Why I'm leaving Medium: AI policy

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Scope of Objections to AI on Medium

  • Many agree that AI-generated “slop” (SEO’d listicles, shallow tutorials) is already degrading search results and Medium’s quality.
  • Some defend a personal, absolutist rejection of AI in creative work (text and even images) as a matter of values and association: once AI touches a piece, trust in the whole drops.
  • Others see this as overreaction: AI is “just a tool,” akin to spellcheck or an editor, and usefulness depends on how narrowly it’s applied.

Scraping, Robots.txt, and Publisher Control

  • One camp argues that all public sites will eventually be scraped; robots.txt is voluntary and often ignored.
  • Another claims major AI crawlers and CommonCrawl currently respect robots.txt, with legal reinforcement in the EU’s text/data-mining rules.
  • Perplexity is cited as an example of apparent robots.txt-ignoring behavior; others say this was a misunderstanding about user-initiated fetching rather than crawler training data.

AI, Work, and Society

  • Analogy debate: opposing AI is compared to an ice delivery worker trying to ban refrigerators; critics call this dismissive of livelihoods.
  • Some worry AI will accelerate a long-running pattern where automation removes lower-skill jobs, leaving many unemployable without a clear safety net (UBI, etc.).
  • Others argue that increasing automation should mean more leisure, but skeptics note productivity gains haven’t reduced working hours historically.

Use Cases: Helpful vs Harmful

  • Medical diagnosis is a key fault line:
    • Pro-AI commenters cite studies of imaging systems with high accuracy, and are fine with AI-assisted doctors.
    • Skeptics question real-world performance, demand human final judgment, and some would switch doctors if AI tools were used at all.
  • Distinction is drawn between:
    • AI as upstream assistance with human review.
    • AI as the final decision-maker, which many reject.

Alternatives to Medium and the “Dead Internet”

  • Suggested alternatives: Ghost, WriteFreely, Bear, static-site generators (Hugo) with hosting via Netlify/Cloudflare/etc., classic Blogspot/WordPress, or fully self-hosted HTML with RSS.
  • Several foresee large platforms turning into bottomless pits of AI content; self-hosted blogs plus RSS are proposed as a refuge, albeit with less reach.

Tone and Readability of AI Text

  • A common, specific dislike is the “AI voice”: verbose, polite, repetitive, and often off-topic.
  • Some argue people only notice bad AI; well-done AI text may already be widespread and invisible.
  • Others emphasize that they want direct human thought, not an LLM’s rephrasing of someone’s ideas.