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Blocked reading the article because medium wants me to sign in. Is Medium now forcing people to create accounts to read posts or is it just a setting that this

Blocked reading the article because medium wants me to sign in. Is Medium now forcing people to create accounts to read posts or is it just a setting that this subdomain turned on?

ravenstine 7y ago
Why is it always Medium that's blamed for this but not mainstream news websites? I'm pretty sure I've been paywalled by sites like NYT yet people keep posting links to them.
- jordigh 7y ago
  Because Medium used to promise it would never do this. https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/03/the-long-complicated-and-extremely-frustrating-history-of-medium-2012-present/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/03/the-long-complicated-and-e...
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    That's what people get when they take promises of any kind seriously. I'm not excusing Medium, but at the same time I'm not going to hold some kind of false expectation over their head.
    - jordigh 7y ago
      Oh, but we should hold it over their head. We very much should. Cynicism only hurts us and leaves us with a poorer way to communicate. Cynicism benefits Medium.
      - munmaek 7y ago
        Err, what? Just host your own blog. Problem solved.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  Because Medium doesn’t author anything. It’s as if NYT consisted of nothing but “letters to the editor” (without an editor and not in response to anything that was previously published, because they would be publishing nothing in the equivalent scenario) and then decided to put up a paywall. There are countless free (and even ad-free) text-only hosting options available. Medium provides nothing of value to me as a consumer. It doesn’t even aggregates the content, people selectively post it to Medium themselves! I say this as someone that pays for about a dozen online newspaper/magazine subscriptions but will never pay a penny to access a site like Medium or Scribd or Quora or any other site that does nothing but make money off being the middle man. Anyway, it’s all moot as Medium will inevitably shutter or pivot. Their model is dead, the only reason people chose to post to Medium is because it offered some views. If those views are killed off by requiring a paywall, then Medium itself becomes defunct.
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    > Medium provides nothing of value to me as a consumer. The value is that it's providing a platform to authors who want a platform where they know they'll get readers. I personally don't choose to use Medium anymore, but it's very easy to get people to read your content on there. In the past I've used places like Wordpress, Blogger, my own webpages, etc., and it took a lot more effort to get people to see your content. Whereas on Medium, it didn't take long to get people to look at my content. Few things I wrote went into a black hole. > I say this as someone that pays for about a dozen online newspaper/magazine subscriptions but will never pay a penny to access a site like Medium or Scribd or Quora or any other site that does nothing but make money off being the middle man. They make money by being a platform to voices you might not otherwise hear because newspapers and magazines pick and choose a small set of authors to write most of their content. If that's not your cup of tea, then it's not your cup of tea. I choose not to use Medium as an author, but I understand why people choose to publish on it and why some people would choose to pay for it. > Anyway, it’s all moot as Medium will inevitably shutter or pivot. Like every other business conceivably? > If those views are killed off by requiring a paywall, then Medium itself becomes defunct. Is that actually happening?
    - 7y ago
sleavey 7y ago
It didn't block me, and I don't have a Medium account. Firefox 72 on Linux, ublock origin, Germany.
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
I've been told it's content creators that enable monetization, but I'm not convinced. Their loss.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s enabled by default or if they use some bullshit dark patterns to coerce users into opting in - it’s in Medium’s best interests to do so as they get a cut of any profits.
reportgunner 7y ago
Here's an outline link, also works in private tab for me. https://outline.com/wMXGZf https://outline.com/wMXGZf
dmos62 7y ago
It didn't ask me to sign in, probably because of ublock origin, but none of the pictures loaded. Crappy platform.
tenryuu 7y ago
Wasn't blocked. Firefox 68,Mobile, ublock origin
derefr 7y ago
Weirdly enough, I think it only does it if it knows you’ve been logged into Medium on your device before, but are currently logged out. Probably because “analytics engineering reasons”—i.e. it wants to correlate the view with some account’s clickstream, and it really looks like that account should be yours, but it also knows that it’s been a while and so it might now be a guest, and so has logged you out temporarily. But it doesn’t just want to spawn a new temporary clickstream that they’ll have to re-correlate to your account later, because that’s costly to server resources in the O(N) case, and in 90% of cases, it still is you browsing.
- davidwparker 7y ago
  This isn't the case as I've never had a medium account and it still blocked me.
puranjay 7y ago
Medium is quickly going down the Quora path for me. The content quality is becoming poorer as more and more people use it as a place to dump their zero-traffic blog posts. The aggressive content gating and pop-ups are another Quora-esque introduction. Just a case of being blinded by metrics. Adding an aggressive sign-up form might get you more emails and sign-ups, but it will also annoy away better quality users.
- kbumsik 7y ago
  It is worse than Quora now because Medium not only requires sign-ins bit asks for subscription to read.
  - bhouston 7y ago
    Never put a blog on Medium. They want to charge me to read it.
  - bubblethink 7y ago
    It is also worse than quora because quora can be blocked easily in search results since it is one domain. People use medium with their own domains too, which makes it hard to block entirely.
- a5aAqU 7y ago
  Try https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/
- wildrhythms 7y ago
  I had a Lyft driver trying to explain to me how they’re going to make it big on Medium. I still am not sure what they write about or how exposure on Medium works, but they were convinced that it was THE place to blog. I could only politely nod and smile thinking about how often I saw that obnoxious user hostile popover.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
j45 7y ago
I usually click on the X in the top right of the pop-over. Do others not see this/
the_duke 7y ago
Blocking Javascript is what makes Medium usable for me. (eg with uMatrix) No article limits, no sign in dialogs.
tsieling 7y ago
Press esc and wave that block away. For now, at least.
jonas21 7y ago
At least for me, there's an "X" in the upper-right corner that dismisses the popup. I can also click anywhere outside the popup to dismiss it. Is that not the case for you? https://i.imgur.com/B7WFCcS.png https://i.imgur.com/B7WFCcS.png
commoner 7y ago
The Bypass Paywalls extension allows you to get around the sign in requirement on Medium: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
dang 7y ago
Please don't post like this. It's off topic and such threads are always the same. And users usually post workarounds in the thread, as they did in this one. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20paywall https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Blocked reading the article because medium wants me to sign in. Is Medium now forcing people to create accounts to read posts or is it just a setting that this subdomain turned on?

