Are you the CEO of Medium? I suspect not.
Let’s try some logic here. If I were CEO of Medium, would I be complaining about Medium’s policies? “I suspect not,” to quote your words. Therefore, I’m not CEO of Medium. Q.E.D. There now, that wasn’t too complicated. My point here, as I’ve argued in a more general way previously, is that Medium is broken and needs fixing.
On the subject of cowardly Medium authors like raving racist Tenaja Jordan blocking responses critical of their racism so that others don’t get to see such responses (unless they happen to come upon those responses some other way), you didn’t like my analogy of the CEO who speaks at a public function and takes questions but has the organizers silence the mic anytime someone tries to ask a critical question, because you claim the CEO, unlike Ms. Jordan, gets paid for his speech. First of all, there are many Medium writers, such as Ms. Jordan’s fellow raving racist, The DiDi Delgado, who do get paid for their work quite literally (take a look at her author page, where she holds out a clinking tin cup to any of her would-be readers) and still abuse the blocking function in the same way Ms. Jordan did (in fact, what DiDi Delgado did was even more egregious, because while Ms. Jordan blocked me almost immediately after receiving criticism from me, in the case of Ms. Delgado, after she wrote an article advocating violence against white cops, in pure violation of Medium’s rules, after my response calling her out on that violation rose to #1 among the responses to that article, she then proceeded to block me to hide the response). And even if authors don’t get paid literally, many authors are using their platform on Medium to advance their careers in other ways (reputation, etc.). Finally, in my example, even if the CEO didn’t get paid to speak in a public forum, what difference would that make? Does that entitle him, assuming he decides to take questions, to silence those questioners who are critical of him?
Turning to your analogy, which I find to be totally off-base…:
You walk into a bar. No cover charge is required. A speaker gets up and starts an open poetry/ spoken word and talks about how whitey isn’t the brightest bulb on the block, but as people of color, we overlook those shortcomings.
You stand and demand to know why the poet has these feelings. The poet looks at you and does not respond. Instead, the poet has you REMOVED.
If there’s an open mic poetry/spoken word night at some bar, then presumably that’s not a situation where responses are called for. Someone reads a poem. The audience obviously isn’t expected to chime in with a critique. But now let’s imagine a slight tweak on your scenario that makes it more analogous to what we’re discussing here. There’s an open mic “politics” night at the bar where the speaker delivers a controversial political message and then invites questions and comments (which is what an author does when they write on Medium and makes the choice to leave responses enabled). At that point, there’s nothing wrong with me making a critical comment, but there would be something wrong if the organizers heeded the speaker’s call to take away my mic (much less have me removed) when I start being critical (as long as I’m not being abusive or preventing others from speaking). Moreover, I would go further (in your analogy, though, of course, not on Medium) and say that even if no comments are invited, if there’s an open mic and someone starts spewing forth racism, many people would spontaneously hoot, holler, chime in and speak up in response. (If it’s helpful, imagine it’s anti-black racism, so you can see my point more clearly.) Medium allows writers to disable comments entirely, and though that’s not my preference for my own writing — since I actually want engagement, whether positive or otherwise — I have no problem with someone choosing to do that. They just want to have their say and not deal with responses. Fine. But if someone allows responses, then they shouldn’t get the right to wait for those responses to come in and then shut up anyone who’s overly critical.
And this brings me to your point about needing to block people to avoid “bullying”:
Medium has lost some fantastic writers over the years, because when one went to bare their souls with their artistry, essays, personal opinions, etc, they were literally bullied off the platform.
First of all, I’m curious to hear some examples of this. I’m not saying it hasn’t happened, but I’m not familiar with any of these instances. What I can is this: I’ve never bullied anyone. I don’t curse at people, I generally don’t start name-calling and spouting epithets. And unlike your friend Gutbloom (who won’t be able to get through this post of mine because it’s >500 words), I don’t tell people to “go away.” What I do is reason with people. Or, at least, I try. Notice how in this entire response to you, I haven’t called you any names, tried to bully you or silence you or anything of that sort. Some brittle people might be intimidated by reasoning, especially when that reasoning, backed up by evidence, exposes them as frauds, liars, idiots or superficial dolts. But my point is that, as anyone who’s followed me for awhile can attest, I have a lot of patience (much more than I probably should) for fools and keep trying to elevate the discussion even when there’s very little hope that I’m going to succeed. The result is that, on more than a few occasions, I’ve been able to reach out and generate some sort of mutual understanding or agreement when it seemed none was forthcoming. And that makes it all worth it for me.
On the other hand, if you really want to talk about bullying, you have to realize that Medium is completely dominated by people on the regressive left, as I’ve discussed here. Their writing is heavily promoted by the powers-that-be on Medium, and that has resulted in a feedback loop where Medium has gotten something of a reputation for being a forum that hosts such writing, which has resulted in more flocks of these squawking gulls swooping in. And many of those people, when challenged for their often ludicrous overstatements, one-sided histories, myopic perspectives and essentialist identitarian viewpoints, have a tendency to lash out. For example, this was one response to me by someone who didn’t like my critical reasoning in response to his racism. Here’s another post describing me as a “pig” and telling me to go back to Russia, even while (comically in its irony) accusing me of being a racist. I could find many more where those came from. I’m not pointing these out to tell you how oppressed or persecuted I am. I’m actually not bothered on any deep personal level by responses like this and find them childishly funny, just a case of fragile egos cracking and airing their insecurities in public. Such silliness reflects far more on the character of the people engaging in it than it does upon me. But I and many other writers here who have viewpoints that differ from those of the regressive alt-left, writers like, in no particular order, Svetlana Voreskova, Ron Collins, Son of Roy, Paul Frantizek, One Tongue Johnny, Olatunji Jesutomisin, David Shuey, Rick Fischer, Kady M., Solipsis, TheLizard, Louis Weeks, O’Neil, A Ennis, arthur lecuyer, Shachar Haad, and, I am sure, many others I am forgetting to mention and many more I don’t know about, have been subjected to their share of similar abuse. So, if anything, the “bullying” on Medium, just like in our universities, in our media and in our public culture in general in 2017, is in the exact opposite direction from what you describe. Conservatives, libertarians, traditional liberals and independents like myself are almost invariably on the receiving end of attempts at bullying by the P.C. police and the regressive left.
My own view is that silencing people (on Medium) is only appropriate when it gets to the level of pure hate speech, but if you feel bullied by something that doesn’t rise to that level, you’re absolutely welcome to block them so that they don’t see any more of your writing and you don’t see any more of theirs, including their responses to you. You’re not going to feel bullied anymore if someone is invisible to you and vice versa, right? But my point is and has been throughout (and I know that many people agree with me, while others, even in the list of people above, don’t) that your decision to block someone to protect yourself shouldn’t prevent others from seeing their previously posted responses linked to your posts. Otherwise, that crosses the line and becomes a powerful tool of aggressive, post hoc censorship that authors like Tenaja Jordan and The DiDi Delgado and other cowards like them can use to suppress “bad reviews” and create a false impression that everyone loves or agrees with their work, no matter how controversial or racist it may be.
