trackers disgusting.

    javascript:(function() { window.location.replace( document.URL.replace( document.location.host,'scribe.rip') )})()

It’s not so much about medium or any other name, it’s purely a matter of a tease with no follow through.

Any site which teases you with content and then slams the door in your face is obnoxious and aggravating. Sites that aggravate me get negative goodwill.

Eventually, as with Facebook, I avoid them entirely as a matter of personal principle.

My hope is that people with interesting things to share will start to see the decline of their platform and move elsewhere to less user hostile places.

I know companies need revenue, but there are ways of getting revenue without being obnoxious or deceptive.

This feels like a standard playbook.

1. Focus on the goal, make a good product, attract customers.

2. Think, “we’ve done it!”

3. Need to make money somehow.

4. Money making attempts demonstrates that no, you didn’t do it, you were just selling dollars for fifty cents.

5. Product decays into garbage as you harass the user.

6. Substack et al. lines up to be next rider on this roller coaster.

Personally, yes, a medium.com link is negative signal that a post is probably going to be thin content marketing fluff.

Medium used to be great for me as an author because I didn't need to care about hosting, spam filtering, tinkering with themes, keeping wordpress up to date and similar things. I could just write. That was in contrast to managing wordpress on my own web server.

But I've always had fewer reads on Medium than on my own blog even if my articles seem to have about as good SEO, which makes me think there is a stigma.

Also, my more technical articles that dive into the subject matter more deeply have attracted some feedback that they're boring, too long, and too technical on Medium. I have not received such feedback when people were reading the articles on my own wordpress site.

Medium seems to have a stigma for shallow content, but some of its readers also could have an expectation for that style of content.

It's unfortunate that Medium has developed this perception of it. Migrating content between platforms takes time and is difficult. Maintaining my own blog CMS and web server also involves time associated with infosec and fixing technical issues when they arise. But at least my own website will never become "another Medium" unlike any other mainstream platform I could go to, I suppose.

I'd go with Substack (https://substack.com/) or Ghost (https://ghost.org/).

Substack is easy (and free) to set up. You have the option to turn on subscriptions and monetise your content via Stripe.

Ghost gives you more flexibility / personalisation. You'll need some web coding/hosting skills or you can subscribe to one of their plans (starts at $9/mo).

Edit: typo.

> Will I/my articles get negativity within dev and tech communities because they are written in Medium?

In short: Yes. Medium has earned a negative reputation.

This is due in part to the low-quality Medium articles which rank high on Google and DuckDuckGo. This builds in "ignore Medium articles" as a useful heuristic.

More importantly, I cannot be sure if I will be allowed to read a Medium article without making an account.

Their pricing model is unclear and their ToS is unagreeable, and so far, nothing has incentivized me to compromise here and make a Medium account.

Well there's definitely a stigma, though for the most part it's more towards the content on Medium than the site and its structure. The average Medium article is often a poorly disguised marketing pitch, a waffling political piece that goes nowhere, or some other paper thin 'thought leader' type stuff. It's become the place where people looking for a quick buck off their writing post online, and there's a certain amount of scepticism towards stuff posted there for that reason alone.

But will it affect your articles? Eh, probably not. Some people will refuse to click, but so long as the topic sounds interesting and you actually deliver on an interesting read for those that view it, you'll probably get past the initial stigma there.

I am less inclined to click on a medium.com link than even a LinkedIn link.

Why? Because of the limitations on articles per month and my skepticism that I either: want to bother with being blocked (negative reinforcement is a thing) or, even if I’m not blocked on this one, how do I know if this article will count against my monthly article limit (FOMO-maybe I’d better spend that token on a different article; can’t take the chance)

I’d be more inclined to read an article linked to me from theanonymousone.com. (Others would be more likely to stumble across it on medium.com, though. Top of funnel is better on medium; conversion rate from mid-funnel to read is better off medium.) Maybe publishing twice covers both bases?

Could I suggest that a few words on what you liked about the Medium experience would be helpful. Is it the editor or the layout of the posts for example? Might help others to guide you to a suitable option.

I can only share a personal opinion.

Yes, I tend to be defiant when clicking on Medium links.

Although I found really interesting authors at the beginning (maybe they were lured or recruited?) the platform has grown enough to attract users that play the clickbait game with attractive article titles, good presentations of issues, often followed by a poor analysis/conclusion that just leaves me frustrated to have clicked the link.

