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Medium bans user for Chrome extension that opened articles in incognito mode
- andix 4y agoTotally understandable. They violated Mediums terms if use. If you don’t like their business model (and you probably shouldn’t), put your content somewhere else.
- donatj 4y agoMedium lived long enough to become the villain. It was honestly quite the heel turn, but they’re all in. As far as I am concerned everyone should just move to substack at this point.
- lzauz 4y agoMedium has been the villain for quite some time now. But not so fast about Substack... they recently started showing modals. In the end, running a website costs money. What are you going to do.
- canadianfella 4y ago
- donatj 4y agoFor what it’s worth I find their modals relatively unobtrusive and easily dismissed. It’s not great but like you said, they need to make a living.
- thinkmcfly 4y agoSwitch platforms before investors can make their money back. Everyone wins!
- thinkingemote 4y agoAre the modals opt in or configurable by the author?
- cpcallen 4y agoSubstack also gets lots of revenue from subscriptions. If that's not enough to keep the platform up then perhaps they need to try to take a bigger cut (or not offer service to authors who have too few subscribers). There's no reason for authors (who are Substack's customers) to want to make the platform more annoying for readers (some of whom are the author's customers). If the author is not making enough money (perhaps because Substack has started taking a bigger cut to cover costs) they need only to improve their writing and/or put more of it behind the paywall in order to get more subscribers.
- imglorp 4y agoThose modals are infuriating. Every time you go to SS for a different article, it will nag you. Does anyone have a uBlock rule to drop them all?
- dredmorbius 4y agoI'm using this in Stylish, a CSS manager browser extension: /* Substack modals, nags, etc. */ [class*="frontend-components-SubscribePrompt"] { display: none; } Saved as "Substack" and applied to any page/domain which uses Substack. Otherwise, for UBO, these two should work: ###.frontend-components-SubscribePrompt-module__subscribeDialog--2_6UY.frontend-pencraft-FlexBox-module__flex-align-center--21WCV.frontend-pencraft-FlexBox-module__flex-direction-column--2sph3.frontend-pencraft-FlexBox-module__flex--fK-9V ###.frontend-components-SubscribePrompt-module__background--2DQPj I suspect Substack vary their element names (e.g., the "2_6UY" and "2DQPj" strings in the above list), so that substring matches as I've used in my CSS example should be more robust. UBO uses the Easylist blocking syntax which ... I can't seem to find documented, so I'm guessing as to the specific patterns. Corrections/clues welcomed.
- james_pm 4y agoWhy move from one corporate entity to another? Substack will end up going down the same road in time. Get your own domain, fire up a CMS and start publishing on something you control and own.
- mcv 4y agoWe really need to move towards self-hosted content, self-hosted social media, etc, instead of surrendering ourselves to arbitrarily-run walled gardens.
- jbaber 4y agoThis is hard for non-technical people and I want to hear what they have to say. The only thing I like about twitter/facebook/medium/etc. is that I get to see what the whole world would do if they knew how to `vim index.html`. In this case, it's even harder because it's about maintaining a website synchronized with a mailing list. Make something open source and ad-free and they'd all run to it, I'm sure.
- mcv 4y ago> This is hard for non-technical people and I want to hear what they have to say. I agree, so maybe we should work towards making it easier for them. I was thinking about spending my Christmas break fixing Friendica bugs, but now I'm suddenly thinking about building my own ActivityPub blogging platform (though no doubt one already exists). But of course that's not going to be enough; it needs to be trivial to deploy and host, at little cost. I believe many cloud hosting providers have a free tier. Would be nice if something like this could be easily deployed there. Create a tool that sets the whole thing up, handles the DNS name, the payments, and deploys the site. In fact, it would be nice if ISPs offered something like that for free with your internet connection, to finally do justice to that 'S' in their name.
- djbusby 4y agoThat used to be a thing they offered. A dial-up or DSL connection and like 25MB of web-hosting.
- paulgb 4y agoThe problem all these sites have is that the domain starts as a signal of high quality — either because they are initially exclusive like Medium, or pay high-quality writers to move over. Over time, they regress to the mean and the domain becomes a signal of mediocrity. I understand the need for things like substack to grow an audience, but I maintain that someone who really wants to run a blog for many years should own their audience.
