Hacker News Reader

Comment by ballenf | Hacker News Reader

I get that, but don't you sort of have to trust that your users are smart enough to 'heart' the articles that are of value to them? It almost feels like he's saying 'our readers aren't smart enough to know good writing from clickbait'. Which might be true, but that's not exactly a sales pitch that's going to make me want to subscribe.

Just take my $5 and divvy it up among all the articles I hearted. Keep it simple!

I've read so much great stuff on Medium I'd hate to see it fail. But, the hand-picked articles on the front page are almost never ones I really value. Maybe I'm just not Medium's target audience.

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> It almost feels like he's saying 'our readers aren't smart enough to know good writing from clickbait'. Which might be true, but that's not exactly a sales pitch that's going to make me want to subscribe.

Yep. It's not really doing or saying anything to assure readers that they know where the quality lies, just giving the same 'media sucks, let's improve it' spiel that most publications start out with, minus the commitment a publication has to cater to its readers (donating through medium essentially gives up your control as to who gets supported, as opposed to the straightforward idea of donating to the publisher/writers you like directly).

I can't see many people as opinionated as medium users lining up to give up that control for blind faith in a platform, but hey, I guess tumblr got enough people to buy into the idea of their convention to fund their ball pit, so who knows, maybe it'll work out.

I'd pay to not have to spend any time deciding if an article is an actual good article or if it is just clickbait.

I read way less than I could because I don't want to spend precious minutes every day sifting through random articles. There's way less opportunity cost compared to Hacker News or even Reddit where I can get quality reading for not a lot of effort.

Want to develop a HN for writers with me?

If it were only paying members whose votes were counted that might work?

So, like, a "poll tax?"

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