Just yesterday I commented to another article on the subject:

I have been on Medium since 2017. I like the concept but see that the execution has been butchered.

The founder and the current leaders see Medium as a platform to publicize their ideological preferences. I know one very good and prolific writer who got an email from Medium that his account had been closed. No explanation. He was very articulative in promoting views contradicting one of the major ideological narratives on Medium.

I never made any meaningful earnings on Medium for the same reason. Two of my articles had some noticeable earnings because Medium boosted them; accidentally, these two texts aligned with Medium’s political objectives.

With that approach, Medium business objective is to lure writers. Good writers are as easy to find as good violin players. So, mediocrity has always dominated on Medium; AI has made it easier.

Medium can become meaningful by attracting readers seeking writing outside the mainstream media. With the deep distrust of the media, it could be a gold mine for Medium. I doubt that the current leadership can grasp that concept and that it has the skills needed to execute it.

However, by promoting high-quality writing on selected hot subjects, Medium can ignore AI-generated material. The general public always had and will have an audience for tabloid-style writings. AI can do it cheaper than humans. So, eliminating it is as easy as exterminating rats in New York. But rats do not define New York; Wall Street does. Medium as a writing platform is like New York without Wall Street. It is like Detroit.

Let me comment on false negatives, such as genuine writing detected as AI-generated. As English is not my native language, and I learned it relatively late in my life, I struggle with grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. Grammarly came to help. I found out that it has a canon of preferred forms and terms. In many instances, I reject the suggestions, believing that my imperfect English can better express my thoughts than the perfection of Grammarly. However, I would not be surprised if some articles written by humans but edited by Grammarly were classified by Pangram Labs as written by AI.

I have many articles about the media; the one expanding on this comment is: “Can Medium be the next big thing in media?”