Why I Left Medium
So I have previously published pieces about the advantages of Medium (here) and later published a piece about the advantages of using it as a syndication platform, which mostly still stands. However, for me personally I will no longer be using it any capacity.
I wrote an article criticizing a problematic cryptocurrency, this article was distributed by Medium curators, and was up for five months before I finally received this email:
You can review the article yourself but I do not think it was gratuitously abusive, and I do not think harmful is a meaningful metric here. If any post that could be harmful to a business is taken down then you are effectively eliminating the ability for people to criticize or review. Once I realized it had been taken down I decided to review their Terms of Service (something I should have done before ever promoting them). They include in their terms this line right here:
This blanket statement made me realize that it was no longer going to be a fortuitous relationship for me to allow them to use my content to advance their platform. I encourage all content creators to control your own domain, control your own hosting if you can (or use one who has committed to being anti-censorship like Wordpress), control your own email list, and keep backups of your content. I did all of these things so this takedown has little effect on me, but I worry about the effect it could have on someone else.
Post at: http://bennettftomlin.com/2019/05/06/why-i-left-medium/