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Why Everyone Should Stop Freaking Out Over The Changes To Medium.
Medium doesn’t owe us anything. Stop expecting it.
Recently, Medium has made changes to the way business is done around here. The changes are two-fold. First, payments are now judged by an article’s read time instead of the the amount of claps and views that it receives. Basically, the longer someone reads an article, the more the author gets paid for that article. Second, you can’t delete then recreate old published articles to give it a second chance at success.
The citizens of Medium, including some of it’s top writers, were not happy. In the past month, there has been a huge surge of articles decrying these new regulations on our creative control.
The payment change is, without a doubt, the most egregious disruption. Everybody gets it. No artist enjoys starving and writers are no exception. Even if you try not to, you can’t help but dream of the day when you become a major writer with book deals and royalties.
These changes were designed to focus on authenticity instead of cranking out a stream of revenue-generating, attention grabbing, fast content.
However, here’s the hard, uncomfortable truth. Evan Williams, the founder of Medium, and his team do not owe us, the writers, absolutely anything.
