<story><title>Medium suspended our account and blocked access to all our published stories</title><url>https://mastodon.xyz/@Liberapay/99744324870271197</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>srslack</author><text>&amp;gt;the understanding of platforms like Medium had been that they will not censor people for ideological reasons&lt;p&gt;They threw out their integrity as a publishing platform when they updated their ToS a month ago: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=16431403&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=16431403&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, there is not much of a point to their existence when they throw this away, other than being a virtue signalling magazine with unpaid authors that doesn&amp;#x27;t even follow their own vague ToS.&lt;p&gt;This week has been horrible for speech and freedom on the web. But surely a much needed reminder that suppressing speech does not work. The remedy is more speech, not less: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;prospect.org&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;remedy-more-speech&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;prospect.org&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;remedy-more-speech&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Without holding this uncompromising stance, I&amp;#x27;m of the opinion that one cannot call themselves a liberal, in a liberal democracy. It is the cornerstone of a functioning, modern liberal democracy, and the recent trend of this self-censorship by big technology companies is worrying.</text></item><item><author>greyman</author><text>&amp;gt; You are trading freedom for convenience and access to an audience.&lt;p&gt;While this is certainly true, the understanding of platforms like Medium had been that they will not censor people for ideological reasons, or will do so only if the content is clearly illegal or disturbing. If they will freely censor people, there&amp;#x27;s not much point of their existence.</text></item><item><author>smg</author><text>A blanket statement like &amp;#x27;Medium is bad&amp;#x27; does not have enough nuance. Medium is for profit centralized service. You are trading freedom for convenience and access to an audience. It is for you to decide if this tradeoff is profitable.&lt;p&gt;For me, having Medium as the sole repository of my content does not seem like the right tradeoff. Maintaining a static site with a CDN costs less than 5$ a month. Having complete control over the content is far more valuable than the audience that Medium brings. Mirroring posts to Medium can still allow me to reach that audience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>djflutt3rshy</author><text>If more speech was the remedy to hate speech, then we would expect platforms with the most speech and least censorship would have the least hate. But compare well moderated social discussion sites like MetaFilter, HN, Fark to &amp;quot;anything goes&amp;quot; places like Twitter, 4chan, Reddit, etc. and the opposite is true.</text></comment>
<story><title>Medium suspended our account and blocked access to all our published stories</title><url>https://mastodon.xyz/@Liberapay/99744324870271197</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>srslack</author><text>&amp;gt;the understanding of platforms like Medium had been that they will not censor people for ideological reasons&lt;p&gt;They threw out their integrity as a publishing platform when they updated their ToS a month ago: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=16431403&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=16431403&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, there is not much of a point to their existence when they throw this away, other than being a virtue signalling magazine with unpaid authors that doesn&amp;#x27;t even follow their own vague ToS.&lt;p&gt;This week has been horrible for speech and freedom on the web. But surely a much needed reminder that suppressing speech does not work. The remedy is more speech, not less: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;prospect.org&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;remedy-more-speech&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;prospect.org&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;remedy-more-speech&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Without holding this uncompromising stance, I&amp;#x27;m of the opinion that one cannot call themselves a liberal, in a liberal democracy. It is the cornerstone of a functioning, modern liberal democracy, and the recent trend of this self-censorship by big technology companies is worrying.</text></item><item><author>greyman</author><text>&amp;gt; You are trading freedom for convenience and access to an audience.&lt;p&gt;While this is certainly true, the understanding of platforms like Medium had been that they will not censor people for ideological reasons, or will do so only if the content is clearly illegal or disturbing. If they will freely censor people, there&amp;#x27;s not much point of their existence.</text></item><item><author>smg</author><text>A blanket statement like &amp;#x27;Medium is bad&amp;#x27; does not have enough nuance. Medium is for profit centralized service. You are trading freedom for convenience and access to an audience. It is for you to decide if this tradeoff is profitable.&lt;p&gt;For me, having Medium as the sole repository of my content does not seem like the right tradeoff. Maintaining a static site with a CDN costs less than 5$ a month. Having complete control over the content is far more valuable than the audience that Medium brings. Mirroring posts to Medium can still allow me to reach that audience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>&amp;gt; more speech, not less&lt;p&gt;When speech can be automated, this turns into a question of who has the largest promotional bot army. True speech can be drowned out with an infinite array of conflicting lies.</text></comment>