I've written to Tony before about how the new algo has slashed earnings by 60-80% and received back nothing but corporate doublespeak. The numbers from an unintentional double blind clinical trial don't lie, though Tony does when he writes this: "I can tell you that revenue and visitor traffic is up since I joined." Here's how:
Two articles on the same topic, similar engagement, views, reads and the longer one (15 min read) published after the transition earned half as much as the shorter one (11 min read) published before:
More Chaos Theory, Russian Style
In Lessons from HistoryView stats 559 8 $16
JULY 2023
Chaos Theory, Russian Style
In Lessons from HistoryView stats 290 5 $32
I could, but won't, bore readers by listing several other examples here to prove this is not sampling error.
I, and others writing the most expert, research-intensive articles on the Russia-Ukraine war (Dylan Combelick, Andrew Tanner, Brian Kean, Chris Snow, Wes O'Donnell) have all experienced this drop in earnings.
I don't need the money from Medium earnings. But the money is the symbolic representation of respect....vs contempt. Because of Medium's disrespect for the knowledge and skills we've built up over decades (speaking Russian and/or Ukrainian), govt/military service, teaching in Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, Poland) from living in these countries, some of us have talked about or begun to move our content elsewhere. This will, of course, by default leave the field to Medium's stateside Putin Parrot disinformation warriors.
Intentionally or not, Medium has made a choice similar to Putin Parrot Elon Musk when he turned off Starlink within 100 km of Crimea to prevent a successful Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol a year ago.
As a successful angel investor in startups in multiple countries I know when a CEO is blowing smoke. This is one of those times.
The real motives for the changes are these: the investors who have funded Medium with $160m for a decade have told the new CEO to get to break even ASAP because they've turned off the funding tap. There are two sources of funding to replace the VC and high net worth funding tap gone dry:
1. Writers' earnings.
2. Tapping subscription revenue from new partner program countries, most of whose populations have/are:
a. Drowning in Russia-sponsored disinformation (India, the UAE, Orban's Hungary, Brazil)
b. Have low incomes and therefore
c. See lowered writer earnings payments as still a substantial boost to their incomes.
As I said above, the numbers don't lie.
See you on Substack:
https://lestergolden.substack.com/p/channel-check-russias-army-and
