
Medium pressured freeCodeCamp to put the articles behind the firewall - planetjones
https://twitter.com/oleg008/status/1134475953470656513
======
SamWhited
Archived link:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190531170114/https://twitter.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190531170114/https://twitter.com/oleg008/status/1134475953470656513)

Stop using Medium. Seriously, what will it take to get people off this
terrible platform? It's bad for readers, bad for content creators, and doesn't
even have the audience people claim to be benefiting from anymore.

If you just want dead simple publishing (which was what Medium was supposed to
be originally before it became terrible), try
[https://write.as/](https://write.as/) (I have no affiliation with it, but I
really like it)

~~~
bluetidepro
If that goes dead, here are the 2 screenshots of it:

\- The tweet: [https://bluetide.pro/EOVchT](https://bluetide.pro/EOVchT)

\- The img in the tweet:
[https://bluetide.pro/X6qAyN](https://bluetide.pro/X6qAyN)

~~~
lenova
Full tweet and screenshot text below:

\--------------------------------------

@oleg008:

"Wow, @Medium pressured @freeCodeCamp to put articles behind the firewall:

'They have pressured us to put our articles behind their paywalls. We refused.
So they tried to buy us... We refused. Then they started threatening us with a
lawyer.'

Can't believe this is real."

[SCREENSHOT TEXT]

Hi Oleg,

Thanks again for publishing on freeCodeCamp's Medium publication.

freeCodeCamp is the biggest publication on Medium. Our open source community
sends Medium about 5% of their total traffic.

But over the past year, Medium has become more aggressive toward us. They have
pressured us to put our articles behind their paywalls. We refused. So they
tried to buy us. (Which makes no sense. We're a public charity.) We refused.
Then they started threatening us with a lawyer.

It's not just us. They are doing this to a lot of publications. And a lot of
high profile people from the developer community are leaving Medium as a
result.

Medium is a corporation founded by a billionaire who also accepted $132
million in venture capital.

freeCodeCamp is just a tiny donor-supported nonprofit.

I tell you this not because I want you to be angry. I'm not angry. I just want
to help people learn to code.

So together, the community made plans to leave Medium. We built freeCodeCamp
News as fast as we could.

freeCodeCamp News is a place where you can share your blog articles. It's
free, it doesn't have ads, and it's open source. There are no "sign in" popups
or paywalled articles. According to Google's own Lighthouse Score,
freeCodeCamp News is faster than Medium, has better SEO than Medium, and is
more accessible than Medium.

And in just the past 48 hours, hundreds of thousands of people have read
articles on freeCodeCamp News. So we have a growing audience for your
articles.

This said, all of your articles are still on Medium where they were before.

The articles you submitted - which we edited then published in freeCodeCamp's
Medium publication - are now on freeCodeCamp News, too.

You can read more about freeCodeCamp News - including my detailed FAQ - here:
[https://www.freecodecamp.org/forum/t/279929](https://www.freecodecamp.org/forum/t/279929)

On a personal note, I wrote more than 500 articles on Medium. I built up a
following of 155,000 people on Medium over the years. It was hard to leave
Medium. But I have no doubt that it was the right thing to do.

I'm optimistic that all of us in the developer community can start our own
blogs on the open web, then use community tools like freeCodeCamp News to
raise awareness of them.

I'm looking forward to reading more of your writing in the future.

Best,

Quincy Larson The teacher who founded freeCodeCamp.org

[/SCREENSHOT TEXT]

------
oldgun
It's not a single case. The whole company is built on an exploitive and
nefarious business model.

[https://hackernoon.com/why-is-hackernoon-com-leaving-
medium-...](https://hackernoon.com/why-is-hackernoon-com-leaving-
medium-103cc541af85) [https://praxis.fortelabs.co/why-im-leaving-
medium/](https://praxis.fortelabs.co/why-im-leaving-medium/)

~~~
lol768
So .. did Hacker Noon leave or not?
[https://hackernoon.com](https://hackernoon.com) still displays a Medium
message.

I've not watched the video, there doesn't appear to be a transcript.

------
bluetidepro
It seems like the other top post for today ("Show HN: Switch from Medium to
your own blog in a few minutes" [1] [2]) comes at a perfect time now.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20060549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20060549)

[2] [https://github.com/mathieudutour/medium-to-own-
blog](https://github.com/mathieudutour/medium-to-own-blog)

~~~
capdeck
Or even git(lab/hub)? if too lazy to set up your own.

~~~
nostalgk
Yeah, that solution does actually automatically put it out on github. I wish
it wasn't locked to another vendor, but it's a good options.

------
franciscop
From the thread, the email author says:

> This email was intended only for Oleg and a few of our other authors. I have
> messaged him asking to delete it. We are focused on the future and want to
> move on from this.

