As a paying subscriber, I lost faith in Medium during COVID, when they started censoring and deleting posts that analyzed COVID data and information. Those speculative amateur posts often resulted in findings that went against the prevailing public health guidance or scientific consensus. While many were wrong, many of those early amateur posts ended up being correct on some counts as well. I feel they deserved a place for the conversation to be held. I was put off by the seemingly arbitrary choices medium made in deleting content, especially considering the WHO and other agencies have been wrong on COVID repeatedly - amateur speculation and reporting was necessary.
A democratized internet requires that we exercise that democratic right and retain control over our content, rather than handing control to new platform masters.
It's really sad. Not just medium but Facebook, twitter, YouTube all blocked such content/posts and tried to stifle the content creators. YouTube even permanently banned many channels. I didn't know medium did the same.
A democratized internet requires that we exercise that democratic right and retain control over our content, rather than handing control to new platform masters.