ravenstine 7y ago

Why is it always Medium that's blamed for this but not mainstream news websites? I'm pretty sure I've been paywalled by sites like NYT yet people keep posting links to them.

jordigh 7y ago
Because Medium used to promise it would never do this. https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/03/the-long-complicated-and-extremely-frustrating-history-of-medium-2012-present/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/03/the-long-complicated-and-e...
- ravenstine 7y ago
  That's what people get when they take promises of any kind seriously. I'm not excusing Medium, but at the same time I'm not going to hold some kind of false expectation over their head.
  - jordigh 7y ago
    Oh, but we should hold it over their head. We very much should. Cynicism only hurts us and leaves us with a poorer way to communicate. Cynicism benefits Medium.
    - munmaek 7y ago
      Err, what? Just host your own blog. Problem solved.
ComputerGuru 7y ago
Because Medium doesn’t author anything. It’s as if NYT consisted of nothing but “letters to the editor” (without an editor and not in response to anything that was previously published, because they would be publishing nothing in the equivalent scenario) and then decided to put up a paywall. There are countless free (and even ad-free) text-only hosting options available. Medium provides nothing of value to me as a consumer. It doesn’t even aggregates the content, people selectively post it to Medium themselves! I say this as someone that pays for about a dozen online newspaper/magazine subscriptions but will never pay a penny to access a site like Medium or Scribd or Quora or any other site that does nothing but make money off being the middle man. Anyway, it’s all moot as Medium will inevitably shutter or pivot. Their model is dead, the only reason people chose to post to Medium is because it offered some views. If those views are killed off by requiring a paywall, then Medium itself becomes defunct.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  > Medium provides nothing of value to me as a consumer. The value is that it's providing a platform to authors who want a platform where they know they'll get readers. I personally don't choose to use Medium anymore, but it's very easy to get people to read your content on there. In the past I've used places like Wordpress, Blogger, my own webpages, etc., and it took a lot more effort to get people to see your content. Whereas on Medium, it didn't take long to get people to look at my content. Few things I wrote went into a black hole. > I say this as someone that pays for about a dozen online newspaper/magazine subscriptions but will never pay a penny to access a site like Medium or Scribd or Quora or any other site that does nothing but make money off being the middle man. They make money by being a platform to voices you might not otherwise hear because newspapers and magazines pick and choose a small set of authors to write most of their content. If that's not your cup of tea, then it's not your cup of tea. I choose not to use Medium as an author, but I understand why people choose to publish on it and why some people would choose to pay for it. > Anyway, it’s all moot as Medium will inevitably shutter or pivot. Like every other business conceivably? > If those views are killed off by requiring a paywall, then Medium itself becomes defunct. Is that actually happening?
  - 7y ago

