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Comment by asymmetric | Hacker News Reader

I fail to understand what medium adds to any other blogging platform. Especially us technical users have dozens of self-hosted alternatives (in addition to the weird beast that is GitHub pages) that have existed since, like, forever.

Why lock yourself in a proprietary platform that then, invariably (like we are seeing now), is going to have to monetize your content?

Why aren't more people bothered by the fact that more and more previously decentralized/self-hosted models are being transformed to monopolies?

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One answer: eyeballs. Medium has managed to bring audiences and audiences bring good writing and money (both to Medium and the writers).

The thing with big sustainable audiences is that there has to be some level of centralization, either of hosted content (medium), or linked content (google).

You don't need a hosted service like medium, but you do need some way to bring the right content to the right people. To be honest, even with great insightful writing, I doubt a single blog can tackle this task. In fact, I think the biggest blogs are big not for the content, but for the marketing/leads generation/traffic building skills of the owners.

Exactly, discoverability is everything. It's why Facebook video is about to eat YouTube's lunch.

The same reason furniture stores and car dealers locate near each other: traffic.

Think of writers with magazines and newspapers. The writers themselves are what make the outlet (plus competent management). If an outlet folds, a great writer moves to another outlet, or takes a break, or writes a book.

You're not tied to any outlet. But it can be an advantage to be associated with one. For awhile.

> Why lock yourself in a proprietary platform that then, invariably (like we are seeing now), is going to have to monetize your content?

Same reason why people use Gmail instead of their self hosted email - convenience. It's even more surprising to see hackers using that kind of service (at least for Medium, Gmail is at at least a superior product in some ways) - while perfectly good self hosted, easy to deploy alternatives exist for years.

How is medium more convenient that, for example, WordPress.com?

Hosting your mail can be nasty, using something for blogging that's not a complete lock-in is a bit far from that.

Medium lets you login with facebook, paste in a word doc, and you've published in <10 minutes. Its extremely simple. Wordpress, while simple compared to many other cms options, is not simple compared to medium.

> We are going to take things down that are unsafe, that are hate speech, that are harassment. It's not a legal obligation, it's an obligation to the ecosystem of the site.

Censorship, it seems.

These comments kill me.

You may have the right to say whatever you want, but not on a blog I'm hosting for you.

While that makes sense, when these companies aspire to be the dominant platform, an oligarchy, or even a monopoly if they could, their power over public discourse is concerning.

Independent blogs and forums, and even independent media, are declining. The future is trending toward hosted content, with only a few hosts.

So, no mods anywhere? You could make the same argument that deleting spam is censorship.

We accept certain limits on free speech, even when the First Amendment applies.

Encouraging a few powerful companies to censor anything they like, without restriction, because their platforms are private property is different from accepting reasonable censorship.

So go start your own! Medium is only 3.5 years old and are just now talking about revenue. Sounds like there is plenty of room for competition.

Free speech doesn't mean anyone has a responsibility to build and offer what you want the way you want it just because you want it.

Censorship is a real thing, like when the president of Turkey prosecutes people for insulting him. There are phrases that literally may not be said in that country.

Medium isn't telling you your speech isn't legal, but they have no obligation to lend you a megaphone.

> So go start your own!

Unfortunately most of us aren't billionaires.

"The press is free, for anyone that owns one."

I didn't mean to say Medium is wrong to censor. I'm saying it's sad the world at large seems to prefer a writing channel that's censored.

host your own content if you want to be a prick.

Oh the irony !!

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