Exactly, at the risk of repeating the same word that many other sibling comments begin with.
After Drupalgeddon, I signed up for Medium and started migrating my content from my site https://donhopkins.com to Medium, because I was tired of sinking time into maintaining my own blog.
I loved the simplicity of the interface and how nice it looked.
But it felt like Medium's goals were at cross purposes to what I wanted to use it for.
I just wanted to make my content easily accessible to the maximum number of people, and I was willing to pay a monthly fee for that. I have no interest in making money off of it.
But Medium seems to be designed for people who want to get rich quick, and the devil's contract that I entered into was that because of the possibility of making money off of Medium (even if I opted out), that gave them free license to make money off of me, so of course their pursuit of exploiting me of me overwhelmed my presumed desire to make money off of my own labor and content unless I systematically and enthusiastically played their clickbait pyramid scheme, and even then were I to monetize my own content at the expense of people being able to read it, all I'd get was chump change, so monetization simply wasn't worth it to me.
I'd rather pay more in exchange for freedom from the feeling of being treated like a prostitute by an exploitive pimp.
I got the distinct feeling that Medium's promotion algorithms not just ignored me but actually had disdain for me, because I wasn't playing their monetization game.
If I write an article about ray tracing lime jello, then why can't I submit it for syndication to three specialty groups about ray tracing, jello, and limes, without restricting everyone on the internet from discovering and reading it for free in my own channel? Why are all the popular syndication channels there for the express purposes of exploiting me to make money for themselves?
That's like having not one pimp, but an entire pyramid of pimps trying to bully my customers and restrict and exploit my work, that I'm happy and willing to do for free.
I'm not going to get into the user interface, which would require writing a hundred page Medium article in itself (that would be promoted to and read by exactly zero readers). I'll just say that at first it was the thing that attracted me, but then once I actually started using it, it was infuriating and frustrating and purposefully lacking obvious and crucial features (not to mention those that I came to depend on that were later removed or hidden).
There are some great things about the ease of writing and editing and formatting articles, but also so many conspicuous trepanations of the skull and lobotomization of the brain that it's obvious it's all part of some dark pattern to brutally control my mind and behavior.
The final straw was when I found myself unable to control the formatting of my images. I was SURE I was able to do that before, but the interface simply was ignoring my mouse clicks that I'd learned to use. At first I thought there was something wrong with my mouse. Then maybe my browser was broken. Or possibly it was my internet connection. And then finally I felt like I was losing my mind and mis-remembering that I used to be able to do this simple obvious thing, and wondering how it was that my previous articles were formatted in ways I couldn't figure out how to apply to my new articles. Then it occurred to me that perhaps I am being gaslighted?
Finally I googled for "why can't I control the formatting of images in my medium articles", and this came up:
https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/4420609316375-Imag...
>Image formatting feature deprecation
>As of January 2022, Medium no longer supports formatting options for images in the Medium editor.
>All images in stories are now displayed in a single image size. Other features, such as the alt text, captions, grids, and image links, remain unaffected.
>Medium has recently redesigned parts of its website in order to deliver a more browsable, consistent, and faster experience to all users. To that end, we have removed certain design elements on the published story page, along with the ability to format and resize imagery in the story editor.
>We know image sizing matters to many writers. So, why did we remove this feature? Simply put: We removed image sizing to accommodate a new right-hand column that provides readers with relevant context on the story they’re reading, along with related reads across Medium. Our data shows this new right-hand column benefits writers by presenting their stories to more readers across the network.
Then why the hell don't you program your web site to respond to the mouse clicks on images with a big red popup and loud buzzer that goes "BZZZZZZZTTTTTT!!!!! YOU CAN'T DO THAT ANY MORE!!!!" so I know it's MEDIUM and not ME that's at fault?
FUCK Medium's right-hand column. I don't give a shit about it. I don't want Medium to "provides readers with relevant context on the story they’re reading", I want readers to READ MY STORY. But obviously the only thing Medium cares about is castrating my formatting and gobbling up my precious square centimeters of screen space for the express purpose of diverting and distracting people away from reading my free content that I'm paying them to publish, and sucking them into the click-bait paid content that they actually make money off of.
The patronizing phrase "Our data shows..." is as bad as "I'm not racist, but..." because it tells me beyond doubt that Medium has become yet another data driven Zynga Cow Clicker skinner box.
http://www.cowclicker.com/
Medium's and Zynga's only goal is monetization by metrics, which suck out every drop of human creativity, design, and intent, and incarcerates my readers in the Clockwork Orange Movie Theatre Scene!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQApGLbgNg
>I believe in second chances. I want us to work together. I want you to become a valued member of our organization. Surrender, and you will find meaning. Surrender, and you will find release. Take a deep breath. Calm your mind. You know what's best. What's best is you comply. Compliance will be rewarded. Are you ready to comply, Agent 33?