Medium bans user for Chrome extension that opened articles in incognito mode | Hacker News Reader

Medium bans user for Chrome extension that opened articles in incognito mode

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181 pointsandrew_94 comments

If you are a builder/creator (even hobbies, with 2 users) and generate contents, please get your own domain. Either you use a service/tool or otherwise but own the content. If you use a service and is important enough, take backups.

Own your content, use eveything else as tools.

These days, the question I usually ask is, "Can I walk out of this and what do I have to do if I need to?"

This.

I'm not sure why the hell anyone would do anything else to be honest. It has been an insane proposition putting content on something you don't control.

I agree in principle, but for people who just want to focus on their project, it’s a heavy tax to learn how domains and content and everything work.

Medium’s promise is “you focus on writing, we’ll deal with distributing.” They don’t live up to that promise in lots of ways, but it’s hard to fault someone for not wanting to deal with the tech.

Well there's an entry cost or an exit cost or a risk. If the tradeoff makes sense then spot on but if Medium pulls your stuff you have an untenable risk tradeoff.

This is why I don't write articles. The investment vs return is low based on the exit costs, risks and benefits.

Is learning how to navigate the DMV system in any US state less "heavy"? I think Medium and others contribute to the problem by perpetuating the myth that ordinary folks can't do it/ it's just too hard. How we break through that is something to think about.

Yes, if you just show up to the DMV they will tell you what you need to do. You only need to self-actualize and figure things out ahead of time to get things done faster than multiple iterations of going there and waiting in line. Remember, the DMV has to deal with the below average members of the public.

For the topic's problem, I'd love to see some automated setup app that would take a "VPS host account", and do all of the installation/configuration to support service(s) running Free software to accomplish a high level task (eg a blog). Like a graphical NixOps with precanned configurations.

You'd need to initially cut down the number of options (say VPS account must be at one of 2 hosts, domain must be at one of 2 registrars), but I think the main problem would be trying to straddle so many abstraction levels.

So I’m a writer with a deep passion for tropical fruits, and I want to start a blog. How do I find your setup app, or even know that I need it?

Yes, I agree that discovery and creating a self-perpetuating critical mass is the hardest aspect of this. Heck, I'm sure some incarnation of this app already exists, but technical people don't need it (so it's not popular here), and non-technical people don't know that they need it. Meanwhile Medium seemingly advertises their own offering on each of their customers blogs.

How to overcome this? Maybe it would be enough to be in some mobile app stores with a distinctive memorable name (despite the horrible UX on mobile), and have a slowly accreting fanbase. Then every time these issues flare up someone would say 'Install LibreZooks to run your blog" in addition to all of those "just use DO and Docker" comments. People do seem to be moving to Mastodon slowly with the current happenings, but decentralized-first stuff can never match the advertising saturation of well funded surveillance companies.

There's also the difficulty that many people these days aren't publishing just to publish, but they're publishing as a side hustle or hoping to get rich. So middlemen like Medium that promise to extract as much as possible and then share a cut have another leg up over "default options" like running Google ads or whatever.

DMV is maybe not the best analogy since it’s more or less mandatory and people can’t choose to invest more time/money to do it better.

How about car repair? As a car enthusiast, I think anyone who fails to invest time and energy to really understand how cars work, from cv joints to TPMS systems, is putting themselves at the mercy of repair shops that can be capricious.

And financial planning, and yard care, and zoning policy, and. . .

Point being, life is too complex for everyone to be an expert in everything they depend on. And we all depend on things where we’re not even expert enough to know the implicit assumptions and dependencies we’re taking on.

I don’t think we can break through that. I’d love to be wrong, but I just don’t see a way for people to have deep understanding of every tool they use while still doing the stuff they want to do.

It is hard to self-host properly. Getting started can be easy with a good tutorial but securing your software and server can be difficult, and even the pros often fail. We're still all suffering the effects of unmaintained, insecure Wordpress installs over the years.

Seems an odd choice for a developer, for sure. I'm with all those who also have pointed out that self-hosting is the better route. Heck, as mentioned here, a compromise for this particular user would be to host the code on github and then use github pages for a nice companion site.

I typically go the github pages route. I used to buy domains for every project I spun up, but the collective bill started to add up for a bunch of very low traffic sites for projects that didn’t pan out. Now I just use github.io.