sleavey 7y ago

It didn't block me, and I don't have a Medium account. Firefox 72 on Linux, ublock origin, Germany.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago

I've been told it's content creators that enable monetization, but I'm not convinced. Their loss.

Nextgrid 7y ago
Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s enabled by default or if they use some bullshit dark patterns to coerce users into opting in - it’s in Medium’s best interests to do so as they get a cut of any profits.

reportgunner 7y ago

Here's an outline link, also works in private tab for me. https://outline.com/wMXGZf https://outline.com/wMXGZf

dmos62 7y ago

It didn't ask me to sign in, probably because of ublock origin, but none of the pictures loaded. Crappy platform.

tenryuu 7y ago

Wasn't blocked. Firefox 68,Mobile, ublock origin

derefr 7y ago

Weirdly enough, I think it only does it if it knows you’ve been logged into Medium on your device before, but are currently logged out. Probably because “analytics engineering reasons”—i.e. it wants to correlate the view with some account’s clickstream, and it really looks like that account should be yours, but it also knows that it’s been a while and so it might now be a guest, and so has logged you out temporarily. But it doesn’t just want to spawn a new temporary clickstream that they’ll have to re-correlate to your account later, because that’s costly to server resources in the O(N) case, and in 90% of cases, it still is you browsing.

davidwparker 7y ago
This isn't the case as I've never had a medium account and it still blocked me.

puranjay 7y ago

Medium is quickly going down the Quora path for me. The content quality is becoming poorer as more and more people use it as a place to dump their zero-traffic blog posts. The aggressive content gating and pop-ups are another Quora-esque introduction. Just a case of being blinded by metrics. Adding an aggressive sign-up form might get you more emails and sign-ups, but it will also annoy away better quality users.

kbumsik 7y ago
It is worse than Quora now because Medium not only requires sign-ins bit asks for subscription to read.
- bhouston 7y ago
  Never put a blog on Medium. They want to charge me to read it.
- bubblethink 7y ago
  It is also worse than quora because quora can be blocked easily in search results since it is one domain. People use medium with their own domains too, which makes it hard to block entirely.
a5aAqU 7y ago
Try https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/
wildrhythms 7y ago
I had a Lyft driver trying to explain to me how they’re going to make it big on Medium. I still am not sure what they write about or how exposure on Medium works, but they were convinced that it was THE place to blog. I could only politely nod and smile thinking about how often I saw that obnoxious user hostile popover.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

j45 7y ago

I usually click on the X in the top right of the pop-over. Do others not see this/

the_duke 7y ago

Blocking Javascript is what makes Medium usable for me. (eg with uMatrix) No article limits, no sign in dialogs.

tsieling 7y ago

Press esc and wave that block away. For now, at least.

jonas21 7y ago

At least for me, there's an "X" in the upper-right corner that dismisses the popup. I can also click anywhere outside the popup to dismiss it. Is that not the case for you? https://i.imgur.com/B7WFCcS.png https://i.imgur.com/B7WFCcS.png

commoner 7y ago

The Bypass Paywalls extension allows you to get around the sign in requirement on Medium: https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

dang 7y ago

Please don't post like this. It's off topic and such threads are always the same. And users usually post workarounds in the thread, as they did in this one. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20paywall https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...