@Ox this surprises me less than it should
@blizzz at one point I tried using their app, hoping to get a bit better UX. Start complaining after reading 3 articles in one month without paying? That's a fast way to *stop* me from reading anything from medium at all.
@MasseR there's a Firefox plugin that removes all that crap. That's not the point however, it shouldn't be broken in first place. If the authors want to have their blogs available for an audience, they should look for something that doesn't kill UX by default.
@blizzz yeah and I'm using private mode anyway, so as far as they're concerned, it's always my first article of the month. I just wish the content wasn't there
@finlaydag33k @blizzz they also cut you off for using their app. Paywall after 3 articles
@blizzz equally there are these tools that come to mind:
@freddyym Sure, there are several tools and workarounds. But has it to be necessary? From the point of view of a blogger, who wants to reach some audience? As a potential reader, when you.encounter such a page, do look for a workaround or rather close the tab?
@blizzz oh, I dislike Medium as much as the next guy. If it was banned altogether I would be happy. These tools were simply if you need a work around.
@blizzz oh boy, this is one of their paywall articles, isn't it
@b0undarybreaker they don't produce any content, but put up a fence if you attempt to read more than 3 articles a month
@blizzz yep 🙃
@blizzz @b0undarybreaker Which is easily bustable if you refuse to accept cookies from Medium. It can’t limit how many articles you can read if it can’t keep track of how many articles you’re reading.
@Stephen_Stone True, but that is not the point. As a writer, do you want to treat your audience like this?
@blizzz I agree with you on that. (Fuck Medium, by the way.)
@blizzz
I'm migrating to qua.name
@blizzz Medium is just another BS, i don't get it why people give the ownership of their content to somebody else ?
why a writer might choose medium
@lxsameer @blizzz medium had fantastic writing tools+ux, good collaboration environment with your editor/proofreader, and decent design for readability. And they host+CDN content at no cost to the writer and take care of the tech side. And all this was true in like 2012 long before the competition and open source alternatives existed in a usable form.
I dislike medium as a business and as a reader now that their surveillance capitalism monetization strategy makes the reading experience so awful, and I wouldn't advise anyone to use it, but I have a lot of sympathy for why a writer would reasonably end up there ...
why a writer might choose medium
@eqe @blizzz
Based on you're argument, Since it has good tooling and a managed service, it's ok for people to give them the ownership of their content. It's like programmers who publish their software on gitlab or github give the ownership of their program to gitlab or github. Tooling is important but these days there are many other alternatives that won't own your content.
why a writer might choose medium
Thanks!
This reminded me of when and why #signalvnoise left #medium:
@blizzz do you use unpaywalling workarounds? Just asking if is an option you would consider using at least for now (Yep, they should leave medium as not everyone knows about the unpaywalling method and also there's no guarantee that the unpaywalling method will exist for long)
@blizzz I've been discussing this with many people whom I recommended Medium in the beginning. It has become an unbearable paywall, with everything pointing you to buy membership and install their app.
@betoissues It looked innocent from the start. But, was there an option to export your posts? So you can leave the platform in case something happens.
@blizzz I don't think so, only to import them. Your posts aren't even discoverable if you're not part of the paywall.
@blizzz That, on top of the content issues I've had with Medium for quite a while. I've seen a fair amount of good pieces on there, but I've had to fight through a lot of dross to get at it.
Sign up with Google?
Sign up with Facebook?
Get their freakin' app, just to read their stuff?
In their dreams.
Medium's ever been that big a source for me, so... m'eh.
@blizzz "get the app" ist the new "you need flash"
@lanodan @normandy @robelix @blizzz @wolf480pl Oh my god that's what it was doing?
I was forced to use Wix for school and was baffled by how slow it was.
@lanodan @robelix @blizzz @wolf480pl oh, sweet summer child...
@blizzz I agree with the author on suggesting to leave Medium. It is also my advice.
For the ones that still depend on following some writer on Medium, a free way to read Medium posts is to install an rss/atom feed reader and add the desired author post feed to this feed reader. Did you know about this?
@penny legit. What keeps you there?
@blizzz Has anyone here tried Dev.to as an alternative?
@SeleniumReal @blizzz I had a look at the site and it doesn't look as bad as Medium but unfortunately it's far from perfect,too 😕 Login is only possible using third-parties and not with email address and password.I don't have a birdsite account and hope that I can delete M$ Github some day so that's not a option for me 👎 At least you can read posts without annoying popups there...
@blizzz we run DT on ghost self hosted. Would love to see writers and readers move over.. We don't have cookies
@blizzz I totally agree.For fediverse users Plume or Write.as should be the way to go.
@danisantos to be fair, not everyone has the knowledge or even time, to run their own instances. It's ok if the provider commits to fair behaviour, operates on free software and has capabilities to export all posts including meta data. The provider can also/preferably be a not for profit entity or a friend, of course.
@blizzz I see your point of view. I understand it. What I did not agree was the option to use 'should' instead of 'can' (use writer.as, etc.) For me, if is going to be a 'should', less than a blog is not the right choice
@blizzz I've found lynx works great to read Medium posts No cookies and no javascript.
@blizzz What makes/made Medium better than any other blogging site? Because that’s all it seems to me to be.