The other concern is legacy. I’m getting up there in age. I would like some of my work to continue to be useful after I retire without me paying for domain renewals or worrying about hosting. Without my intervention a github.io site will probably outlast a onionisafruit.com site.

> but the collective bill started to add up for a bunch of very low traffic sites for projects that didn’t pan out.

Then maybe group them on a domain with subdomains or just subpages?

> This.

You're not on Reddit, pal.

“This” is fine as long as it isn’t the only content of the comment. It is simply a signal that the following text isn’t meant to contradict what they are replying to. It’s a simple shorthand for “I wholeheartedly agree, and furthermore …”

I find it irritating, but I can see your point.

As the poster who posted it, it irritates me but it saves a lot of typing and is a well understood idiom.

IDK, clicking reply and typing into a box sure seems easier than spinning up a domain for this comment.

I like Nearlyfreespeech.net for stuff like this. For $1.50 per month, they let you easily host static HTML files. You don't have to learn about servers or routing or anything.

https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/pricing

Why not just use GitHub pages or it's equivalent gitlab alternative when you're already going static files?

Super easy to maintain as publishing is always just a commit away and if you're feeling fancy you can pivot to your static site generator of choice later

All fun and games until Microsoft closes your repo on a false dmca claim.

+1 to this. Out of the frying pan (Medium) into the fire (Microsoft).

The same applies to literally all other offerings. If the other party ceases to do business with you, you're just SOL. Not even a custom domain will protect you from that, as your register can effectively terminate it without releasing the domain.

It's always a question if risks, and they're miniscule for both GitHub and gitlab

Does anybody else find their pricing quite, uhm, labyrinthine?

I would like to clarify that I'm not against Medium or any other tool/platform. In fact, I'm a pro subscriber so I can read some of the nice people writing there and I hope I'm helping them. And, some of my writings were pretty circulated and my account has over 4,500 followers. I have disabled few other accounts (company) that were not so bad.

Domains are super cheap and easy to get. Everyone should have one (especially anyone who calls themself a hacker). Ideally you would also self-host your servers, but having your own domain is the most important thing, because you can always change your hosting provider, whereas it is impossible to go back in time and rewrite all of the links to your old (now deleted) medium.com blog. "Owning" a domain just means you get to route DNS lookups for that domain to any IP address of your choosing, which can be your own IP, Amazon's IP, GitHub's IP, or any other IP.

GitHub Pages (or GitLab Pages, if you prefer) will host your website for free. You don't even have to know HTML to make your site look fancy, just basic Markdown; GitHub will run your Markdown files through the Jekyll static site generator by default (this can be disabled by adding a blank ".nojekyll" file to the root of your repository).

Assuming you have a GitHub account and that you only need to serve static (HTML/JS/CSS) files, launching a site with your very own domain name is as easy as:

1. Buy a domain from the registrar of your choice

2. Create a repository called "<yourusername>.github.io" and a "index.md" or "index.html" at the root

3. Go to https://github.com/<yourusername>/<yourusername>.github.io/s..., select the "master" branch as the publishing source, and enter your domain (excluding the "www.") under "custom domain"

6. Go to your domain registrar's website, and find your DNS settings. Create four "A" records pointing to GitHub's IP addresses: "185.199.108.153", "185.199.109.153", "185.199.110.153", and "185.199.111.153". Create a "CNAME" record pointing "www.<yourdomain>" to "<yourusername>.github.io"

Then if GitHub decides to block/censor/ban you, all you have to do is switch to a different provider (or potentially self-host). If your registrar blocks you, you can transfer your domain to another one.

> but having your own domain is the most important thing, because you can always change your hosting provider

What if your hosting provider or authorities seize your domain?

Authorities and locked platforms aren’t the same problem.

But definitely don’t buy a domain through a content platform. Buy it from a registrar and manually link it to whatever hosting/content platform you’re using. Preferably hosting with offsite backups that can actually be used to reconstitute a site elsewhere.

What type of sites can be hosted on github pages? Can github pages be used free by anyone for any site? Can I have a blog under my own domain (with ads and make money) where I write about random stuff not relatade to any github project?

Feels like there must be alot of limitations, like not for profit, limited bandwidth/pageviews per month, and must be github project oriented etc or?