- judgardner 4y agoGoogle results will also rank these “high quality” sites above a self hosted domain. To the point where even a direct string search on an indexed page will never return on Google. Kagi and Brave search do a better job here if you’re looking for content on someone’s self hosted blog.
- pmontra 4y agoHow long before seeing a comment like the next two paragraphs? Substack lived long enough to become the villain. It was honestly quite the heel turn, but they’re all in. As far as I am concerned everyone should just move to ${random_new_platform} at this point.
- orphea 4y agoSubstack did already. They have very annoying subscribe modals, and when they pop up, I just close the site.
- nwoli 4y agoWe shouldn’t move to substack it’ll for sure just repeat history. Just make your own minimal site, especially if you have things worth reading and draws attention
- rpgbr 4y agoCentralizing stuff in another VC-backed startup is… kind risky[1]? [1] https://notes.ghed.in/posts/2022/substack-centralization/ https://notes.ghed.in/posts/2022/substack-centralization/
- gog 4y agoWhy move to another provider? Have a look at https://indieweb.org/POSSE https://indieweb.org/POSSE
- romanovcode 4y agoHosting your website on GH seems much easier. Also free. Also you have a copy of your website that you can self-host whenever GH decides to ban you and point your domain name to new IP.
- gog 4y agoYou can use Github to host your website on your domain and still use POSSE to syndicate your posts on other platforms.
- tobr 4y agoMedium CEO @tonystubblebine is here occasionally. In case he comes by the thread, I’d like to ask him if he’s heard of the Streisand effect?
- WhackyIdeas 4y agoAh damn, I left a comment about Streisand effect then seen yours!
- Brajeshwar 4y agoIf you are a builder/creator (even hobbies, with 2 users) and generate contents, please get your own domain. Either you use a service/tool or otherwise but own the content. If you use a service and is important enough, take backups. Own your content, use eveything else as tools. These days, the question I usually ask is, "Can I walk out of this and what do I have to do if I need to?"
- gumboza 4y agoThis. I'm not sure why the hell anyone would do anything else to be honest. It has been an insane proposition putting content on something you don't control.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- brookst 4y agoI agree in principle, but for people who just want to focus on their project, it’s a heavy tax to learn how domains and content and everything work. Medium’s promise is “you focus on writing, we’ll deal with distributing.” They don’t live up to that promise in lots of ways, but it’s hard to fault someone for not wanting to deal with the tech.
- gumboza 4y agoWell there's an entry cost or an exit cost or a risk. If the tradeoff makes sense then spot on but if Medium pulls your stuff you have an untenable risk tradeoff. This is why I don't write articles. The investment vs return is low based on the exit costs, risks and benefits.
- ncphil 4y agoIs learning how to navigate the DMV system in any US state less "heavy"? I think Medium and others contribute to the problem by perpetuating the myth that ordinary folks can't do it/ it's just too hard. How we break through that is something to think about.
- kennydude 4y agoHosting your own stuff is always the answer. And keep backups! Even something like getting some cheap hosting and spinning up a WordPress installation will work well (and is easily backed up, exported off-site etc).
- coldcode 4y agoIt's not about hosting, it's about discovery. If no one knows your content exists, no one will read it. At least on Medium you have an opportunity to be seen. Sure, if you already have a huge online presence, then you don't need that. But starting from zero you need some way for people to find you. You can for example use Ghost to host your content, then syndicate it to Medium. But just sticking a website on the internet is pointless if no one will see it.
- ncphil 4y agoThat last para is an excellent solution!
- rawoke083600 4y agoNot your platform, not your content ? Man I truly do not like Medium, if i land on an article i just close it immediately!
- mattrighetti 4y agoI have changed my tax form 4 months ago on the platform because I moved to a different country, they still have to approve a single thing and of course they did block the monthly payroll. I've sent them a final email asking for info on the issue, after that I'm removing all my content from the platform.
