4 ms·

There should be a ban on medium articles being published on hacker news.

unixhero 7y ago
I'd like to know why. Has it got something to do with yet another corporate entity consolidating market position and power?
- sgt 7y ago
  Medium is encouraging people to put their articles behind a paywall, so many Medium stories are inaccessible unless you log in. Many feel this goes against the spirit of blogging.
  - gtirloni 7y ago
    Yes but the romantic era of blogging is over. Content creators have to get paid. I'd rather have paywalls than widespread ads. At least it's the normal arrangement that way: you create something valuable, I pay for it. Very clear cut. With ads that relationship is blurry.
    - simion314 7y ago
      >Yes but the romantic era of blogging is over. Content creators have to get paid. IMO most bloggers are not living by writing blogs, the blogs post are used usually for promotion or other reasons and not to make a few cents. Newspapers are a different thing.
      - gtirloni 7y ago
        Sure, but we're talking about bloggers than want to profit. Otherwise, they wouldn't have paywalls, right? In that case, if their content is just self-promotion and doesn't have a lot of value, fewer people will pay. EDIT: Really puzzled by the downvotes, care to elaborate?
        simion314 7y ago
        I did not downvote, I was under the wrong impression that all medium posts are under paywall but I checked now ( https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018834314-Stories-that-are-part-of-the-metered-paywall https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018834314-Stori... ) and it seems the blogger must opt-in into it, so maybe the downvoters also had same impression as me. Still weird that some person wants to promote some conference and fine volunteers and puts it under a paywall.
        verdverm 7y ago
        Medium still requires login after so many visits to the site, regardless if the content is behind the paywall
    - _jal 7y ago
      1) I'm going to guess that the count of independent bloggers whose primary income derives from their blog is, at best, in the three digit range. 2) I can't speak for others, but paywalls have convinced me to give money to zero entities. I do subscribe to a couple, but making me delete my cookies was not their sales tactic. 3) Completely aside from all that, none of this says anything about HN, and is worth discussion. If I post a link to one of the sites I subscribe to with a larger price tag, where's the line? At what point does it damage conversation? I wonder if, on average, there's less discussion of paywalled links, or if the participant pool is different. Just as one datapoint, I think Google News should not include WSJ links in the default feed. It is nothing but an ad, which is ironic considering the rest of news.google.com is ad-free.
    - verdverm 7y ago
      Run your own blog, no need to embed ads. Create content for others rather than to get paid.
  - api 7y ago
    I called it years ago: Medium is a magazine with unpaid writers and editors. It was a roach motel to bait everyone into putting their content there with a pretty UI and then paywall it.
- vijucat 7y ago
  They allow a couple of articles per month before you hit a paywall. It's frustrating because there happens to be a ton of interesting content (esp. machine learning-related) on Medium and the exact same content could be in a Wordpress or other blog (with a Medium-like theme if you'd like that), and it takes a total of 5 minutes to set up a blog.
  - Metacelsus 7y ago
    NoScript + blocking cookies lets you read as many articles as you want
pndy 7y ago
While we're at this, there are other domains from which stuff is notoriously being added through a single day and which should already have some restrictions; there's difference from adding interesting content and shameless spamming or as some would prefer "content promotion". I've joined HN in hope to see interesting IT content, not to be fed by big portals with general news from yet another side.

I'd like to know why. Has it got something to do with yet another corporate entity consolidating market position and power?

sgt 7y ago
Medium is encouraging people to put their articles behind a paywall, so many Medium stories are inaccessible unless you log in. Many feel this goes against the spirit of blogging.
- gtirloni 7y ago
  Yes but the romantic era of blogging is over. Content creators have to get paid. I'd rather have paywalls than widespread ads. At least it's the normal arrangement that way: you create something valuable, I pay for it. Very clear cut. With ads that relationship is blurry.
  - simion314 7y ago
    >Yes but the romantic era of blogging is over. Content creators have to get paid. IMO most bloggers are not living by writing blogs, the blogs post are used usually for promotion or other reasons and not to make a few cents. Newspapers are a different thing.
    - gtirloni 7y ago
      Sure, but we're talking about bloggers than want to profit. Otherwise, they wouldn't have paywalls, right? In that case, if their content is just self-promotion and doesn't have a lot of value, fewer people will pay. EDIT: Really puzzled by the downvotes, care to elaborate?
      - simion314 7y ago
        I did not downvote, I was under the wrong impression that all medium posts are under paywall but I checked now ( https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018834314-Stories-that-are-part-of-the-metered-paywall https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018834314-Stori... ) and it seems the blogger must opt-in into it, so maybe the downvoters also had same impression as me. Still weird that some person wants to promote some conference and fine volunteers and puts it under a paywall.
        verdverm 7y ago
        Medium still requires login after so many visits to the site, regardless if the content is behind the paywall
  - _jal 7y ago
    1) I'm going to guess that the count of independent bloggers whose primary income derives from their blog is, at best, in the three digit range. 2) I can't speak for others, but paywalls have convinced me to give money to zero entities. I do subscribe to a couple, but making me delete my cookies was not their sales tactic. 3) Completely aside from all that, none of this says anything about HN, and is worth discussion. If I post a link to one of the sites I subscribe to with a larger price tag, where's the line? At what point does it damage conversation? I wonder if, on average, there's less discussion of paywalled links, or if the participant pool is different. Just as one datapoint, I think Google News should not include WSJ links in the default feed. It is nothing but an ad, which is ironic considering the rest of news.google.com is ad-free.
  - verdverm 7y ago
    Run your own blog, no need to embed ads. Create content for others rather than to get paid.
- api 7y ago
  I called it years ago: Medium is a magazine with unpaid writers and editors. It was a roach motel to bait everyone into putting their content there with a pretty UI and then paywall it.
vijucat 7y ago
They allow a couple of articles per month before you hit a paywall. It's frustrating because there happens to be a ton of interesting content (esp. machine learning-related) on Medium and the exact same content could be in a Wordpress or other blog (with a Medium-like theme if you'd like that), and it takes a total of 5 minutes to set up a blog.
- Metacelsus 7y ago
  NoScript + blocking cookies lets you read as many articles as you want

pndy 7y ago

While we're at this, there are other domains from which stuff is notoriously being added through a single day and which should already have some restrictions; there's difference from adding interesting content and shameless spamming or as some would prefer "content promotion". I've joined HN in hope to see interesting IT content, not to be fed by big portals with general news from yet another side.