According to GitHub:

> You can use GitHub Pages to showcase some open source projects, host a blog, or even share your résumé

> GitHub Pages is not intended for or allowed to be used as a free web-hosting service to run your online business, e-commerce site, or any other website that is primarily directed at either facilitating commercial transactions or providing commercial software as a service (SaaS)

> In addition, your use of GitHub Pages is subject to the GitHub Terms of Service, including the restrictions on get-rich-quick schemes, sexually obscene content, and violent or threatening content or activity

> GitHub Pages sites have a soft bandwidth limit of 100 GB per month

https://docs.github.com/en/pages/getting-started-with-github...

There are certainly better hosting options out there that provide more freedom, but GitHub Pages is nice for someone who just wants to get a personal site up and running without much fuss.

I don't understand why people use Medium or similar gated blogging platforms. It is so easy to use Wordpress. You can get a domain name with managed wordpress install ready to roll for less than $50 a year. And you become the owner of your own publications.

Or if you want to do it yourself, just install a Ghost Docker container in some spare space of that $5 Digital Ocean instance, and you are ready to go.

With a $5 DO instance I've got a self hosted recipe book (RecipeSage), Bookmark Service (LinkAce), blogging platform (Ghost) and also use it as a Socks Proxy. I've got nightly backups for $1.5 and everything was as easy as docker-compose up.

I understand non-technical people suffering the issues of internet deplatforming, but for a self-named "The Practical Dev" ?

Substack is nice because it handles email distribution, has free podcast hosting and RSS feeds for separate "sections" of your newsletter/podcast, and handles payment stuff. I could do the same things for Wordpress, but each of those functions is likely a (premium) plugin, with its own layer of tinkering, installation, config, updates, etc.

When Medium was better, it was easy to get a good domain for the same handle as your Twitter, with a good UI/readable final product. It's changed a lot since and kinda sucks now, but it's a step up from people using Pastebin as their blog.

Medium lived long enough to become the villain. It was honestly quite the heel turn, but they’re all in.

As far as I am concerned everyone should just move to substack at this point.

Medium has been the villain for quite some time now.

But not so fast about Substack... they recently started showing modals.

In the end, running a website costs money. What are you going to do.

For what it’s worth I find their modals relatively unobtrusive and easily dismissed. It’s not great but like you said, they need to make a living.

Switch platforms before investors can make their money back. Everyone wins!

Are the modals opt in or configurable by the author?

Substack also gets lots of revenue from subscriptions. If that's not enough to keep the platform up then perhaps they need to try to take a bigger cut (or not offer service to authors who have too few subscribers).

There's no reason for authors (who are Substack's customers) to want to make the platform more annoying for readers (some of whom are the author's customers). If the author is not making enough money (perhaps because Substack has started taking a bigger cut to cover costs) they need only to improve their writing and/or put more of it behind the paywall in order to get more subscribers.

Those modals are infuriating. Every time you go to SS for a different article, it will nag you.

Does anyone have a uBlock rule to drop them all?

I'm using this in Stylish, a CSS manager browser extension:

  /* Substack modals, nags, etc. */

  [class*="frontend-components-SubscribePrompt"] {
      display: none;
  }

Saved as "Substack" and applied to any page/domain which uses Substack.

Otherwise, for UBO, these two should work:

  ###.frontend-components-SubscribePrompt-module__subscribeDialog--2_6UY.frontend-pencraft-FlexBox-module__flex-align-center--21WCV.frontend-pencraft-FlexBox-module__flex-direction-column--2sph3.frontend-pencraft-FlexBox-module__flex--fK-9V
  ###.frontend-components-SubscribePrompt-module__background--2DQPj

I suspect Substack vary their element names (e.g., the "2_6UY" and "2DQPj" strings in the above list), so that substring matches as I've used in my CSS example should be more robust.

UBO uses the Easylist blocking syntax which ... I can't seem to find documented, so I'm guessing as to the specific patterns. Corrections/clues welcomed.

Why move from one corporate entity to another? Substack will end up going down the same road in time. Get your own domain, fire up a CMS and start publishing on something you control and own.

We really need to move towards self-hosted content, self-hosted social media, etc, instead of surrendering ourselves to arbitrarily-run walled gardens.

This is hard for non-technical people and I want to hear what they have to say. The only thing I like about twitter/facebook/medium/etc. is that I get to see what the whole world would do if they knew how to `vim index.html`.

In this case, it's even harder because it's about maintaining a website synchronized with a mailing list.

Make something open source and ad-free and they'd all run to it, I'm sure.

> This is hard for non-technical people and I want to hear what they have to say.

