The amount of stupid is impressive

I kind of wish I hadn't looked.

Happy Friday

Have you noticed that the complaining on Medium has changed?

Specifically, the “who” has changed.

I’ve been on Medium a long time. There’s always been complaining. Nature of the beast. Where there are people, there will be complaining. lol.

For most of the time, the complaining has come from the people who are struggling. They complain about how hard it is. For a while, they complained about curation jail when curation was a thing. Now it’s mostly automated. I even read a post complaining that there “are” top writers to begin with. The posts said all top writers should leave voluntarily to give new writers a shot. lol.

But now?

Now it’s the so-called “big” writers complaining.

—Gillian May (42K) said her earnings on Medium have dropped so much she’s earning more on Newsbreak.

—Benjamin Sledge (36K) wrote about the glut of poor quality content and meta posts on the homepage and said his earnings have tanked.

—Matt Lillywhite (29K) flat out said the platform is no longer recognizable from its former self, and that’s why he’s leaving. Poof. Gone.

He’s not the first and won’t be the last. A lot of the top writers from a year ago are gone. Remember Ben Hardy? Gone. Jessica Valenti? Gone.

Here’s the one that got me.

Jessica Wildfire (89K) said her views are holding steady, but pay is down about a third.

That was concrete.

You know? Something a numbers geek like me could work with. In our stats, we can look at each article on an overall basis, or monthly. So I dug into the stats and you know… she’s right. Pay is down about a third for the same views.

Back in August, 2.5 hours of read time was paying around $9.
But in October, 2.5 hours of read time only paid about $6.
Down a third.

It seems like a piddling number on a small scale, but it scales ugly. I saw it in my stats. Earlier this year, I earned $600 for 65 hours of read time. Two months ago, I earned $160 for the same amount of read time.

People who make almost nothing might be tempted to pull out the world’s smallest violin and play a song of sympathy. lol. Truth is, it doesn’t matter where you fall on the earning scale, the change is hitting everyone who isn’t writing the meta posts that keep floating to the top.

My question is why.

Why is that happening? What changed?

The amount of stupid is impressive

In hindsight, I kind of wish I hadn’t looked. Because once I really looked, I saw what’s happening and I can’t unsee what I saw.

It’s the new “relational” model Medium introduced a few months ago.
We all knew that. We just didn’t know HOW.

Even worse, the relational model is fueling the glut of low quality posts, meta posts, and “how to make money” posts we’re all seeing on the site. Shoving them right to the top of the feeds. I can explain how and why that’s happening, too.

I’m pretty sure Medium sees the glut of meta posts. Their way of correcting it is to give us the “see less like this” option that recently appeared.

It’s not going to help. lol.

Long story short, the “relational” model is backfiring. The more readers read on Medium, the less most writers will earn. How stupid is that?

Honestly. Having spent entirely too many hours analyzing stats and really digesting how the relational algorithm works, I’m not even mad. Just stunned.

Absolutely gobsmacked. The amount of stupidity is kind of impressive.

So now the million dollar question.

Should I ignore it and wait for Medium to figure it out?

Or should I write about it?

What do you think?

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More reading…

• Victorian Dresses Were Death Traps

• History of Women Has Quadrupled in 4 Months

• 3 Words That Weaken Your Writing.

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Did you know if you click the heart or leave a comment, Substack gives you stars for being responsive? You can’t see them, but I can and they make me smile. :)

Thanks for reading.

xo,
Linda