~~~
dntrkv
Is that because they really want to move on or is it because the email doesn't
tell the whole story?

Curious to hear Medium's response.

~~~
derivagral
As I understood it, the request was from the founder of FCC who presumably
doesn't want the drama.

I get his concern, but as someone uninvolved in FCC but who does read Medium
I'm glad to see this sort of thing out in the open.

~~~
taytus
I get his concern as well, but at the same time... why would _ANYONE_ share
something you might regret (like on this case) if the content is made public?

~~~
brokensegue
you've never told someone something in confidence?

~~~
taytus
Yes, because telling someone something in confidence is the same as sending a
fucking email. You are reaaaaaaaally making an effort to look obtuse.

------
danols
Medium is done as a platform. If you still post content there you need to look
for an alternative. It will not get any better. The management shows zero will
to recognize the issues and to solve it. As soon as a company resorts to dark
UI patterns (which medium has done for some time now) it is always downhill
from there. Just in the last few weeks I have found 5+ regular authors that
does NOT intend to post premium articles but have been tricked into doing so
through a misleading/dark UI. Kind of a shame since it used to be quite good
as discovery platform and it had promise but it is not anymore and I spend
zero time on the platform apart from reading articles that I click from my
Twitter feed.

------
quincyla
Please delete this post. This is a private email I sent to the author. It was
not intended to be shared on Twitter.

We just want to move on and focus on the future.

~~~
bluetidepro
Genuinely curious though, why try to sweep under the rug the sketchy tactics
Medium tried to pull here? I think this should be a good warning for others.
You can move on, and focus on the future but still reflect and share the past.
They are not exclusive, in my opinion.

~~~
contempt
my best guess (albeit, guess -- don't know much about medium or freeCodeCamp)
would be fear of further frivolous threats and potential legal actions on
behalf of medium. Frivolous lawsuits, no matter how ridiculous (libel,
whatever) can feel a lot less frivolous to small/non-profit organizations who
don't have the capital to point this out in court or respond when companies
beat them over the head with their greater resource pools and influence. Also,
it seems likely if they were bringing that much traffic to medium, they
probably do have good relationships with some individuals at medium and
probably don't want to alienate those connections based on a couple poor
decisions, which is totally understandable.

------
Deimorz
Hopefully someday we'll start recognizing the pattern. Sites built on large
amounts of venture capital are literally too good to be true.

They're able to lose tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year
providing completely unsustainable services, but they can't keep doing it
forever. When they start monetizing, they have to use methods that are far
more aggressive than would have been needed originally, because they're
starting at the bottom of a giant hole they dug themselves into.

Yes, a store that sells dollar bills for 90 cents would be very popular. The
tech industry needs to stop acting like there's anything impressive about
that.

~~~
propter_hoc
Hi Deimorz, are you the same /u/Deimorz who used to be an admin on reddit? I'm
very interested to read this perspective from you. Do you think there is a
viable third way forward for companies like Medium and reddit?

~~~
Deimorz
That's me, yes. And you're setting me up so perfectly here that I almost feel
guilty about it:

A few months after I left reddit, I started a non-profit and have been
building a new HN/reddit-like community site that can stick to the principles
I believe are important (including being entirely user-supported with no
investors or ads). The announcement post is probably still the best
explanation overall: [https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-
tildes](https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes) (HN discussion of it here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093))

The site's been public to view (but still needs an invite to register) for a
few months now, so anyone can have a look:
[https://tildes.net](https://tildes.net)

Feel free to email me for an invite if anyone's interested, the address is in
the blog post. It's not intended to be difficult to get an invite, I just want
to keep the growth under control while we keep building up a base site culture
and features.

~~~
perfectstorm
> including being entirely user-supported with no investors or ads

What are your plans when user-supported revenue is not enough to keep the
servers running?

~~~
Scoundreller
I’m still surprised that I can’t donate my resources toward a distributed
DB/web server for this kind of content. E.g. by subscribing, I automatically
start serving content and/or augmenting other mirrors. As some channels I
subscribe to become stale, I automatically start re-assigning my resources to
keep it alive.

Basically a BitTorrent/Tor-like decentralized system for distribute DBs with a
web front end.

The amount of server resources I consume from fora must be 1/10000th the
excess CPU/HD/bandwidth capacity I have.

