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When it first launched it was quick, simple, beautiful, and easy to use compared to all the alternatives at the time.

Ever since it has become more and more muddled as they regressively focused less on users and more on revenue with quick cash grabs and tools to artificially increase popularity (you can "clap" 50 times for any article).

They are only popular these days because they were popular, and they've been riding the coattails since.

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You can find this pattern in so many things. Companies, Projects, or Artists spend their early days building up reputation. Usually by making something great. After some inflection point they switch to spending down that reputation (usually trading it for money). At which point someone new comes along. They make something great and start building up reputation.

YouTube? Remember when there were no ads? Now they are flogging the platform to death like a tired racehorse, for every cent they can get.

Yeah, this is exactly why I used it. It was far better than WordPress, smooth, no thought needed, and easy to teach readers. At some point, it became really hard and I'd get more readers from an unknown blog than from Medium.

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