I agree, so maybe we should work towards making it easier for them.

I was thinking about spending my Christmas break fixing Friendica bugs, but now I'm suddenly thinking about building my own ActivityPub blogging platform (though no doubt one already exists). But of course that's not going to be enough; it needs to be trivial to deploy and host, at little cost. I believe many cloud hosting providers have a free tier. Would be nice if something like this could be easily deployed there. Create a tool that sets the whole thing up, handles the DNS name, the payments, and deploys the site.

In fact, it would be nice if ISPs offered something like that for free with your internet connection, to finally do justice to that 'S' in their name.

That used to be a thing they offered. A dial-up or DSL connection and like 25MB of web-hosting.

That's true. In fact, I recently got an email from mine asking if I still wanted to keep my webhosting, because they wanted to get rid of it. I used to have a lot of stuff there, but it got deleted when they mixed something up about my account.

Some of them still do. In France, Orange hosts a free 6Gb static website if you're a client; Free offers 10Gb. I dunno about the other isp

Although that wasn’t much better for longevity than Medium or the like.

So much early web lost from URLs like http://www.myisp.net/~username/

Just make a service that easily ports (or reverse proxies) content from Medium and Substack into a static site hosted on Netlify for free with a custom domain.

Users can continue authoring on those platforms but can begin promoting their own-domain version and gradually move their users off.

Please avoid building another platform. Odds are there is something that is close that needs a lot of help.

I know sometimes there is a project that looks good but the maintainers are impossible to get along with. Thus there is sometimes a need to start over. Most of the time though what platforms need is more people to help out: fix bugs, write documentation, translate the UI, run UX tests. That is all the thankless unseen when it works work that makes good commercial projects more polished than most open source projects.

Sounds like a vote to stick with my promise to help Friendica. I've got to admit my main issue with it is that it's in PHP. A lot of these platforms seem to be, and I'd rather work on something in, for example, Svelte+Node.js or something.

I don't know much about that space, but there is probably something written in language better than php. Good luck finding it

> Why move from one corporate entity to another? Substack will end up going down the same road in time. Get your own domain, fire up a CMS and start publishing on something you control and own.

It's quite weird to see people fawning over the latest startup blogging platforms in 2022.

While people have been migrating to/from medium and substack, wordpress.com has been here the whole time, and it's still quite OK. The killer feature it has, of course, is that because it is open source you can export your data and run it yourself should things go sour (or if you just outgrow it).

Whatever features substack/medium/whatever closed source platform may have that you think you really need, the anti-feature of lockin is not worth it.

The problem all these sites have is that the domain starts as a signal of high quality — either because they are initially exclusive like Medium, or pay high-quality writers to move over. Over time, they regress to the mean and the domain becomes a signal of mediocrity.

I understand the need for things like substack to grow an audience, but I maintain that someone who really wants to run a blog for many years should own their audience.

Google results will also rank these “high quality” sites above a self hosted domain. To the point where even a direct string search on an indexed page will never return on Google. Kagi and Brave search do a better job here if you’re looking for content on someone’s self hosted blog.

How long before seeing a comment like the next two paragraphs?

Substack lived long enough to become the villain. It was honestly quite the heel turn, but they’re all in.

As far as I am concerned everyone should just move to ${random_new_platform} at this point.

Substack did already. They have very annoying subscribe modals, and when they pop up, I just close the site.

We shouldn’t move to substack it’ll for sure just repeat history. Just make your own minimal site, especially if you have things worth reading and draws attention

Centralizing stuff in another VC-backed startup is… kind risky[1]?

[1] https://notes.ghed.in/posts/2022/substack-centralization/

For those who, like me, had trouble parsing HN title, here's the first sentence of the tweet:

> Medium decided to ban me because I built a Chrome Extension to automatically open Medium articles in incognito mode.

And, here's Medium Rules link:

https://policy.medium.com/medium-rules-30e5502c4eb4

He clearly hasn't violated any of their written rules.

They should have some rules for themselves: "1. Don't become clowns."

Weird. I still don’t see where that’s prohibited (so it can’t be facilitating a violation). The closest is when it talks about forging IP headers or using anonymous emails. Or accessing the site only via published interfaces.

It seems like we are living in an era of the Wild West filled with authoritarianism and self rule and sheriff style enforcement. Except it doesn’t just date to the Wild West. It goes back to feudalism. The same cunningness and framework of authority is being put forward.

