And, somewhat related, there was period when I think a lot of people assumed, however incorrectly, that content on Medium was somehow differentiated and could be taken more seriously than content on a random individual web site. Anything I ever put on Medium was always mirrored elsewhere, but I did use it for a time--mostly for professional content that my company wanted to link to from newsletters and so forth.
There was a period during which Medium was a signal of quality, probably because it was a niche platform only known in the tech circle and I believe it was invite-only for a while as well.
Now that every marketer, "growth hacker", "entrepreneur" and their dog are on there it's the opposite. Medium is now a signal that some idiot is trying to build credibility in an unrelated field by rehashing basic facts/existing content and peppering it with stock images and "sign up for my newsletter" forms.
