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I chose random blog post on Medium and tried to copy a sentence out of it. It offers to let me "create an account to highlight a passage", or tweet it out via

I chose random blog post on Medium and tried to copy a sentence out of it. It offers to let me "create an account to highlight a passage", or tweet it out via Twitter, but I can't just copy it and paste it into my notes elsewhere. Whose idea was it to assert this level of control over written material, especially user-generated material? It's a very unpleasant experience. EDIT: Dialing down my tone a bit here, I should have taken a minute between trying the frustrating thing and posting about it.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
> Whose idea was it to assert this level of control over written material The real mistake was giving web developers the power to do this in the first place. It was meant to help usability by preventing selection of things that weren't meant to be selected. Of course the first thing people did instead was abuse it in order to protect "their content".
oxfordmale 5y ago
I use Firefox with Noscript browser next to my regular browser for any such websites with questionable practices.
johnchristopher 5y ago
> Whose idea was it to assert this level of control over written material, especially user-generated material? It's not just user-hostile, it's sadistic. It's optimized for public sharing of user generated content to social network platforms. Web 2.0 in a nutshell but optimized for outreach, not personal log.
- atoav 5y ago
  Breaking a browsers default behaviour IMO needs a good justification. This isn't a good justification. If sharing would be really that important to your plattform, why not add it as an option that doesn't break expected behaviour?
  - johnchristopher 5y ago
    You are not the intended audience. I am not defending their model nor their implementation. > Breaking a browsers default behaviour IMO needs a good justification. This isn't a good justification. Good enough for them though. Their site, their choice. Also, it's not like there isn't many browser extensions to disable that behavior.
    - a5aAqU 5y ago
      > You are not the intended audience. A site full of programming articles (Medium) probably wants its articles to be read by programmers.
      - johnchristopher 5y ago
        > A site full of programming articles (Medium) probably wants its articles to be read by programmers. I haven't found official data but programming is in the 25th position and software in dev in the 40th: Here are the top 43 most popular Medium tags in 2021 Life (520,000 followers) Startup (487,000 followers) Blockchain (473,000 followers) Poetry (455,000 followers) Life Lessons (452,000 followers) Politics (396,000 followers) Health (374,000 followers) Love (350,000 followers) Travel (334,000 followers) Technology (334,000 followers) Entrepreneurship (333,000 followers) Self Improvement (332,000 followers) Education (330,000 followers) Writing (324,000 followers) Business (320,000 followers) Cryptocurrency (314,000 followers) Design (267,000 followers) Social Media (241,000 followers) Music (228,000 followers) Relationships (214,000 followers) Social Media (214,000 followers) Sports (209,000 followers) Mental Health (202,000 followers) Productivity (187,000 followers) Programming (186,000 followers) Food (167,000 followers) Leadership (166,000 followers) Javascript (160,000 followers) Art (152,000 followers) Fiction (143,000 followers) Humor (143,000 followers) Artificial Intelligence (143,000 followers) UX (138,000 followers) Culture (136,000 followers) Books (135,00 followers) Photography (128,000 followers) Creativity (126,000 followers) Data Science (123,000 followers) Psychology (119,000 followers) Software Development (117,000 followers) Coronavirus (115,000 followers) Self (104,000 followers) Family (103,000 followers) https://findingtom.com/most-popular-medium-tags/ https://findingtom.com/most-popular-medium-tags/ Other articles I found also show programming articles are in the bottom of the list.
marban 5y ago
Reader mode is your friend. (Not that I'm a supporter of this pattern)
heywintermute 5y ago
It's even more frustrating when it some programming related blog and you can't copy and paste the code snippet
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  The worst part is this can be activated with CSS.
  - have_faith 5y ago
    There's a lot of genuine use cases for pointer-events: none, so it's a difficult issue to navigate.
- a5aAqU 5y ago
  Also, the code snippets often don't work when you paste them because of the "smart quotes".
quaintdev 5y ago
I understand general public can fall prey to fancy UI and easy blogging but I do not expect medium to be used by people from IT who know better. For example, recently both Dart and Flutter got version upgrade and they announced this via Medium. I mean you have largest Software company backing you. Why would you choose medium for your blog!?
- abraham 5y ago
  It's not like Google has it's own blogging platform...
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    Shhh, don't tell them! They'll kill it if they remember it's there.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Isn't software development currently just going and picking up what is the big popular name today. Be that platform, database, language or framework. Picking Medium fits perfectly to this mind-set. Move fast break things. Don't reinvent the wheel... Or do when it makes CV better even if you are writing same product again...
- imachine1980_ 5y ago
  medium was a great platform, you can make you own subdomain and mange what you want, then the focus change from make a great blog experience from a modic price for non tech-savy to, try to become a premium buzzfed, the ui is the same but the home screen is full of crappy shit first post(The Real Way to Figure Out How Smart Someone Is it work every time), and you are force to premium or kick like happens to hackernoon and freecodecamp
  - jayzalowitz 5y ago
    One of the founders of Hackernoon here. They didn't kick so much as "you cant make any money here, and we are going to make it difficult for you to operate" Ev and co arent bad people. Im actually a fan, but i think he is shortsighted in his goals.
tomrod 5y ago
It's been this way since they launched, hasn't it? I tell you what would be really nice: a browser that lets me click & launch into reader mode directly. None of these shenanigans with Turing complete JS. Just give me text to read.
- julianlam 5y ago
  Can you not do this with browsers? Turning off JS should get rid of most of the egregious stuff, and I think at least Firefox lets you strip out CSS and inject your own (or if not, then via plugin like Greasemonkey)...
  - tomrod 5y ago
    Maybe? The experience would be: - Normal model with JS on (modulo ad blocker/flash blocker) - Oh, hey, a site that plays shenanigans with text! - Rightclick, open in reader view
- gumby 5y ago
  > I tell you what would be really nice: a browser that lets me click & launch into reader mode directly. Safari can be set to use reader mode by default (then you can tell it to ignore individual sites). I use it in this mode.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    Safari is stuck in the dark ages of Apple lockin, isn't it?
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > Safari is stuck in the dark ages of Apple lockin, isn't it? Why would Apple be obligated or even incentivised to make their browser for other operating systems?
      - tomrod 5y ago
aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
It seems that you’re using a user-hostile agent instead of a user agent.
stalfosknight 5y ago
I solve that in Safari by enabling the Development menu and mapping Shift⌘J to Disable JavaScript. Works great for any website that tries to disable right clicking for whatever reason.
bool3max 5y ago
No need to dial your tone down, the absolute fucking baboons whose idea that level of restriction on a website was deserve every bit of hate and criticism they get.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> Whose idea was it to assert this level of control over written material The real mistake was giving web developers the power to do this in the first place. It was meant to help usability by preventing selection of things that weren't meant to be selected. Of course the first thing people did instead was abuse it in order to protect "their content".

