[Nextgrid]

It used to be a very good experience, both for the blogger and the reader. Unfortunately, they took on lots of VC funding (as if building a blogging platform was that difficult) without a clear and ethical path to profit and now have no choice but to be nasty to try and make money.

[ghaff]

And, somewhat related, there was period when I think a lot of people assumed, however incorrectly, that content on Medium was somehow differentiated and could be taken more seriously than content on a random individual web site. Anything I ever put on Medium was always mirrored elsewhere, but I did use it for a time--mostly for professional content that my company wanted to link to from newsletters and so forth.

[Nextgrid]

There was a period during which Medium was a signal of quality, probably because it was a niche platform only known in the tech circle and I believe it was invite-only for a while as well.

Now that every marketer, "growth hacker", "entrepreneur" and their dog are on there it's the opposite. Medium is now a signal that some idiot is trying to build credibility in an unrelated field by rehashing basic facts/existing content and peppering it with stock images and "sign up for my newsletter" forms.