Dear Medium Trust & Safety Department

You’re not going to like what I have to say!

THANK YOU!

Although I feel you treated me horribly in suspending one of my stories — no reason given — and insinuating I’m a criminal…

THANK YOU!

Your work is thankless. I’m sorry it’s that way. All I can do is point out one little thing —

Behind your defensive line, writers on Medium are exploring subjects in unique, fearless ways one won’t find anywhere else (at least I haven’t).

Sure, there are superb writers at The New Yorker, NYT, Atlantic, Washington Post and other publications. But they’re all somewhat predictable and err on the side of caution.

Sure, you suspended one of my pieces (which I agree may have been over the line) but you’ve let all the others go through. I’ve written 200+ stories.

In 2018 I came to Medium to write. I ended up spending 90% of my time reading others. Sure, I read stuff in the name publications listed above. Yet I often suspect they’ve regurgitated and dumbed down what a Medium writer wrote weeks or months beforehand.

So I say this sincerely. Medium is a special platform. Medium writers are a special breed. They succeed solely on the quality of their writing, not the reputation of the publication. When they need a boost of confidence, they can’t drop “I write for the New York Times”.

So I’m here to say, I for one — and I bet many writers — appreciate what we have here and should probably thank you from time to time.

So again, THANK YOU!

You should be very proud of the work you do. For all our gripes, Medium — you — deliver us an audience we can’t reach anywhere else.

Show me any other platform where the people who comment on the stories ADD to the subject discussed. Very few people who comment on my stories are trolls. And that’s

BECAUSE OF YOU.

No one in management says, “let’s pay top dollar for someone in Trust & Safety.” I know, as every writer should know, that Medium is under constant attack, 24/7. Spammers, fraudsters, identity thieves, plagiarists, propagandists, trolls, bots and on and on.

Just know, you can talk to me. I think you can talk to most writers here on Medium. Feel free to vent. Most of all, give us the benefit of the doubt. If you had written me saying “I believe your story is not in the spirit of our guidelines” I probably would have taken it down myself. Of course, there are some writers who would make you regret your personal approach. Anyway, I don’t want to make this about me.

Medium is Medium in large part because of your efforts. If someone dropped the name “Medium” at a party I went to — it would impress me!

So again, THANK YOU!