4 ms·

Ask HN: Do you guys hate medium.com?

6 points by PhilipWee 4y ago

Seems like pretty few articles are from medium.com, most articles are on pretty plain html pages, is it a hackernews thing?

slater 4y ago
In a word: Yes. Mainly due to paywall / user-registration-walls
ev1 4y ago
Plain? It sends analytics requests with practically every pixel scrolled. The performance is worse than rubbish and leaves a gigabyte of analytics data in your localstorage.
- PhilipWee 4y ago
  No as in the usual HN links that I click on are plain...
bediger4000 4y ago
Yes. They got all the popular writers, then slid a paywall over it. Seemed like a bad faith centralization of something that had previously been decentralized, hand crafted and individually owned. Like main stream media consolidation in the 80s, maybe.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Eloquent!
EddieDante 4y ago
It's called Medium because the content is neither rare nor well done. I don't hate Medium, but I won't write for Medium until they put me on the payroll and send me a W2 every January. Nor will I read articles on Medium or link to them. It's kind of sad that Evan Williams went from making Blogger and Twitter to making a content farm that changes its business model every 9-12 months. Medium barely merits contempt, let alone hatred.
cable2600 4y ago
I'd rather use Wordpress instead. It is free and Medium has a paywall.
i67vw3 4y ago
Tracking, repeated prompts to login etc. I have started using https://scribe.rip https://scribe.rip (and its other instances) for reading medium articles.
glaucon 4y ago
It doesn't add any value for me and I honestly wonder how it's got as far as it has.
h2odragon 4y ago
They go to some length to make things hard to link or quote; therefore I go to some length to avoid pages served by them to avoid the frustration.
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
A little box opens when I mark text. I don‘t like that. medium.com is an overengineered, harmful mess
Bender 4y ago
This is my own personal preference but I honestly can't stand medium. It started off ok, but now It's too bloated and I can't read many of the articles people link. I use an addon to force myself to put in a password if I really want to see a link someone share on that and several other paywall sites. It gives me a chance to ask myself, "Did I just get baited?" If the answer is yes they do not even get a referrer click. If there was an addon similar to Teddit Redirect [1] or Nitter Redirect [2] that made the site more usable by stripping out most javascript and removing the paywall then I would probably visit it more. [1] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-to-teddit-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-to-ted... [2] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redire...
dontbenebby 4y ago
Hate is a strong word, I'm looking for a static site generator rn, it's more a dislike of cloud providers in general vs self hosting
kbelder 4y ago
It's one of two sites* I actively try to avoid clicking on any HN links to. The experience is awful. So awful that I have a hard time understanding why anybody would ask why we avoid it... can't you just go to medium and see why? It's pretty obvious. *the other is twitter.
joshxyz 4y ago
passionately. fuckin signup walls.

6 points by PhilipWee 4y ago

Seems like pretty few articles are from medium.com, most articles are on pretty plain html pages, is it a hackernews thing?

slater 4y ago

In a word: Yes. Mainly due to paywall / user-registration-walls

ev1 4y ago

Plain? It sends analytics requests with practically every pixel scrolled. The performance is worse than rubbish and leaves a gigabyte of analytics data in your localstorage.

PhilipWee 4y ago
No as in the usual HN links that I click on are plain...

bediger4000 4y ago

Yes. They got all the popular writers, then slid a paywall over it. Seemed like a bad faith centralization of something that had previously been decentralized, hand crafted and individually owned. Like main stream media consolidation in the 80s, maybe.

hammyhavoc 4y ago
Eloquent!

EddieDante 4y ago

It's called Medium because the content is neither rare nor well done. I don't hate Medium, but I won't write for Medium until they put me on the payroll and send me a W2 every January. Nor will I read articles on Medium or link to them. It's kind of sad that Evan Williams went from making Blogger and Twitter to making a content farm that changes its business model every 9-12 months. Medium barely merits contempt, let alone hatred.

cable2600 4y ago

I'd rather use Wordpress instead. It is free and Medium has a paywall.

i67vw3 4y ago

Tracking, repeated prompts to login etc. I have started using https://scribe.rip https://scribe.rip (and its other instances) for reading medium articles.

glaucon 4y ago

It doesn't add any value for me and I honestly wonder how it's got as far as it has.

h2odragon 4y ago

They go to some length to make things hard to link or quote; therefore I go to some length to avoid pages served by them to avoid the frustration.

Traubenfuchs 4y ago

A little box opens when I mark text. I don‘t like that. medium.com is an overengineered, harmful mess

Bender 4y ago

This is my own personal preference but I honestly can't stand medium. It started off ok, but now It's too bloated and I can't read many of the articles people link. I use an addon to force myself to put in a password if I really want to see a link someone share on that and several other paywall sites. It gives me a chance to ask myself, "Did I just get baited?" If the answer is yes they do not even get a referrer click. If there was an addon similar to Teddit Redirect [1] or Nitter Redirect [2] that made the site more usable by stripping out most javascript and removing the paywall then I would probably visit it more. [1] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-to-teddit-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-to-ted... [2] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redire...

dontbenebby 4y ago

Hate is a strong word, I'm looking for a static site generator rn, it's more a dislike of cloud providers in general vs self hosting

kbelder 4y ago

It's one of two sites* I actively try to avoid clicking on any HN links to. The experience is awful. So awful that I have a hard time understanding why anybody would ask why we avoid it... can't you just go to medium and see why? It's pretty obvious. *the other is twitter.

joshxyz 4y ago

passionately. fuckin signup walls.