Member-only story
Articles Shadow Banned in February
For some reason, they didn’t want you to see these
Hello readers.
I published less on Medium in February because I was busy finalizing my next book. That book on political ideologies will be released by the end of March. The publicists say they need to do some magic first. Sadly, no interview on the Daily Show is yet scheduled.
Other writers on Medium tell me that their February numbers were down from their average views. I also experienced that, and a slightly lower percentage of articles Boosted. I did, however, have a much higher percentage of articles shadow banned.
A quick reminder — shadow banned means an article is not outright censored, but it is not distributed — not shown in anyone’s feed. It’s relegated to Tier 3 status, as explained in the screen grab below. No one will have the option to read the article unless they look at the author’s page, which, of course, very few people do.
It is very easy for an author to identify an article relegated to Medium’s Tier 3 cellar, left to gather dust. Below are my articles published in February that were shadow banned — not allowed to be seen by Medium readers, resulting in those articles receiving fewer than 10% of the average views my articles receive. (The gulf in number of views between articles shadow banned and articles allowed general distribution is stark and stunning. We are talking about hundreds of views.)
They, of course, stifled this article, as any company would suppress a critical article.
They refused to Boost my political commentary, Why Trump Wins, but they didn’t suppress it either and it had many readers. They did shadow ban the follow-up, though, that dug deeper into the power of fear. Does Medium fear serious content?
