Of Little Hearts and Open Minds in the Medium Community
A recent piece by Medium’s “unofficial cheerleader” — SF Ali — has garnered some attention. You can read through it, but the basic premise is this: the Medium staff reached out to him to question the authenticity of his recommendations. They believe that based on the frequency of his recommendations, and the content of some of his recommendations, he may be using some sort of software to make numerous quick recommendations, or merely hitting the green heart on nearly everything without reading it.
My man Ali was a bit miffed, of course. He’s been on Medium for a long time — reading, recommending, and commenting on a lot of people’s stuff. That includes commenting on a lot of my stuff (and I have a lot of stuff).
I can understand why he had the reaction he did. After all, recommending people’s stuff gets that stuff seen by more people. Medium’s mission is to be a platform for people to write and have that writing reach more people than it otherwise would. So what’s the problem here?
I’ll quote the man himself here:
Since I joined, I’ve been an avid reader and recommender of *everything* I came across, across the spectrum of diverse thought, especially stuff I might disagree with, including but not limited to ignorance penned by Deplorables and incoherent screeds left by Islamophobes as responses on my own stories.
I’m not sure about this approach. I love Ali’s writing, but I think his approach here is wrong-headed. So I’ve started thinking about the different ways that the little heart seems to be used here on Medium. Here’s what I’ve got so far
1. A literal recommendation
To me, a recommend means something like the following: I read this story, and I believe that it is interesting enough or I agree with it strongly enough that I recommend that others invest the time to read it.
That seems to be recommending is supposed to be basically a recommendation that others read something. So recommending nearly everything becomes the same as not making any recommendations. People check the recommends on your profile, and see enough crap that they don’t even bother. I want something different. I want the people that follow me to be able to look at my recommends and see really interesting stuff to read.
Keep in mind that this literal recommendation can — and should include stuff that I disagree with. Some of the most interesting pieces I’ve read are ones I disagree with. But that’s what makes them interesting, so I recommend them. [thanks to Aaron Charles for helping me to clarify this point]
2. Helping out a friend
You can also argue that recommending a piece is also a way to get a friend’s work out there in front of others. You’re helping people out — cheering them on. But I don’t see how that is different from saying “this is interesting, it’s worth your time to read it, followers.”
3. As a currency
Many people will recommend a comment on their own piece as a kind of “thank you for reading, recommending, and commenting”. They may also go and read one of the commentors’ pieces and comment on the latest one, or some recent one.
In that way, the little heart can serve as a kind of currency. You recommend mine, I’ll recommend yours, and so on. I would also not put it past people to have recruited others to regularly recommend their pieces to elevate stats and perhaps attract sponsors or gain subscribers. I’m not saying I think it is happening, but I’ve gotten enough followers that never read my stuff again to know that there are some fishy profiles up to something.
So which way is the right way?
Look, I’m not here to be Medium’s ethicist (though wouldn’t that be an interesting job?). But I think that the first use of the recommend is the only proper use. It’s not terrible if you recommend stuff by a friend that you don’t actually think is good or interesting, but I’m not sure it’s a habit. What’s more, I think it can mess with the whole reason why people look in their feeds for stories.
I think the third use of the recommend — as a kind of social media currency — is probably always a bad look. To me, it borders on inauthentic. When done a few times as a “thank you”, it might be okay, but again, consider the consequences. I’m grateful for people saying “nice piece, I agree!” But if I recommend enough of those, I’ve got to believe that it mucks up the algorithm.
I could be wrong (it’s happened before). But I wanted to get these thoughts out there.
What do you think? What other ways are recommends used? Are they good, bad, neutral? Comment and let’s discuss.
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