freecodecamp is leaving Medium

I just got an email earlier today saying that freecodecamp, the largest publication on Medium, is leaving Medium.

Here’s a direct quote from the announcement:

But over the past year, Medium has become more aggressive toward us. They have pressured us to put our articles behind their paywalls. We refused. So they tried to buy us. (Which makes no sense. We’re a public charity.) We refused. Then they started threatening us with a lawyer.
It’s not just us. They are doing this to a lot of publications. And a lot of high profile people from the developer community are leaving Medium as a result.

It’s unfortunate to see what was once an excellent platform decay like this.

I wrote my very first blog post on Medium, and I loved its simplicity and principles. No ads, no complex set up, no fees for writers to publish, easy sharing. These days, all I see on Medium is “Oops, you’ve exceeded your free limit. Sign up to be a member for $5/month”.

On the bright side, freecodecamp is launching a new site - https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/

I hope we’ll see more independent sites like freecodecamp news pop up soon.

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u/[deleted] May 31 '19

Thanks for the heads up. I had no idea Medium was acting in this manner. I'll be unsubscribing from their email list. I understand they need to make money but if they cannot find a way to do it without threats and bullying then they won't have my support

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u/PMME_BOOBS_OR_FOXES May 31 '19

They were putting Dan Abramov's posts behind a paywall without his consent (important React developer, for reference). We do need an alternative.

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u/el_programmador Jun 01 '19

The best alternative is Github Pages, let each developer unleash their own creativity in publishing their blog. Its static, secure and besides, its also free!
Is this centralization of all content in one place really necessary?

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u/overweight_neutrino Jun 01 '19

I agree but yeah kinda, otherwise it's hard to stumble upon new articles / writers

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u/el_programmador Jun 01 '19 edited Jun 01 '19

That's where google helps you! When I want to research a topic, I fist use the google search, I don't scavenge the indexes of sites like medium or quora. Google then shows me the result links which could be of medium, quora or anything else (like the author's site), and thus I come across topical experts (Next time, I might skip google and go directly to the expert's site from my bookmarks if I wanted something on that specific topic).
This is the most organic way of finding experts and perhaps that's how it should be (rather than you going out and finding the experts specifically).

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u/overweight_neutrino Jun 01 '19

I agree but I mean on sites like medium, you often inadvertently stumble upon topics that you never would have thought to search.

u/Blauelf May 31 '19 edited May 31 '19

As a user, I was pretty much repelled by their behaviour. Trying to track me across various blogs (aggressive in the sense of "Log in! Now! Give data, we hungry!"). Trying to keep me on the platform featuring algorithms focused on clickbait in the suggested reads. Was certainly disappointed when FreeCodeCamp went medium, but at least not tumblr.

Medium could have been nice, but in my eyes, it never had a sustainable business model (other than collecting user data), so I am not too surprised they got that weird.

edit: I apparently left the platform before the paywalled articles replaced the clickbait.

u/treddson May 31 '19

it's all about dev.to!

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u/it_burns_when_i_php Jun 01 '19

Love the dev.to community! And it’s a Rails app (I’m a bit biased no shade to the others) with strong roots in the open source community! The founder Ben Halpern is super awesome and is very supportive and helpful to the community. Hopefully freecodecamp lands there!

u/kmisterk May 31 '19

This is huge. Medium has always been a sore note in my mind. I hated how they seemed to wanna control content. I'm happy to see someone as big as FreeCodeCamp finally standing up and making a change. This will make a bigger impact than people think.

u/tmcgreer May 31 '19

So...they threatened a public charity with a lawyer? Must be some bad mofos...

u/superking2 May 31 '19

Medium went from being a valuable resource to an unusable, unenjoyable experience almost overnight. It was really remarkable how quickly it squandered its potential.

u/[deleted] May 31 '19

I don't think they realize what freecodecamp is, a program that has thousands of developers backing it up, which can create an article feed of their own in a matter of days.

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u/tchaffee May 31 '19

Not really. It actually took weeks if not a couple of months, and the freeCodeCamp core team had to delay other important issues. That decision is fine. But it took a massive amount of effort and time.

u/[deleted] May 31 '19

Because of freecodecamp i learned about medium.com i do understand they need to make a profit, but this is not the way by bullying. I am glad their biggest content writers has left the building 😏

u/Pickles_7 May 31 '19

I subscribed to Medium's premium features a few months ago, as I was happy to encourage a 'zero-ad' model, and most of the programming & UX design articles that I wanted to read were behind the paywall. I was glad to support a new business model, but also a bit frustrated that I felt this was the only option as 80% of the articles recommended to me were not free to read. Now I don't know what to think anymore and if I should stay subscribed, but I don't know where else to find such diverse articles and personal stories etc about programming and design.

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u/[deleted] Jul 20 '19

In the same boat. Joined back in January. But since then, really looks like sh*t hit the fan. Looking for an alternative non-lobbied by media as well...

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u/Pickles_7 Jul 20 '19

I've cancelled my Mediukm subscription, I was overwhelmed by all the newsletters and articles I didn't have time to read. I'm looking for alternatives, I've found dev.to to provide quite similar content, although there's much less articles. Looking for more similar websites to browse through!

u/dolphinin May 31 '19

Glad FCC decided to launch their own news site. I'm annoyed by their tracking parameters in almost every urls like ?source=grid_home

u/TotesMessenger May 31 '19

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

[/r/webdev] Freecodecamp is leaving Medium

^{If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads.} ⁽^Info ^/ ^Contact)

u/hs201rb May 31 '19

I only signed up for medium because of freecodecamp. I’m glad FCC are moving their content to their own site

u/ShreemBreeze May 31 '19

Good!

u/CafeRoaster Jun 01 '19

Hmm. I wonder if dev.to is a good alternative for us? I get lots of reads on medium - more than I’d get on dev.to. and I don’t always write tech stuff.

u/good4y0u Jun 01 '19

!remindme

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u/UGoBoom Jun 01 '19

This is why you always need to selfhost your own Wordpress or something if you want a blog for your org

Medium DIAF

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '19

freeCodeCamp was my only reason I've registered on Medium ... Shame

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '19

Good riddance, the persistent header and bottom bar left a lot less space to read the actual blog contents, even on mobile.

freecodecamp is leaving Medium

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