Why most writers don’t get paid.
I have no idea why more people aren’t talking about this.
The information is all over the internet and there are even Medium stories on the subject.
If a user opens an article in Incognito mode, the 3 stories a month policy goes out the window.
Anyone can read allegedly gated content for free, forever. You don’t even have to delete cookies. Nothing. Just right-click on any story, select to read it in an incognito window, and boom!
Why is Medium doing this to their writers?
The same happens with reading everything via Twitter DMs for free.
If someone’s even too lazy to open the incognito window, they don’t have to. Browser extensions are available to fix that for them.
So, why is Medium not doing anything about this? Why would anyone buy a subscription after finding this out? They’re not hacking anything, just using a vulnerability of the platform.
What am I missing?
Maybe Medium should start paying per view, from both membership holders and non-membership holders, since authors lend their articles to the platform and this is how the platform gets any traffic in the first place.
That would be fair.
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This article was originally published on Medium on January 8, 2022.