I'm concerned with the move that FreeCodeCamp just pulled by leaving Medium(dev.to)
dev.to
I'm concerned with the move that FreeCodeCamp just pulled by leaving Medium
https://dev.to/ben/i-m-concerned-with-the-move-that-freecodecamp-just-pulled-by-leaving-medium-io8
31 comments
On an unrelated note, I really wish that Medium hadn't gone to a pay-after-three model like everyone else- not only can I not afford it, it feels counter-intuitive. To me, Medium is a place where budding bloggers, industry professionals, etc. can get a start or work on building up and out their careers and influence- and it doesn't make sense to say "you have to spend money to give these people attention", especially when I can that same blog post somewhere else. Medium, the company, doesn't seem to produce much content, and so it seems unfair for them to restrict the flow to the creators themselves.
Budding bloggers can just stay outside the pay wall, which applies only to articles that the author chooses to monetize.
For the moment their paywall can be bypassed by using private browsing, it might still present you with a nag screen but after that’s closed it should display the article.
Yes, Medium pulled a bait and switch which lead to a lot of rightfully unhappy customers.
It was this behavior which led to publications like Hackernoon and FreeCodeCamp to begin leaving.
Ultimately the reasons for wanting to leave make a lot of sense. Doing it _in this way_ is the troubling part.
It was this behavior which led to publications like Hackernoon and FreeCodeCamp to begin leaving.
Ultimately the reasons for wanting to leave make a lot of sense. Doing it _in this way_ is the troubling part.
What monetization model would you suggest? The pay after three model only applies when the authors opt-in, and they earn a share of the profits.
What ever happened to writing for free? I don’t want everyone to get paid for posts. It should be rewarded based on merit.
Yes, but maybe they do want to be paid for their posts. They can choose to write for free, but they didn't.
Silicon Valley happened.
what does "pay-after-three" mean?
After reading three articles for free, they want you to pay them money to continue reading.
I thought we had a story a while back about FreeCodeCamp trying to contact the authors while trying to get off Medium.
In the end it seems very strange that Medium, FreeCodeCamp and the authors all were intertwined in very strange ways as far as ownership and why they were involved together.
In the end it seems very strange that Medium, FreeCodeCamp and the authors all were intertwined in very strange ways as far as ownership and why they were involved together.
I am happy with the FreeCodeCamp move and I want all the engineering blog to move off from the medium.
It's really pain when you open the blog and you get they paywall to say "You read much ...". Really, It's annoying what Medium become.
It's really pain when you open the blog and you get they paywall to say "You read much ...". Really, It's annoying what Medium become.
"Publications on Medium are bound by the Medium Terms of Service, and they have no right to your content that you do not explicitly grant them. That includes exporting, copying, or reposting your content to any website that is not Medium.com"
"You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium"
Wait what? If it's my content and I own the rights, I can repost it wherever I wish.
"You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium"
Wait what? If it's my content and I own the rights, I can repost it wherever I wish.
The publications have no right of export of content they display that you posted yourself, unless you declared otherwise to the publication.
If you, the same legal entity, are both poster and republisher, then Medium’s statement is both true and irrelevant to you, as you retain the right of export that they guarantee is the poster’s to exercise.
If you, the same legal entity, are both poster and republisher, then Medium’s statement is both true and irrelevant to you, as you retain the right of export that they guarantee is the poster’s to exercise.
Yep, if FreeCodeCamp secured the right to reproduce the content elsewhere everything is fine, but if they didn't they probably shouldn't have stood up the new site with an export of the content.
Many publications that pay for content secure the perpetual right to publish the content and usually some expiring right to exclusive publishing of the content and the writers themselves retain copyright. Not sure if FreeCodeCamp did this.
Many publications that pay for content secure the perpetual right to publish the content and usually some expiring right to exclusive publishing of the content and the writers themselves retain copyright. Not sure if FreeCodeCamp did this.
Yes, you can post it wherever you wish. A third party publication on Medium, however, cannot do so without your consent.
The authors of the posts probably own the rights. FreeCodeCamp doesn't (as far as I can tell).
The intricacies and legal details here are a little beyond the scope of my understanding. Medium was never much, and when they turned into a popup-serving nagware, that was the end of them for me.
Please post here if you file a DMCA claim against them for misuse of your content without your permission. Their contact information is in their terms of service ([email protected]) and their public non-profit filing (1), and they declare themselves subject to US Law.
They are a nonprofit, so they have the option of offering each author a tax deduction as payment for content. If you have entered into any rights deal with them directly, you may not have standing to make a DMCA claim; take care not to knowingly do so under such circumstances, as that is likely a crime under US federal law.
Their hosting provider will likely also want to be notified of your DMCA claim, as they may be in violation of contractual agreements signed for their hosting.
(1) https://s3.amazonaws.com/freecodecamp/Free+Code+Camp+Inc+IRS...
They are a nonprofit, so they have the option of offering each author a tax deduction as payment for content. If you have entered into any rights deal with them directly, you may not have standing to make a DMCA claim; take care not to knowingly do so under such circumstances, as that is likely a crime under US federal law.
Their hosting provider will likely also want to be notified of your DMCA claim, as they may be in violation of contractual agreements signed for their hosting.
(1) https://s3.amazonaws.com/freecodecamp/Free+Code+Camp+Inc+IRS...
Does medium even provide any valuable content? Every time I've been there's it's been nothing but people who are total amateurs talking out of their ass as tho they're experts.
There's also seemingly useful articles that end up being content marketing!
I understand his concerns, but frankly Medium is a purulent ulcer on the web that needs to be put out of its misery ASAP.
One thing mentioned in Ben’s post that’s worth talking about explicitly: if you add a post to Medium using their import feature, Medium will set the canonical URL to your original URL. This meant that when if you imported a post from your personal blog and submitted it to FreeCodeCamp, you’d get a big SEO benefit: your post was shared on one of the biggest Medium publications, but any backlinks and ranking boosts would apply back to your original post, on your website.
As part of this migration, FreeCodeCamp has removed canonical URLs from submitted posts - your original post is now competing with freecodecamp.org, and Google (and other search engines) is going to do a duplicate content check. Considering that FCC is in the top 2000 sites in the world according to Alexa[1], there’s a _strong_ chance your site will be penalized. This is a big deal for authors.
[1]: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/freecodecamp.org
As part of this migration, FreeCodeCamp has removed canonical URLs from submitted posts - your original post is now competing with freecodecamp.org, and Google (and other search engines) is going to do a duplicate content check. Considering that FCC is in the top 2000 sites in the world according to Alexa[1], there’s a _strong_ chance your site will be penalized. This is a big deal for authors.
[1]: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/freecodecamp.org
What kind of example does it set for FreeCodeCamp to rely on a site like Medium as opposed to making its own site and sharing that code on GitHub? Budding engineers don't need to rely on sites like Medium when they can put together their own sites and learn about SEO.
That's a really good point, but that may not be ideal from a pure learning perspective.
Engineers are often subject to the whims of management, tight deadlines, dependency quirks, their own personal bias, and so on. A living example would showcase all of those things, but unless you annotate each line and comment excessively, you lose a lot of context.
It's also much easier to follow a tutorial than to dig through commit history and piece everything together yourself.
Engineers are often subject to the whims of management, tight deadlines, dependency quirks, their own personal bias, and so on. A living example would showcase all of those things, but unless you annotate each line and comment excessively, you lose a lot of context.
It's also much easier to follow a tutorial than to dig through commit history and piece everything together yourself.