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I guess I just don't read enough clickbait swill. I had never even heard of "HackerNoon" until 30 seconds ago, and the fact that people refer to it as "HN" (ju

I guess I just don't read enough clickbait swill. I had never even heard of "HackerNoon" until 30 seconds ago, and the fact that people refer to it as "HN" (just like Hacker News) is a bit confusing and annoying. At any rate, there doesn't appear to be anything too scandalous here. Some "brand entity" was curating content submissions, hosted on Medium. The curator decides to start hosting their own CMS site, and asks submitters for permission to re-publish submissions at the new place. Submitters obviously don't have to grant this opt-in if they don't want to. The end. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The only noteworthy item here is the sillyness of "brand entities" trying to use someone else's "platform" to bootstrap themselves. If you start off as a Facebook page, or YouTube channel, or whatever... it could be bumpy when you reach the scale of wanting to self-host your own site instead. That's the trade-off for having used that original host for its "foot traffic" benefits at the outset. However, while Facebook/Reddit/etc makes sense for bootstrapping meme content, and YouTube makes sense for bootstrapping video content... for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone NEEDS Medium to get a print blog off the ground. It's PRINT, for goodness sake! The easiest and cheapest thing in the world to self-host. Does being on Medium really give you that much in the way of foot traffic or networking effect? I always find Medium posts by way of links from Hackers News or Reddit. I don't think I've ever gone to Medium simply to browse around and stumble across things.

egypturnash 8y ago
yeah, there was nothing about a rights grab in that letter from Hacker Noon at all, wtf. I've seen links to HNoon semi-regularly here on HNews for the past couple years, fwiw.
- Macha 8y ago
  Honestly I thought Hacker Noon was a first party Medium product, especially when it constituted approximately all paywalled medium articles I saw.
  - smooke 8y ago
    Please let us know which paywalled articles you have seen? We want all our content to be free for all. Medium did a design switch recently where authors have to uncheck a box as so a story is not paywalled. Hacker Noon 2.0 won't put a paywall in front of any writer's story.
- btown 8y ago
  The devil's in the details, here. Here's Medium's relevant terms of service: You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium. By posting content to Medium, you give us a nonexclusive license to publish it on Medium Services, including anything reasonably related to publishing it (like storing, displaying, reformatting, and distributing it). In consideration for Medium granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Medium may enable advertising on the Services, including in connection with the display of your content or other information. We may also use your content to promote Medium, including its products and content. We will never sell your content to third parties without your explicit permission. https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e0f https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e... Contrast that with https://terms.hackernoon.com/ https://terms.hackernoon.com/ : We may use Your Content in a number of different ways, including by publicly displaying it, reformatting it, incorporating it into advertisements and other works, creating derivative works from it, promoting it, distributing it, and. As such, you confirm and warrant that you own or control all rights to Your Content and hereby irrevocably grant us world-wide, perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, assignable, sub-licensable, transferable rights to use Your Content for any purpose. Please note that you also irrevocably grant the Users of the Site the right to access Your Content in connection with their use of the Site. Finally, you irrevocably waive, and cause to be waived, against Company and its Users any claims and assertions of moral right or attribution with respect to Your Content. Typos aside, HNoon is asserting far more rights than just "we're getting the same terms that Medium got when you first posted there." Particularly, I believe (IANAL), the waiver of attribution claims against other users of HNoon means you are effectively releasing your work into the public domain, to be used without attribution by anyone who finds it through HNoon. To the extent that HNoon was trying to "sneak this through" with their friendly message to authors, it's a scumbag move. It's good that they're updating their language, and hopefully they change enough.
  - smooke 8y ago
    Hey Btown, David from Hacker Noon here. Thank you for feedback on our terms of service. We are trying to make a simple non-exclusive license, and don't have as large of a legal budget as maybe we should. There are mistakes in these terms. We will be updating our terms to make it more clear that contributors can remove their content at any time and contributors will always be accredited (and fix the typos). We are not trying to sneak anything through, just want a medium-free nonexclusive license to keep content where it is on hackernoon.com
markbnj 8y ago
> Does being on Medium really give you that much in the way of foot traffic or networking effect? Don't disagree with your points but as someone who publishes on Medium I think the answer to the above question is yes.
EamonnMR 8y ago
> That's the trade-off for having used that original host for its "foot traffic" benefits at the outset. This is a pretty good case for steering clear of Facebook and Discord if you're trying to create a community (rather than just post memes or whatever.)

egypturnash 8y ago

yeah, there was nothing about a rights grab in that letter from Hacker Noon at all, wtf. I've seen links to HNoon semi-regularly here on HNews for the past couple years, fwiw.

Macha 8y ago
Honestly I thought Hacker Noon was a first party Medium product, especially when it constituted approximately all paywalled medium articles I saw.
- smooke 8y ago
  Please let us know which paywalled articles you have seen? We want all our content to be free for all. Medium did a design switch recently where authors have to uncheck a box as so a story is not paywalled. Hacker Noon 2.0 won't put a paywall in front of any writer's story.
btown 8y ago
The devil's in the details, here. Here's Medium's relevant terms of service: You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium. By posting content to Medium, you give us a nonexclusive license to publish it on Medium Services, including anything reasonably related to publishing it (like storing, displaying, reformatting, and distributing it). In consideration for Medium granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Medium may enable advertising on the Services, including in connection with the display of your content or other information. We may also use your content to promote Medium, including its products and content. We will never sell your content to third parties without your explicit permission. https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e0f https://medium.com/policy/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e... Contrast that with https://terms.hackernoon.com/ https://terms.hackernoon.com/ : We may use Your Content in a number of different ways, including by publicly displaying it, reformatting it, incorporating it into advertisements and other works, creating derivative works from it, promoting it, distributing it, and. As such, you confirm and warrant that you own or control all rights to Your Content and hereby irrevocably grant us world-wide, perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, assignable, sub-licensable, transferable rights to use Your Content for any purpose. Please note that you also irrevocably grant the Users of the Site the right to access Your Content in connection with their use of the Site. Finally, you irrevocably waive, and cause to be waived, against Company and its Users any claims and assertions of moral right or attribution with respect to Your Content. Typos aside, HNoon is asserting far more rights than just "we're getting the same terms that Medium got when you first posted there." Particularly, I believe (IANAL), the waiver of attribution claims against other users of HNoon means you are effectively releasing your work into the public domain, to be used without attribution by anyone who finds it through HNoon. To the extent that HNoon was trying to "sneak this through" with their friendly message to authors, it's a scumbag move. It's good that they're updating their language, and hopefully they change enough.
- smooke 8y ago
  Hey Btown, David from Hacker Noon here. Thank you for feedback on our terms of service. We are trying to make a simple non-exclusive license, and don't have as large of a legal budget as maybe we should. There are mistakes in these terms. We will be updating our terms to make it more clear that contributors can remove their content at any time and contributors will always be accredited (and fix the typos). We are not trying to sneak anything through, just want a medium-free nonexclusive license to keep content where it is on hackernoon.com

markbnj 8y ago

> Does being on Medium really give you that much in the way of foot traffic or networking effect? Don't disagree with your points but as someone who publishes on Medium I think the answer to the above question is yes.

EamonnMR 8y ago

> That's the trade-off for having used that original host for its "foot traffic" benefits at the outset. This is a pretty good case for steering clear of Facebook and Discord if you're trying to create a community (rather than just post memes or whatever.)