oxfordmale 5y ago

I use Firefox with Noscript browser next to my regular browser for any such websites with questionable practices.

johnchristopher 5y ago

> Whose idea was it to assert this level of control over written material, especially user-generated material? It's not just user-hostile, it's sadistic. It's optimized for public sharing of user generated content to social network platforms. Web 2.0 in a nutshell but optimized for outreach, not personal log.

atoav 5y ago
Breaking a browsers default behaviour IMO needs a good justification. This isn't a good justification. If sharing would be really that important to your plattform, why not add it as an option that doesn't break expected behaviour?
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  You are not the intended audience. I am not defending their model nor their implementation. > Breaking a browsers default behaviour IMO needs a good justification. This isn't a good justification. Good enough for them though. Their site, their choice. Also, it's not like there isn't many browser extensions to disable that behavior.
  - a5aAqU 5y ago
    > You are not the intended audience. A site full of programming articles (Medium) probably wants its articles to be read by programmers.
    - johnchristopher 5y ago
      > A site full of programming articles (Medium) probably wants its articles to be read by programmers. I haven't found official data but programming is in the 25th position and software in dev in the 40th: Here are the top 43 most popular Medium tags in 2021 Life (520,000 followers) Startup (487,000 followers) Blockchain (473,000 followers) Poetry (455,000 followers) Life Lessons (452,000 followers) Politics (396,000 followers) Health (374,000 followers) Love (350,000 followers) Travel (334,000 followers) Technology (334,000 followers) Entrepreneurship (333,000 followers) Self Improvement (332,000 followers) Education (330,000 followers) Writing (324,000 followers) Business (320,000 followers) Cryptocurrency (314,000 followers) Design (267,000 followers) Social Media (241,000 followers) Music (228,000 followers) Relationships (214,000 followers) Social Media (214,000 followers) Sports (209,000 followers) Mental Health (202,000 followers) Productivity (187,000 followers) Programming (186,000 followers) Food (167,000 followers) Leadership (166,000 followers) Javascript (160,000 followers) Art (152,000 followers) Fiction (143,000 followers) Humor (143,000 followers) Artificial Intelligence (143,000 followers) UX (138,000 followers) Culture (136,000 followers) Books (135,00 followers) Photography (128,000 followers) Creativity (126,000 followers) Data Science (123,000 followers) Psychology (119,000 followers) Software Development (117,000 followers) Coronavirus (115,000 followers) Self (104,000 followers) Family (103,000 followers) https://findingtom.com/most-popular-medium-tags/ https://findingtom.com/most-popular-medium-tags/ Other articles I found also show programming articles are in the bottom of the list.

