
I'm concerned with the move that FreeCodeCamp just pulled by leaving Medium - boling11
https://dev.to/ben/i-m-concerned-with-the-move-that-freecodecamp-just-pulled-by-leaving-medium-io8
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HeWhoLurksLate
On an unrelated note, I really wish that Medium hadn't gone to a pay-after-
three model like everyone else- not only can I not afford it, it feels
counter-intuitive. To me, Medium is a place where budding bloggers, industry
professionals, etc. can get a start or work on building up and out their
careers _and influence_ \- and it doesn't make sense to say "you have to spend
money to give these people attention", especially when I can that same blog
post somewhere else. Medium, the company, doesn't seem to produce much
content, and so it seems unfair for them to restrict the flow to the creators
themselves.

~~~
gnicholas
Budding bloggers can just stay outside the pay wall, which applies only to
articles that the author chooses to monetize.

~~~
ThisBytes
Incorrect if you don't publish your articles behind the paywall it will be
distributed much less widely

~~~
gnicholas
I've not heard this before, and it doesn't match my experience. Is it an
official Medium policy?

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kmf
One thing mentioned in Ben’s post that’s worth talking about explicitly: if
you add a post to Medium using their import feature, Medium will set the
canonical URL to your original URL. This meant that when if you imported a
post from your personal blog and submitted it to FreeCodeCamp, you’d get a big
SEO benefit: your post was shared on one of the biggest Medium publications,
but any backlinks and ranking boosts would apply back to your original post,
on your website.

As part of this migration, FreeCodeCamp has removed canonical URLs from
submitted posts - your original post is now competing with freecodecamp.org,
and Google (and other search engines) is going to do a duplicate content
check. Considering that FCC is in the top 2000 sites in the world according to
Alexa[1], there’s a _strong_ chance your site will be penalized. This is a big
deal for authors.

[1]:
[https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/freecodecamp.org](https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/freecodecamp.org)

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fmajid
I understand his concerns, but frankly Medium is a purulent ulcer on the web
that needs to be put out of its misery ASAP.

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floatingatoll
Please post here if you file a DMCA claim against them for misuse of your
content without your permission. Their contact information is in their terms
of service (team@freecodecamp.org) and their public non-profit filing (1), and
they declare themselves subject to US Law.

They are a nonprofit, so they have the option of offering each author a tax
deduction as payment for content. If you have entered into any rights deal
with them directly, you may not have standing to make a DMCA claim; take care
not to knowingly do so under such circumstances, as that is likely a crime
under US federal law.

Their hosting provider will likely also want to be notified of your DMCA
claim, as they may be in violation of contractual agreements signed for their
hosting.

(1)
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/freecodecamp/Free+Code+Camp+Inc+IRS...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/freecodecamp/Free+Code+Camp+Inc+IRS+Determination+Letter.pdf)

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beenBoutIT
What kind of example does it set for FreeCodeCamp to rely on a site like
Medium as opposed to making its own site and sharing that code on GitHub?
Budding engineers don't need to rely on sites like Medium when they can put
together their own sites and learn about SEO.

~~~
huehehue
That's a really good point, but that may not be ideal from a pure learning
perspective.

Engineers are often subject to the whims of management, tight deadlines,
dependency quirks, their own personal bias, and so on. A living example would
showcase all of those things, but unless you annotate each line and comment
excessively, you lose a lot of context.

It's also much easier to follow a tutorial than to dig through commit history
and piece everything together yourself.

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chrisco23
The intricacies and legal details here are a little beyond the scope of my
understanding. Medium was never much, and when they turned into a popup-
serving nagware, that was the end of them for me.

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duxup
I thought we had a story a while back about FreeCodeCamp trying to contact the
authors while trying to get off Medium.

In the end it seems very strange that Medium, FreeCodeCamp and the authors all
were intertwined in very strange ways as far as ownership and why they were
involved together.

------
codesternews
I am happy with the FreeCodeCamp move and I want all the engineering blog to
move off from the medium.

It's really pain when you open the blog and you get they paywall to say "You
read much ...". Really, It's annoying what Medium become.

------
thatoneuser
Does medium even provide any valuable content? Every time I've been there's
it's been nothing but people who are total amateurs talking out of their ass
as tho they're experts.

~~~
drngdds
There's also seemingly useful articles that end up being content marketing!

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dheera
"Publications on Medium are bound by the Medium Terms of Service, and they
have no right to your content that you do not explicitly grant them. That
includes exporting, copying, or reposting your content to any website that is
not Medium.com"

"You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium"

Wait what? If it's my content and I own the rights, I can repost it wherever I
wish.

~~~
bhalp1
Yes, _you_ can post it wherever you wish. A third party publication on Medium,
however, cannot do so without your consent.

~~~
bigdang
It might help to explain the Medium third party publication system, as it
wouldn’t exactly be clear to people who haven’t experienced it before.

