Medium seems to suffer from another problem: AI-generated content and fake account for fake engagement to generate revenues. According to their recent article (Paywall might be enforced to read this), many accounts under the Partner Program were suspended recently to stop this fraud.

I’ve returned to Medium last fall (read my comments about the reading and writing experience over there) and found that content quality has gone down compared to what we used to read there. The revenue program is much less generous than it used to be. I published 18 stories since my return and earned less than a dollar! We don’t know how these revenues are calculated, but it is a bit insulting or at least discouraging. At this rate, I won’t recover the Partner Program subscription cost in the first year which makes my presence there questionable. This should have been a no-cost journey which it’s not. Still seven months to go…

Manuel Moreale link posting on the subject of header images on blog posts:

“I’ll go one step further Nelson, I have a growing hatred towards pointless images in blog posts in general, I don’t even care if they’re AI-generated or not. If they’re there as part of the content then by all means use them but if you’re just adding a stock image from unsplash to make the page “feel” more interesting then you’re just part of the broader problem that’s plaguing the web.”

Header images do add to the page load times, yes I do use AI-generated images from time to time, like in this post where I wanted to make a point, and I use many of my personal photos… like in this edition of the Ephemeral Scrapbook newsletter. Yes, I prefer header images on that specific blog because it is part of its visual theme. So then what? That’s MY corner of the web. I do what I find cool and creative and whatever.

I’m guessing he’s reading none of my blogs because of this, among other reasons?

Here is a thought about recent tweaks to RSS importer on Micro.blog. For example, now it’s possible to import photos in the RSS feed published by Glass. With this, when I publish a photo on Glass, it gets posted on my blog too. The same photo on two platforms. As much as I like the POSSE principle for writing, it doesn’t fit well with my desire to share photos on special places, like a photo-dedicated service. Glass is such a special place, just like Pixelfed. What would be the point of having a single photo spread out on other platforms? I see places like Glass like museums. Pieces of art hanged on the wall of a museum are unique to this place. It makes the place unique. I’m still thinking about all this.