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Ask HN: Medium sucks. Why does anyone use it?

22 points by dmje ↗ HN
Every time I follow a link to Medium I can tell it's Medium even without looking at the URL. There's a long pause as the page fails to render. Then the fonts finally arrive, and then a blitz of popups and screen savaging overlays. Why on earth does anyone put up with it?

15 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 57.9 ms ] thread
Pryde
I would imagine it's some combination of network effect for the readers (it's where the content is), and ease-of-use for creators. I've never published on Medium, so I can't actually speak to ease, but that seems the most reasonable explanation to me.

I also do not care for Medium, but for a lot of things it's where I can find information, so I put up with it as much as I have to.

theandrewbailey
I run Firefox + uMatrix, and don't run scripts by default. Medium doesn't harass me without scripts.
drannex
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.

paulz_
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.
dave_sid
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.
muzani
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.
lmiller1990
Medium was really good a while ago. I posted there a lot. I got a lot of traffic, it loaded fast, there was no paywall etc.

I have since abandoned it like many others, but it's still a low friction way to get writing and traffic.

franzwong
When I see Medium URL listed in Google, I prefer not to click it first until I can't find the information in other search results.
simonblack
I refuse to use paywalled sites, or sites that require me to login before they give me anything.

If Medium (or those other sites) are the only place to get something, that 'something' mustn't be worth getting at all.

joshxyz
I think its okay for most people, but man if you're a web developer IT IS MADDENING AS FACK.

The clunky loading of content, the fackload of tracking scripts, the cookie-based article blocker if you've read over X articles - you notice ALL of it.

People still make money on it and I guess its better than maintaining a wordpress site or whatever cms, so understandable still. But fack.

api42_
Yes, It sucks big time.

I still don't understand why is it so hard to have some real time conversation in comment section in medium.

I guess many of the content is still good. I would occasionally use if I land on article from google search.

xenopticon
Since nobody mentioned, https://outline.com works well with Medium articles.

I use it every time I need to read one. Just go to `outline.com/<medium article url>`.

fattybob
yep, gave up on that ages back, am always kinda stunned to see articles quoted from it, so clearly it's still used a lot, but, ugh!
[dead] cybercraft1
Our software development company CyberCraft https://cybercraftinc.com use Medium for advertising new articles from our Blog. Due to stats, it's not as useful as it was before.

P.S. Simple users don't like article blocker, but you can still find on Medium a lot of valuable information.