I’m sure some cryptocoin project is working on something like this.

~~~
rolleiflex
Ha, I’m working on this. It’s called Aether:
[http://getaether.net](http://getaether.net). You contribute bandwidth / cpu /
storage by being a peer on the network. It’s less Medium and more Slashdot /
Reddit though.

------
k__
_" They tried to buy us but we are a public charity"_

Made my day, thanks.

"You have no powere here"

------
tchaffee
Why is this post still here? The original author of the email - Quincy Larson
- said it was a private email. Sure the tweet is already available at archived
links. That doesn't mean we can't be respectful of the wishes of the original
author of a leaked private email. Especially someone who has put so much time
and hard work into running a small non-profit helping people learn to code.

~~~
moate
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

Partially this.

And while it's possible this post will go down, there's also a worthwhile
discussion to be had about Medium. Some things are bigger than Quincy might
want them to be (I say this as someone who's a HUGE fan of FCC and what they
do).

~~~
tchaffee
Fair point about what the effect _might_ be. I'm talking about the ethics of
the YCombinator community and company in particular and not the internets at
large. If someone asks me to delete something that was private, I just do it.

~~~
michannne
If it's posted publicly, it's public. They can't really do anything about
that.

------
gnicholas
> _Then they started threatening us with a lawyer_

On what grounds would legal threats have been made? Would this be related to
freeCodeCamp posting articles (possibly without author agreement, according to
recent allegations) separately? If it happened before freeCodeCamp left, then
obviously it would have to be something else, but I can't think of what.

------
user00012-ab
I don't think Medium has fully grasped that people read most content because
they are bored, not because they really care about the content; thus when you
put the content behind a paywall, most people will just go find other ways to
amuse their bored brains on the internet.

Content on the internet is usually so shallow it's bordering near worthless;
lots of people just repeating other people over and over. When it comes to
explaining a concept, most sites on the internet just cover the basics and
promise they'll get to the deeper stuff later (and never do.)

The nice thing about the old book model (Before ebooks), is the amount of work
it took to get a book published ended up filtering out all the mediocre
content which we see today on the internet because it is so easy to hit
publish somewhere. Paying for a book is worth it, as the book is actually a
complete thought. The stuff people are trying to charge for on the internet is
just mostly low quality stream of conscious writings with no actual content
behind it.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
Facebook hasn't figured this out with in-video ads. I don't care that much
about how Tasty makes some baked good enough to sit through a 15-second ad to
see the remainder of the video.

~~~
richrichardsson
I make a habit of stopping the video as soon as I see the "Ad will start in X
seconds" notice, in the vain hope that someone is paying attention to those
metrics.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
You're not alone: I do the same thing.

------
charleshan
Why can't Medium follow YouTube's business model?

Provide ad-supported content with premium ad-free option.

------
zby
There are two kind of authors at Medium. There are those who try to earn money
directly from their writing and those who just want to write and maybe
monetize in other ways, maybe not monetize at all just make their writing a
gift to the humanity. The second kind of authors hate the paywall.

What is worse is that there is a negative selection among those who want to
earn from their writing - those who really know writing try to get into real
journalism and the Medium authors are mostly those who _try_ to earn money.
That is not to say that there are no good writers, just last week I have
eventually paid the Medium membership only because one author, but I am
disappointed about the whole package. I presume there is better stuff written
by the fist type of authors who write because they want to say something - but
they are not recommended by Medium because they don't want the paywall. So
being recommended is mostly a negative sign - it is often even written quite
well - but with no depth.

I really wish Medium all the best - because the traditional media are failing
and we as society, we have to find a way to support journalists. But the
Medium experiment is probably failed one.

------
paulcarroty
Unrelated to this thread, but I can't remember when reading any good words
about Medium last time :)

------
throwaway13000
Lets say I am a random dude writing one off blog on medium.com. Will the user
be still subjects to "5 free articles" per month? Will user be subjected to
"Lets make things official" or is the quota only for firewall/paywalled
articles?

~~~
gnicholas
If you don't opt-in to monetizing your posts, then they are not subject to the
quota. I believe Medium will still show the pop-ups to get people to
subscribe, but they won't ever actually be blocked from reading your posts.

------
tschellenbach
Got no skin in the game, but why all this hate for medium? Sounds like they
just don't want to do ads?

~~~
JeremyBanks
If you can't read the article, can you at least read the headline?

~~~
briandear
I am curious what “pressured” means. A threat? A shakedown? Or a polite email?
The headline doesn’t really make it clear and the “article” is deleted.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
The HN discussion contains links to archived versions at the very top.

