Is it time for a Medium Member Reciprocity rating?

One that reflects the change of the algorithm to relational

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

During my first year on Medium, I saw that writers adjusted to various changes, including updating the user agree to give Medium greater discretion over content distribution on and off the website. I suspect that most of us (myself included) still don’t know the full implications of this means.

There has been a monumental change in the compensation scheme away from claps to reads. Now that we’ve had some time to adjust to the read-based compensation system, it seems obvious that written content is made to be read. This change also begs the question: did people actually clap without reading what they were clapping for before this?

This compensation change has resulted in massive income drops for some of the platform’s biggest names, of which I am sadly not one. Medium’s own blog entries point to a more “relational” experience. Medium writers like Terry Mansfield point to reciprocity as their key to success.

Medium’s move away from its own publications to a reader/writer relationship model has implications. By relational, Medium is valuing how we interact with others and compensating accordingly. There are many ways in which the platform allows us to connect. Claps, responses, follows…