On “Free” Writing Platforms

I love and hate Medium (the blogging platform founded by ex-twitter Evan Williams) equally. I might hate it more than I love it since I am clearly not using it for my blog. I appreciate that it has become a platform for many voices that otherwise might have never ventured to online blogging. However, it’s also a trap for its users, who might find that leaving the space once they outgrow it is not possible.

Matthew Butterick summarizes it best"

Whereas the tra­di­tional type­writer of­fered free­dom at the cost of de­sign, the bil­lion­aire’s type­writer of­fers con­ve­nience at the cost of freedom. ~The Billionaires Typewriter

I dislike Medium for many reasons but I believe there is a place in the web for tools that ask the absolute bare minimum of its users. Not everybody has the time—or inclination—to figure out what Wordpress is all about, and how to get it up and running.

Medium also dif­fers from ear­lier blog­ging ser­vices in a sig­nif­i­cant, con­trar­ian way: it of­fers you, the writer, nearly zero op­tions for the pre­sen­ta­tion of your sto­ries. No mat­ter what kind of story you write, or who your read­ers are, it gets pack­aged into a sin­gle, non-ne­go­tiable template. ~The Billionaires Typewriter

And to the question “how does Medium im­prove the In­ter­net?” Well… it exists, it has a point of view. If you don’t like it, code your counter argument.