Medium claims to "provide a platform for everyone to come to share their stories and express their viewpoints." However in my experience this is not true. Medium.com is arguably a great platform for blogging and writing but it is clearly biased in favour of certain protected groups.
While Medium prohibits harassment of users based on gender and race they also reserve the right not to take action at their discretion. After using Medium for a period of time one will observe that there are a number of protected groups who are allowed to engage in targeted hatred against other non-protected groups and any rebuttals, even polite ones, often will result in action by moderators against those people.
I have included in pictures below screenshots in which a Medium user discusses how while it would be unfair to kill all men he would support doing so while allowing women to keep a small stock of men for breeding purposes. In another screenshot you will find an article in which a non-white person discusses how white people are dirty for not using water after going to the toilet and in an additional screenshot you will find a black persons struggle to 'see humanity in white people' alongside an article entitled 'My Dad Taught Me Never to Trust White People'. These are some of thousands upon thousands of Medium articles which have been published which are clear violations of Mediums own hate speech policy prohibiting attacks based on gender and race.
In my 6 months of using Medium I was reported by members of these protected groups 3 times - one of those violations, classified as 'Hate Speech' was when I wrote that 'I don't care or think that gender identity is really that important.". Clearly this is not 'Hate Speech'. The sentence does not attack those who identify as other in gender. It simply says that I hold the opinion that gender identity is not important to me. Ironically I do support naturally gendered people and I support people who re-gender. I simply don't consider it to be particularly important in a world which is frankly falling apart. In the next infraction I was in violation when I was personally attacked by somebody because I didn't anticipate that continuing to politely engage with them would result in a personal attack. Finally today my subscription was cancelled and I was permanently suspended from Medium because I politely replied to an article by a particularly active user who has a very large following and large internet presence. She was not happy that I disagreed with her article and subsequently blocked and reported me. Medium immediately suspended me and their reason was that I had too many infractions and must therefore be an abusive person.
In terms of Mediums customer service, I have responded each time to its warnings, twice several months ago and one today and to date I have never received a response to my enquiries or a reasonable explanation of their actions. This is despite being a paying customer.
In light of what I have written I would say that if you are a certain category of human (gender, race) that you would probably find Medium to be enjoyable, welcoming and perhaps even profitable if you write well but that if you are my gender, race you will certainly not unless you conform to Mediums expectations and narrative and you can tolerate Medium serving you constantly with articles that attack your race and gender in hateful ways.
While it proclaims to be an open platform for all writers, I would disagree. I submitted a few pieces of content, after paying the fee to join the site. It was supposed to take at least two weeks for the curation process according to the help section, yet mine was turned down in a matter of hours. Curation guidelines are very vague and after some extensive online research, I discovered why.
While anyone is free to publish what they want the curation is geared towards individuals who fit the image of what Medium stands for. This is leftist politics, SJW propaganda, and other extreme left views. Which is fine, if that's what you want to do. My issue is maybe you should just be upfront with what your goals are. It would be nice so people like me, who are neutral and couldn't care less about politics, didn't waste our time and energy trying to please curators. Instead, they dangle a carrot in front of you with the chance of being featured or making money when people read your content. Well, when paying members read your content.
As I said, the curation guidelines are not clear and I can't understand why there wouldn't be an in-depth style guide if you really wanted writers to succeed. The only reason I can guess is that they don't want to come right out and say the content they really want is blogs about Medium (free SEO work), health and lifestyle that borders on pseudoscience, and feminist or SJW propaganda. I use that word for it's meaning only, those subjects are not a bad thing, and I think they should have a platform. I just want to know if I am submitting to one since my content would not fit in.
Then there's the lack of customization and I am fairly certain that I had "claps" on a few of my articles that are no longer there. Also, the stats said I had a total of 30 reads on an article, but the next day it was down to 4. On another it had been 25, then 1. So, I don't know if it was a glitch or, as some others claim, the site being deceitful, it's curious is all I do know. It would just be nice to see some transparency with these blogging platforms, they remind me of content mills. They want all the content they can get for SEO, but only praise the pieces that fit their mold. But, don't really tell anyone what that mold is.
I am happy for those who have found success on the site, however, I did notice that the same authors are always featured, even some of the content a year or two old. So, if there are so many writers using the site, how come only a handful are featured? If every writer has an opportunity to be featured or curated why is it these two dozen or so authors that get all the attention? I am not claiming that my content is better than their's or even worth featuring, I am saying that there are signs that the site is not what it claims to be.
I would really take time and consideration before posting there. As of this, I am working on removing my content and finding a more neutral outlet.