My Future Perspectives on Medium

The Story of my Ban, What I Learned and What I Am Doing Now

Photo by Junseong Lee on Unsplash

A couple of weeks ago, like every morning, I got up and opened Medium. However, in addition to the usual screen, there was also this unusual red banner:

I realized in no time that I could no longer interact with other people’s stories or publish anything. In one word, I had been banned.

First Reaction

I admit the first reaction hasn’t been pleasant.

However, after a few minutes, curiosity struck me to understand what I had done. The only explanation I could find on my profile was: “Violation of Medium Rules,” with a link to the Terms and Conditions. Since I’m not one to take things lightly, and I had already thoroughly gone through them, I wrote an email to the Help Center asking for further explanations.

In response (two days later), they simply reiterated that there was a violation without specifying what it was and asked me to clarify how I use my account. Now, I believe that when you ban someone, you should be the one to know why, not me to provide explanations. Anyway, I provided these explanations, and they (after another two days, thus passing the 8th of the month and causing me to miss the February payment deadline) reactivated me, specifying that “next time it happens (and here I couldn’t help but think: “What happens?”) it won’t be possible to reactivate me”. They also wrote that the February payments will be arriving in April.

So, here I am.

Reflections on What Happened

Since I was still able to see other authors’ articles, I read a ton of stories about it, and I understood that there had been a massive ban. Probably, my account had been associated with fraudulent ones, but this, besides being blatantly false, didn’t explain why other accounts, which even commented twice as much as mine, were still active.

But above all, another question tormented me: if I had been a more followed author, who and what would have compensated me for the damage to my image?

In the meantime, there was another significant event approximately 24 hours earlier.