In those days, there was no super world power America. There was no UN. There was no successful secret fraternity that espoused ideals like freedom of expression. There were just kings deeply seated in self interests.

This online world feels much like it is the same.

Medium CEO @tonystubblebine is here occasionally. In case he comes by the thread, I’d like to ask him if he’s heard of the Streisand effect?

Ah damn, I left a comment about Streisand effect then seen yours!

Not your platform, not your content ?

Man I truly do not like Medium, if i land on an article i just close it immediately!

Why move to another provider? Have a look at https://indieweb.org/POSSE

Hosting your website on GH seems much easier. Also free. Also you have a copy of your website that you can self-host whenever GH decides to ban you and point your domain name to new IP.

You can use Github to host your website on your domain and still use POSSE to syndicate your posts on other platforms.

How does Medium link what some person does as a project to some person who puts content on Medium? What's their authentication mechanism for doing this linking? Maybe he just said "Yeah, that's me."?

He probably wrote an medium article on it. lol

No. I was too lazy to write an article for that The only place I mentioned it was on my Twitter (https://twitter.com/henrylim96/status/1529055034385780737) and on my GitHub.

So how did they make the connection?

I was able to find his Medium page by looking up "henrylim96 medium". What's troubling to me is that this isn't some trigger-happy autoban - someone had to actively seek him out. It could have been someone who "snitched" on him, or (I suspect) a Medium employee.

So it's assumed that someone who has a pseudonym on Twitter is the same entity that uses that pseudonym on Medium?

I know of a few ways we can test this theory. We're going to need a short list of popular publishers on Medium.

Hosting your own stuff is always the answer. And keep backups!

Even something like getting some cheap hosting and spinning up a WordPress installation will work well (and is easily backed up, exported off-site etc).

It's not about hosting, it's about discovery. If no one knows your content exists, no one will read it. At least on Medium you have an opportunity to be seen. Sure, if you already have a huge online presence, then you don't need that. But starting from zero you need some way for people to find you.

You can for example use Ghost to host your content, then syndicate it to Medium. But just sticking a website on the internet is pointless if no one will see it.

That last para is an excellent solution!

“Own your stuff” • Because the only constant is change, you shouldn’t depend on others to keep your content online.

https://www.brycewray.com/posts/2022/11/own-your-stuff/

I have changed my tax form 4 months ago on the platform because I moved to a different country, they still have to approve a single thing and of course they did block the monthly payroll.

I've sent them a final email asking for info on the issue, after that I'm removing all my content from the platform.

When submitting an extension to the Chrome Web Store you’re asked for a written justification for why it needs to run against the sites/URLs specified in the manifest. I’m curious how closely anyone at Google examines these; if this is such a clear ToS violation then maybe it shouldn’t have been approved?

(Edit: I’m not asserting that it is in fact a violation, but that its having been approved suggests it didn’t seem like one to the Web Store folks, at least, and maybe Medium should have addressed this by trying to get it removed rather than banning the user.)

> if this is such a clear ToS violation then maybe it shouldn’t have been approved?

Maybe user software shouldn't be enforcing arbitrary ToS, but should instead obey the user? Do we really want corporations colluding with each-other to enforce their whims over us through their products that we are surrounded by, and are becoming necessary for modern life? What next, disk firmware scanning for copyright violations?

I'm sorry if this comes off as harsh, but I am sick of people using the ToS (that a company can make up at will) as any kind of justification, pro- or against. They can and do write anything they want there.

A lot of these blogging platforms have accessibility issues, either with reading or writing articles, and don't even support Markdown! Thank God for write.as.

Extension downloaded immediately. Thanks @HenryLim96

Since I have not seen anyone mention it here, https://write.as/ might also be an option for someone looking to replace Medium.

Hosted by them or self-hosted.

Not affiliated in any way. Just like the idea.

wasn’t their ceo on HN recently bragging about how they’re going to turn the ship around? Looks like an already sunken ship at this point.

someone should assemble and post a list of all tools that makes medium better?

I pay for Medium since I want to support the availability of blogs.

But I don't post using medium that often.

I use GitHub README.md for my journal. I have been journalling in the open since 2013 and I am up to 700 entries. (See my profile)

Streisand effect, anybody?

Just use scribe.rip

Totally understandable. They violated Mediums terms if use. If you don’t like their business model (and you probably shouldn’t), put your content somewhere else.

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