You know what?

I like reading articles on Medium. It’s one of the paid memberships that make the monthly cut.

Good content creators found their voice here and I enjoy their work.

I hit refresh and discover new things all the time.

And then… the clouds show up.

Not even the good kind.

These clouds make the space beneath them seem tiny, with no air left to breathe properly.

And they’re everywhere. No matter the topic, you can’t find the good things because of them.

And then, a few clicks later, you realize it’s smog, not clouds.

More and more of it every day.

There are so many users who pollute this space with their posts.

I used to think the platform itself is mainly a junk collection.

But no. The good writers are here, the interesting content is here, no matter the niche.

It’s the ticks that attached themselves to the platform that make the quality articles so difficult to find.

So, I activated the Spring Cleaning mode for my timeline.

I started blocking “authors” like crazy. Block, not mute.

It’s the only way in which we can clear the air on Medium in particular, and socially, in general… or stay disease-free, depending on the metaphor you prefer.

I understand we sometimes decide to publish content that is not top-quality — we all have our days, as well as topic and style preferences.

I don’t block writers who usually publish good content and have a few bad or cringy stories here and there. My own pieces do that dance at times.

No. It’s more severe types of quality and common sense infringement that make me hit “Block”.

I will list below some of my criteria.

I Will Block You on Medium if…

• You publish “How To Be Successful On Medium” stories when you’ve only joined the platform days ago.
• You steal other people’s success stories and turn them into your own “How To Make Money/Be Successful” articles.

• You write “self-help”, “personal development”, or “psychology” articles but your credentials in the field are zero and you do not link to or mention trustworthy sources for your recommendations.
• You write low-quality stories about making tons of money but label them satire since they’re nothing but a bunch of clickbait crap.

• You mainly write about how you make $3.49 each month from writing and call it “your Medium journey”.
• It’s obvious that you are making stuff up. No evidence to support your claims, silly “personal stories” that make it seem like everything that could happen to a person in a lifetime just happened to you over the last week.
• You rely too much on recommendations from side-hustle or personal development “gurus” and write about how you think they’re geniuses — it shows that you’ve never read a good book from the fields where those scammers activate.
• You write erotica. There’s a time and a place for that. I don’t think Medium is the place. I am also not interested in the genre itself. It’s cheap in more ways than one, most of the time.
• You write on controversial topics but only use them because they can bring in the clicks. No essence, no original thoughts, just a regurgitation of something that could‘ve been a stupid Twitter exchange.

• It’s not over. I am sure that the more time I will spend on the platform, the more criteria I will discover and add to this list.

My timeline seems airier now.

Thank you for reading.

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This article was originally published on an external platform on May 4, 2022.