marban 5y ago

Reader mode is your friend. (Not that I'm a supporter of this pattern)

heywintermute 5y ago

It's even more frustrating when it some programming related blog and you can't copy and paste the code snippet

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
The worst part is this can be activated with CSS.
- have_faith 5y ago
  There's a lot of genuine use cases for pointer-events: none, so it's a difficult issue to navigate.
a5aAqU 5y ago
Also, the code snippets often don't work when you paste them because of the "smart quotes".

quaintdev 5y ago

I understand general public can fall prey to fancy UI and easy blogging but I do not expect medium to be used by people from IT who know better. For example, recently both Dart and Flutter got version upgrade and they announced this via Medium. I mean you have largest Software company backing you. Why would you choose medium for your blog!?

abraham 5y ago
It's not like Google has it's own blogging platform...
- giantrobot 5y ago
  Shhh, don't tell them! They'll kill it if they remember it's there.
Ekaros 5y ago
Isn't software development currently just going and picking up what is the big popular name today. Be that platform, database, language or framework. Picking Medium fits perfectly to this mind-set. Move fast break things. Don't reinvent the wheel... Or do when it makes CV better even if you are writing same product again...
imachine1980_ 5y ago
medium was a great platform, you can make you own subdomain and mange what you want, then the focus change from make a great blog experience from a modic price for non tech-savy to, try to become a premium buzzfed, the ui is the same but the home screen is full of crappy shit first post(The Real Way to Figure Out How Smart Someone Is it work every time), and you are force to premium or kick like happens to hackernoon and freecodecamp
- jayzalowitz 5y ago
  One of the founders of Hackernoon here. They didn't kick so much as "you cant make any money here, and we are going to make it difficult for you to operate" Ev and co arent bad people. Im actually a fan, but i think he is shortsighted in his goals.

tomrod 5y ago

It's been this way since they launched, hasn't it? I tell you what would be really nice: a browser that lets me click & launch into reader mode directly. None of these shenanigans with Turing complete JS. Just give me text to read.

julianlam 5y ago
Can you not do this with browsers? Turning off JS should get rid of most of the egregious stuff, and I think at least Firefox lets you strip out CSS and inject your own (or if not, then via plugin like Greasemonkey)...
- tomrod 5y ago
  Maybe? The experience would be: - Normal model with JS on (modulo ad blocker/flash blocker) - Oh, hey, a site that plays shenanigans with text! - Rightclick, open in reader view
gumby 5y ago
> I tell you what would be really nice: a browser that lets me click & launch into reader mode directly. Safari can be set to use reader mode by default (then you can tell it to ignore individual sites). I use it in this mode.
- tomrod 5y ago
  Safari is stuck in the dark ages of Apple lockin, isn't it?
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Safari is stuck in the dark ages of Apple lockin, isn't it? Why would Apple be obligated or even incentivised to make their browser for other operating systems?
    - tomrod 5y ago

aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago

It seems that you’re using a user-hostile agent instead of a user agent.

stalfosknight 5y ago

I solve that in Safari by enabling the Development menu and mapping Shift⌘J to Disable JavaScript. Works great for any website that tries to disable right clicking for whatever reason.

bool3max 5y ago

No need to dial your tone down, the absolute fucking baboons whose idea that level of restriction on a website was deserve every bit of hate and criticism they get.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]