- laserlight 4y agoFor those who, like me, had trouble parsing HN title, here's the first sentence of the tweet: > Medium decided to ban me because I built a Chrome Extension to automatically open Medium articles in incognito mode. And, here's Medium Rules link: https://policy.medium.com/medium-rules-30e5502c4eb4 https://policy.medium.com/medium-rules-30e5502c4eb4
- angry_octet 4y agoHe clearly hasn't violated any of their written rules. They should have some rules for themselves: "1. Don't become clowns."
- SilasX 4y agoWeird. I still don’t see where that’s prohibited (so it can’t be facilitating a violation). The closest is when it talks about forging IP headers or using anonymous emails. Or accessing the site only via published interfaces.
- mhb 4y agoHow does Medium link what some person does as a project to some person who puts content on Medium? What's their authentication mechanism for doing this linking? Maybe he just said "Yeah, that's me."?
- pedro_hab 4y agoHe probably wrote an medium article on it. lol
- henrylim96 4y agoNo. I was too lazy to write an article for that The only place I mentioned it was on my Twitter (https://twitter.com/henrylim96/status/1529055034385780737 https://twitter.com/henrylim96/status/1529055034385780737) and on my GitHub.
- mhb 4y agoSo how did they make the connection?
- 10000truths 4y agoI was able to find his Medium page by looking up "henrylim96 medium". What's troubling to me is that this isn't some trigger-happy autoban - someone had to actively seek him out. It could have been someone who "snitched" on him, or (I suspect) a Medium employee.
- nashashmi 4y agoIt seems like we are living in an era of the Wild West filled with authoritarianism and self rule and sheriff style enforcement. Except it doesn’t just date to the Wild West. It goes back to feudalism. The same cunningness and framework of authority is being put forward. In those days, there was no super world power America. There was no UN. There was no successful secret fraternity that espoused ideals like freedom of expression. There were just kings deeply seated in self interests. This online world feels much like it is the same.
- devinprater 4y agoA lot of these blogging platforms have accessibility issues, either with reading or writing articles, and don't even support Markdown! Thank God for write.as.
- _justinfunk 4y agoExtension downloaded immediately. Thanks @HenryLim96
- kshay 4y agoWhen submitting an extension to the Chrome Web Store you’re asked for a written justification for why it needs to run against the sites/URLs specified in the manifest. I’m curious how closely anyone at Google examines these; if this is such a clear ToS violation then maybe it shouldn’t have been approved? (Edit: I’m not asserting that it is in fact a violation, but that its having been approved suggests it didn’t seem like one to the Web Store folks, at least, and maybe Medium should have addressed this by trying to get it removed rather than banning the user.)
- pannSun 4y ago> if this is such a clear ToS violation then maybe it shouldn’t have been approved? Maybe user software shouldn't be enforcing arbitrary ToS, but should instead obey the user? Do we really want corporations colluding with each-other to enforce their whims over us through their products that we are surrounded by, and are becoming necessary for modern life? What next, disk firmware scanning for copyright violations? I'm sorry if this comes off as harsh, but I am sick of people using the ToS (that a company can make up at will) as any kind of justification, pro- or against. They can and do write anything they want there.
- WhackyIdeas 4y agoStreisand effect, anybody?
- brycewray 4y ago“Own your stuff” • Because the only constant is change, you shouldn’t depend on others to keep your content online. https://www.brycewray.com/posts/2022/11/own-your-stuff/ https://www.brycewray.com/posts/2022/11/own-your-stuff/
- chillbill 4y agowasn’t their ceo on HN recently bragging about how they’re going to turn the ship around? Looks like an already sunken ship at this point. someone should assemble and post a list of all tools that makes medium better?
- samsquire 4y agoI pay for Medium since I want to support the availability of blogs. But I don't post using medium that often. I use GitHub README.md for my journal. I have been journalling in the open since 2013 and I am up to 700 entries. (See my profile)
- jacooper 4y agoJust use scribe.rip
- brainchild-adam 4y agoSince I have not seen anyone mention it here, https://write.as/ https://write.as/ might also be an option for someone looking to replace Medium. Hosted by them or self-hosted. Not affiliated in any way. Just like the idea.