Complaining to the Medium Gods

Feeds, MPP, Shadow Bans, Stale Dates, Pub Owners

Photo by <a href=”https://unsplash.com/@michaelkroul?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Michael Kroul</a> on <a href=”https://unsplash.com/photos/green-grass-field-under-blue-sky-and-white-clouds-during-daytime-Vw6Pw0EUN2w?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash">Unsplash</a>

The Feed

After five years on Medium, I’m still frustrated with my Medium feed. You see, there are writers I really want to read. That is why I have followed them. But their articles do not show up on my feed. If I want to read these writers, I have to hunt them down. When I find their work, I see they have written 20 or more articles since I last read them — and none of these articles showed up on my feed.

Before I made the above assertion, I “got some facts.” I inspected my feed closely. It seems that about 70% of my articles come from writers I have chosen to follow. The other 30% probably come from topics I seem to be reading about, but with unknown writers. We could argue that this is not a bad way to select articles for my feed.

I then adjusted my Medium feed. I switched from the tab “For You” to “Following.” The “lost” writers I like to follow still did not show up.

For some reason, the Medium algorithms have chosen certain of my follows over my other follows. This means my feed misses these less favored writers; with “less favored” being defined by the algorithms, not by me.

The MPP (Medium Partner Program)