mstdn.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A general-purpose Mastodon server with a 500 character limit. All languages are welcome.

Administered by:

Server stats:

17K
active users

Erin Kissane

Plenty of great people have cycled through at various points, but I would love to see a little bit of memory retention about their organizational history:

"Medium abruptly cancels the membership programs of its 21 remaining subscription publishers" niemanlab.org/2018/05/medium-a

"‘We had no idea that it was coming’: Medium pulls the rug from under publications" cjr.org/business_of_news/mediu

"The long, complicated, and extremely frustrating history of Medium, 2012–present" niemanlab.org/2019/03/the-long

Nieman LabMedium abruptly cancels the membership programs of its 21 remaining subscription publisher partners"Could we have a better metaphor for the way Silicon Valley considers local journalism?” fumed the owner of one of these remaining publications.

As with Substack, there are always going to be a ton of people who very understandably feel like they have to keep quiet about the bad stuff because most writers live in various states of perpetual precarity—which is exactly why this clownshow history drives me up the wall. Tech companies buy new toys and throw away the old ones and real people get hurt.

LAST ONE but I know for a fact that criticizing this stuff is professionally damaging, bc a tech company exec in NYC literally called me in on the pretense of offering editorial work, only to turn his computer around to point out a (mild) critical tweet I once sent, and demand that I explain myself before sending me home.

So keep that in mind when people stay quiet.

@kissane that is absolutely wild levels of fuckery. Jesus.

@jaykaydee The thinnest skins imaginable!

@kissane truly. Also just such a great example of how Twitter for all its faults *did* do some things to balance power relations, how bosses hate that, and how making you physically present is a way for them to re-asset that power (see also: return to office mandates)

@jaykaydee Oh completely yes. One of the best things about twitter.

@ken By far the most cartoonish experience of my professional life

@kissane did you laugh very hard and walk out

@ken to be completely honest, I gapped out and came to on the street, but I'm pretty sure the gist was "ok but I said what I said"

it's not like I'm especially hardass or anything, just—come onnnn

@kissane @ken

There's a scene in "Saving Private Ryan" where a Nazi is knifing an American soldier and shushing him as he dies.

That's the world Republican billionaire donors are funding into existence:

Fascists demanding complicit silence as democracy is being knifed to death.

A world where mutual respect doesn't exist.

It's not being thin-skinned. It's fascists demanding silent deference to authority.

@Npars01 That’s quite an aggressive mental image and response to process before coffee.

(Unfortunately, shit bosses do flourish across the political spectrum and can probably be discussed as a freestanding phenomenon, but 🤷🏻.)

@kissane

FWIW as a long-time subscriber and partner program member, there are many things I like about @medium, particularly the ad-free reading experience. But I also recognize and understand the criticism, considering the company's history of pivots. With the current CEO, I remain cautiously optimistic about the site's future.

@funcrunch @medium I genuinely hope it works out, and that it helps a lot of writers.

@kissane @medium

Thanks, me too (and not just for my own sake). I'm concerned about some people already talking about defederating Medium's instance before they even open it up to their own writers. Though of course that is their right, there may be unintended collateral damage.

@funcrunch @medium lol yes defederating in advance seems deeply silly to me, but fedis gonna defed

@kissane just honestly incredible to witness this today.

@kissane @dansinker this is soooo incredibly lolsob, what a journey they are on!!

@fraying @dansinker @kissane
If you think about, the choice of the term «embraces» is ... courageous, when you consider that a sizable portion of the criticism is going to be «beware EEE»

HT @KevinMarks

@kissane Multiple friends of mine have been screwed over by medium’s habit of abrupt changes. I wouldn’t trust that company for a moment.

@jhpot Just bizarre to me that they don't suffer reputation damage for all their feckless choices.

@kissane As far as alternatives go: I'm really excited to see more communities try out PubPub! pubpub.org

It's the most similar open-source option I've come across (e.g. has some social features and lots of ways to organize/layout content).

But open source CMSes and community-platforms are actually an embarrassment of riches. Just those pesky network effects/FOMO keeping people tethered to the VC clowncars.

PubPubPubPub · Community PublishingCollaborative Community Publishing

@caseyg oh damn this looks wonderful? I love it instantly

ok to boost this?

@kissane

Why is everybody acting surprised? Any and all third party proprietary platform will fuck you over sooner or later. It's just a matter of when. Why, if not, are you all here?

@kissane

“Our experience in dealing with a lot of these tech-oriented operations is that there’s some good reception, but in the end, it’s whatever their whim is."

This is an all-too-common complaint with ALL proprietary software, especially so, as the #twexit folks here have experienced, when the ownership changes hands.

@kissane the niemanlab article you’ve linked is fascinating. Thanks for sharing it!

@Haste They remain absolute all-stars, honestly

@kissane I’m one of todays lucky ten thousand so it sounds like I have some backlog reading to do

@kissane Just reading the post here (without digging into the meat of the article), sound a little like what we are going through with Vocal (which used to be OMNI, then OMNI Reboot, then....). Messy, messy, messy...

@kissane Thanks! I've been boosting their posts mainly because it's the first example of private/coorp embrace on here I'm seeing, so I think everyone should pay attention whether it's a good thing in principle or not. Your post, though, is the probably the one everyone should read.

Being on an instance run by a private coorp is ... an interesting choice ... except maybe as an employee, but even then you're splitting yourself, which I guess is par for the course in this world.

@maegul Yeah, I definitely don’t want to suggest that people who join up are bad, I just feel like there is quite a bit of amnesia about how they’ve handled “content creators” or whatever before. I hope it works and if they shut it down later, they treat people with care and respect.

@kissane I’ve been reading/publishing pieces on Medium for many years now. I’m aware of the myriad pivots, but had no idea about much of what I’m seeing here.

I love my Medium experience but I’m considering a move to Substack because I see a lot of good writers there, but would love to learn more about their experience.

Have you found a good home there? Is there anything problematic worth noting?

@markwyner Oh man, Substack is a real mess on the ethics side. I do a free public health newsletter there bc I’m never ever going paid so they’re never getting a cut, and I needed something fast and I thought temporary, but here I am a year later :/

I think a lot of people do fine on both but they have a lot going on

@kissane thanks much. That’s helpful. I keep leaning towards publishing my own work on my own server. I have the skills to build it. But it’s the community of a reading network that seems elusive.

@kissane whenever Medium is in the news, I think of Matthew Butterick, the Practical Typography guy, talking about the billionaire’s typewriter 😂 practicaltypography.com/billio

practicaltypography.comThe billionaire’s typewriter | Butterick’s Practical Typography