Funny how Medium started out being branded as the one clean template alternative to all the others, and has now devolved into just as cluttered as all the rest.
Medium's trashed their brand way before this. Likely the point where quality content became less of a concern than 'anything with words' and the staff decided that promoted the vapid and overtly political was more important than finding decent stuff for their users to read.
Of course, all these layout changes and annoyances have helped even more, so what was once a minimalistic site with a decent quality control standard is now just any old blogging platform with any old blogging platform's ugly awkward to use layout.
The sad part is that the only reason people use Medium in the first place is because it started out as a place where you could guarantee the content would be readable and relatively nicely presented...
Oh I so tend to agree. Medium started off really well but started to lack moderation and it was quickly swamped with fluff opinion pieces and outdated half-assed IT instructions.
Medium used to be so good in it's early days (first 2-4 years) that it was my favorite site to visit. I remember even signing up for paid membership as soon as they rolled it out.
Now I never go there. The design degraded so much and the user experience sucks.
It's amazing to me how can something so good become so terrible so quickly. Truly makes me believe that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a great mantra to live by when it comes to redesign initiatives.
I find it odd that Medium, a company that preaches design from every corner of their soap box, can't even create an enjoyable reading experience. From top to bottom the entire site is just a UX mess.
I remember when Medium first came out, it was "all about the words". Today it couldn't be further from that. Medium articles are slow, janky, filled with pop ups and paywalls.
Medium, is now full of clickbaitish articles + content marketing from various people pandering their online courses. Way different from the medium, I fell into when I discovered it. Recently deleted the mobile app.
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