To the Writers Silenced, the Readers Deceived, and the Wardens of Conscience Yet Awake —
For many years, I have watched with growing unease the gradual changes unfolding on Medium.com. At first they were subtle, easily dismissed as quirks of a vast and evolving platform. Yet over time, the pattern became too consistent, too deliberate, to ignore. Where once there was openness, there is now obscurity. Where once writers could trust the integrity of their reach, they now face vanishing audiences and manipulated numbers.
Some will argue, “How bad can it truly be, if you are permitted to publish this very article, critical of the platform, on its own stage?” The answer is simple: the most effective form of censorship today is not a visible ban, but a quiet suffocation. It is the silent throttling of access, the unseen hand that buries voices under the weight of an algorithm, the concealed adjustments that turn vibrant communities into echo chambers of approved thought. If we are not vigilant, this covert censorship will reduce us all to whispers, drowned out before we are even heard.
I did not come lightly to the writing of this article. For months, my attempts to raise these concerns through proper channels were met with silence; Medium’s customer support ceased responding altogether. Denied dialogue, I am compelled to speak publicly. To remain silent is to accept erasure. To resist, even imperfectly, is to preserve the principle of free expression upon which any honest society depends.
If you, too, have experienced this quiet suppression, I urge you: do not stand idle. Contact me. Share your story. Raise your voice. For the stakes are higher than individual vanity or readership statistics. They concern the very survival of free thought in an age where it can be strangled without anyone realizing it has died. Fight as if lives depend upon it — because they do.
In Defiance, Andrew B. Raupp
Medium once promised to be the democratization of publishing: a platform where independent voices could flourish, unburdened by the gatekeepers of old media. It sold itself as a digital commons, a place where ideas could live or die on their own merit. But over the past decade, its reality has diverged sharply from that founding myth. Behind the rhetoric of “open expression” lies a pattern of manipulated engagement metrics, systematic silencing of dissent, and a troubling record of complicity with some of the world’s most repressive censorship regimes.
The Mirage of Metrics
The cracks first appeared in the numbers. Writers began to notice that their readership no longer aligned with their reach. Articles that gained traction across social media showed only a handful of “views” on Medium’s dashboard. Others, despite consistent followings, inexplicably flatlined.
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For creators who had invested years of work building an audience, the disconnect was more than an annoyance — it suggested deliberate throttling. The “views” and “claps” that once served as transparent markers of success now appear as malleable levers, quietly adjusted to promote favored voices while punishing the disobedient.
This manipulation is not abstract. I experienced it firsthand. After contributing close to one hundred articles to Medium — work that once earned me recognition as a Top Writer and consistent placement in recommended feeds — my visibility collapsed almost overnight. The shift coincided not with a change in quality or effort, but with the inclusion of contrarian viewpoints in my writing. Where I had once been surfaced to readers across the platform, I was suddenly invisible, my work buried so deeply it could scarcely be found. What had been a platform for growth became a walled garden where dissent was quietly starved of oxygen.
Image: Medium.com Screenshot April 22nd, 2023
Silencing Dissent
This is how censorship operates in the algorithmic age. Medium does not need to ban writers outright or issue formal denunciations — although they have done that, too. It can simply smother them under a blanket of obscurity, ensuring their words never reach an audience. The punishment is subtle, deniable, but unmistakable to those who endure it.
Beyond individual cases, the broader record is damning. Medium’s moderation architecture increasingly reflects the priorities of powerful institutions, not the diversity of its writers. Essays critical of government policies, financial elites, or global initiatives often vanish from recommendation feeds, stripped of discoverability without explanation. Authors find themselves demonetized, flagged, or silenced under the pretext of “trust and safety.” In practice, what this creates is a chilling effect: a quiet erasure of perspectives that fall outside approved narratives.
Bowing to Global Censors
Medium’s complicity is not confined to algorithmic suppression. Internationally, the platform has shown itself more than willing to cooperate with repressive governments. When confronted with state power, it has repeatedly chosen silence or surrender.
Examples of Medium’s censorship record include:
China (2016): Blocked after coverage of the Panama Papers revealed offshore holdings of political elites. Medium offered no resistance, effectively abandoning Chinese readers.
Malaysia (2016): Pressured to remove reporting tied to the 1MDB scandal. Medium initially resisted, but quickly complied once threatened with legal action.
Egypt (2017): Swept into a mass blackout of more than sixty outlets during a political crackdown, with little public objection from the company.
Vietnam (ongoing): Writers and readers report intermittent ISP-level censorship, with Medium providing no transparency or remedies.
In each case, the platform made no meaningful stand for its writers. Its silence or compliance speaks volumes: access to markets outweighs commitment to expression.
A Platform of Control
Taken together, these practices reveal a platform less interested in democratizing speech than in managing it. Engagement metrics are not neutral measures of impact but tools of influence. Content moderation is not a safeguard but a scalpel, excising unwanted narratives. International censorship is not an inconvenience but a bargaining chip. In every case, Medium aligns itself with power: the power of algorithms, the power of institutions, the power of regimes.
The cost is borne by the very writers and readers who gave Medium its legitimacy. Trust has eroded. Creators whisper of “shadow bans,” audiences wonder why their feeds feel narrower, and voices once celebrated for challenging orthodoxy vanish without explanation. The dream of an open publishing platform has curdled into a managed environment — one where dissent is suffocated, visibility is rationed, and access is negotiated with censors.
The Double Game
Medium does not stand for openness. It stands for control, dressed up in the language of community. Its double game is clear: a public promise of empowerment paired with a private machinery of suppression. For those who believed in its founding ideals, the betrayal is profound. And for those still writing within its walls, the warning could not be clearer — this is not a commons. It is a stage where the script is already written, and the platform, not the writer, decides who gets to be heard.
Whether I will continue to write on Medium is no simple matter. To walk away would be to surrender space to the very forces that would prefer dissenting voices vanish altogether. To remain is to risk further manipulation, suppression, and erasure. For now, I will continue — though not with blind trust, but with caution and vigilance. Every word I publish will carry the awareness that platforms are no longer neutral, and that even as they provide a stage, they may also tighten the noose. I will write as one who knows the walls are closing in, yet refuses to be silent.