I pay much more attention to HN comments on a Medium article though :)

I do tend to avoid visiting medium links because it feels too much like LinkedIn. There’s too much nonsense wrapped up in a shitty and invasive user experience.

There’s some good stuff there for which I use a laptop to browse. The mobile experience in iOS sucks thanks to a lack of proper browser plug-in support (fuck you, Apple). I feel hostage within my own device.

It used to be true that Medium gave you exposure much like TikTok does it nowadays where you post* a video and it's instantly put in front of thousands of people. Medium had great network effects, but today you can even rank lower.

Also, once you post on Medium, that content is theirs to use freely.

My advice is for you to use your own blog. It's harder to build traffic that way, but all of these traffic is yours. In my opinion, a blog well put together is far better that Medium or any similar 3rd party blogging platform.

You may not have the same network effects starting out, but that traffic is yours to keep.

EDIT: Clarity.

some Americans in the (often impoverished) math and science corner of certain specialties seem to repeatedly, pointedly, publish their "industry influencer" manifesto and/or technical overview/brag articles on Medium (e.g. Planet). Its odd and directly counter to lots of intellectual reasoning about how and where to publish. As noted here, Medium itself has become more intrusive over a few years. The whole combination feels onerous. Like some papers of record in capital-S Science itself, Medium gets clicks, but under protest and yes, negative stigma.

This question should be a poll. I'll happily vote yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231804

Medium is paywalled. Unless they are paying you a lot to post there, it’s a bad idea because many people will not be able to read your article. People can read X articles for free then it’s paywalled.

I don’t know how the “don’t paywall my article” works, but I run into paywalled Medium articles all the time.

I do not care much about who host a generic article, I do care a bit about the author though. After the click if the site load without js/works with Firefox Reader I read, otherwise I quit.

In the past I've seen valuable publications here and there, I prefer avoiding prejudice on a specific platform/business model.

I've read a lot here that medium and dev.to have negative stigma here on HackerNews. So I've taken a look at hashnode and substack. So I now I have accounts at substack, medium, dev.to, hashnod and wordpress blog. It is time to consolidate that :)

Medium, Forbes, Nautilus, etc. It's rare that I read anything off of those sites that isn't a waste of time. The only exception might be posts from companies that use medium as their official blog.

Yes. I avoid medium links.

I personally block all medium links for my search engine results. The amount of low quality spam content on sites like medium and quora make it not worth the effort to sort through.

I avoid Medium and Quora at all costs. Both are viewer hostile.

I read it sometimes, but I'm getting sick of the click-bait "joke" articles, like the recent "Python 3.14 Will be Faster than C++".

I usually try to avoid Medium and Medium-like platforms, but it's not a strict rule. I've found some very good articles there.

I avoid Medium and Substack, questionable content quality plus some odd patterns always baiting to sign up or subscribe to something or whatever.

I just find the content dull and it never lives up to the quality they imply. I usually just shut the tab if I realise it's Medium hosted.

The site feels too ‘fat’. Too much noise vs. content. Also the barrier to entry is very low so the quality is not guaranteed.

Apart from the tracking and soft paywall issues that you and some comments mention, there's another problem with sites like Medium and Substack (and Linkedin and others, too)

Publishing on those sites requires minimal effort. As the userbase grows, those sites attract more and more low-quality creators. Although there are many excellent writers on Medium, there is naturally also an increasing proportion of spam.

This flood of low effort content harms the perception of the entire site, so today when we see a Medium.com link perhaps we hesitate to click.

The medium is the message, and it's probably not the message you want to send.

Seeing this is reminding me that I need to migrate my blog from Medium...

yes they are slow, full of trash links, and generally low quality content compared to what was there years before

I paid the yearly fee for two years up until 2020. There were a handful of authors and topics I liked on Medium. Those authors have since left the platform. The topics I’m interested in kind of dried up with not much worth reading these days.

I don’t care so much about the paywall. It is the low quality of content that pushes me away.

Writers saw an opportunity to make money on Medium. This gradually dragged down the overall quality of writing on platform, and likely the reputation of the platform itself.

These days whenever I do click through to a Medium article, it rarely delivers on its title.

Why not consider substack?

I don't think they'll get negativity so much as people will just be less likely to click on them. When I see a Medium link I often just skip it, expecting to see either some paywall/registration popup or maybe a lower quality self-promotional article.

Too many click baits articles