Thoughts on “Censorship”… From a Medium Writer Who Has Been Warned

What’s CEO Tony Stubblebine To Do With Polymaths, Freethinkers and Old Provocateurs?

How much freedom of expression do writers on Medium have?

The managers of Medium deleted one of my stories and then threatened to delete my account, probably because they deemed me antisemitic. Ironic that my father, who was Jewish, doesn’t save me from the threat of ceasing to exist on Medium. Yes, I know, bad joke. I only want to demonstrate why I frustrate Medium staffers.

Medium didn’t have a detailed policy against what I wrote, “Some Jews Have Finally Gone To Far” until after I wrote it. I believed the title would warn away the kind of readers Medium doesn’t want to offend. I was also on the fence about deleting the story myself, not because it was antisemitic, but because I sounded mashugana.

I believe calling anyone a racist, antisemite or anything else is a form of intolerance that only gives the name-callers a feeling of superiority while fixing none of the problems associated.

What to censor is an age-old problem. The Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, admitting we’ll never be able to define destructive speech or media, ended up justifying censorship of hard-pornography with a variant of “I know it when I see it.”

Some people believe they can fix personal and societal problems through positive change. CEO Tony Stubblebine and his like-minded staff are those who try. I believe he and others, who would ban me, sincerely believe in their solutions. Their solution is to remove hateful individuals. They “know them when they meet them”. That’s how we become better humans.

I just wish they’d notice some big audience writers on Medium write anti-white-man speech that, should you fill in “white” with “Jew” would make anyone blush. I’m okay with them, they have an interesting take on things.

Anyway, how can I judge Medium managers when I’m the first to admit I don’t have solutions most people agree with?

Yet do the managers of Medium see the irony of asking writers to leave a platform designed for unique voices? Did Evan Williams first raise capital for Blogger or Twitter with the idea that those businesses would never achieve some sort of monopoly — for only with monopolistic power can VCs cash out.

Wasn’t Blogger started because someone didn’t have a place to write freely? For me Medium has become a place to reach other literate people.

So to ask me to leave, a monopoly I feel built for me? Cold!

Medium’s power resides in its paying readers. Let’ say 700,000 which is around $42 million a year. Sure, to you and I that’s nice money, but I bet Williams never sees a dime of it. The value is in the equity, a combination of stickiness of subscribers and trends in growth (or decline).

Is Tony Stubblebine under intense pressure to protect Medium’s subscriber base? Or grow it? How? Am I part of the future or past?

I understand that if people cancel their subscriptions because of something I write it isn’t a good thing.

THE FUTURE OF MEDIUM

I don’t believe Medium is going to send an apology letter to the writers who it deleted or had their stories removed (one who is 82 years old and begged to be reinstated).

Medium management seems to favor self-improvement writing (and tolerates the cryptocurrency crowd). Through positivity we can make a better world. I’m all for that. But sorry, I don’t write self-improvement.

The world is at war. Hyperbole or not, that’s how I see it. The problems are the same as in the 1930s. Technology has driven a huge divide between social and economic classes.

The effects have already ignited a shooting war in Europe, half a million dead or permanently injured. Hamas was able to attack Israel partly because the wealthy of Israel no longer paid the money to guard the border in places that weren’t Tel Aviv or Haifa. The U.S. is being flooded with migrants, thousands from as far away as China (think about that!). You get the idea.

War, migration, famine — nothing new for those of us who read history. All growing. For thinkers like me, you can’t write about war without upsetting someone about something.

Medium sits in an awkward place between big money politics (Evan Williams is a billionaire) and the freedom of freethinking intellectuals.

Am I over-reacting? Is Medium over-reacting?

For what it’s wroth, I believe Medium IS deep provocative writers who give Medium a profitable monopoly that serves the public-good. We DO have a community here (however small), even if Stubblebine doesn’t take part?

Perhaps Williams will one day invest in Medium, like The New Yorker. He would have to truly believe in the stories we write — warts and all.

I spend more time reading on Medium than writing. Medium IS the new New Yorker for me. A reason why I’m cut to the core when asked to leave.