My Last Post Got Me Kicked Off Medium

Must be doing something right.

No explanation. No warning. No timeout. No appeal.

Just poof – seven years of posts gone.

Here’s what I received from Medium:

We have determined that your account is in violation of our Rules (https://medium.com/policy/medium-rules-30e5502c4eb4) and has been suspended.

Your work will remain accessible to you while signed in, and may be exported at any time by following the instructions here, but will appear as unavailable to others.

Your Medium membership, if you have one, will be canceled and any remaining funds you may have prepaid will be returned to you.

Thanks,

Trust & Safety

All right. Let’s put aside the creepy-Orwellian vibes of “Trust & Safety”, for a moment.

Notice, they don’t even say WHAT the violation was.

So, putting on my best deferential tone, I sent them this:

Hello!

Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

May I know the specific article, sentiment, quote, link which violated the guidelines?

a) This would serve to clarify, educate, and help prevent creators from violating the guidelines in the future; and

b) Provide an opportunity for a "non-nuclear" option: i.e., a communication and request to remove the specific content, rather than a total account suspension, which I gather is not about my discussion of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, for example.

Is there any reason why the non-violating content must also come down?

Cheers,

Jim Taylor

A reasonable request, I think.

No response.

Not that I expected one.

This echoes the mystification I’ve seen expressed by Steve Kirsch and Robert Malone over their non-specific LinkedIn and Twitter bans: can you please point to the specific violation?

Of course, either they can’t, or they can’t be bothered.

So, in the absence of clarity, we are left to surmise some things:

1. I’m just assuming my last post was the offender, but of course it could have been any number of posts, e.g., on one masking as virtue-signaling, one on why we’re supposed to question things, or why “trust the experts” is a fallacious and dangerous idea, or why many of the policy decisions around COVID have had nothing to do with a virus and everything to do with consolidating power.

2. Assuming it WAS the last post, it’s funny because the post is entirely about officials admitting they were wrong about things. So my linking to them doing so could not possibly be misinformation. I didn’t invent these admissions. They actually happened. For real.

3. So, again assuming this was the offending post, either Medium doesn’t want us to notice when officials admit they are wrong, or they don’t want to admit these admissions ever happened, and that we just dreamed them. Sorry. They did. I provided links to every single one. (The only one I didn’t link to directly was a leaked Pfizer confidential document, since I’m wasn’t 100% on the legality of linking to it. But I did provide the title and the reader is free to look it up for themselves. It’s out there.)

4. Perhaps they cannot point to the violation because in doing so they would be forced to assess the veracity of the claim and will find it well-sourced and unassailable.

5. Perhaps they do not care about the veracity of claims made on their platform, but only want an echo chamber of people they agree with. So, in effect, they are not banning the content, so much as the person, i.e., they just don’t like you or anything you have to say. (Given the lack of response, this seems likely).

or

6. They really were shocked and offended by my writings on JRR Tolkien.

Appropriately enough, my post was about conversing with, rather than silencing, people whom you disagree with, but later turn out to be right.

How about we just talk instead? I implored.

If someone at Medium really disagreed with my content, for example, they could have flagged it (as Facebook and now Spotify do) as “COVID-related” and provided a link to the CDC website. Or, even better, they could have responded to my post in the comments and made their case, providing counter-evidence or explaining why I misinterpreted something.

This would have done something immensely valuable: educating and engaging the minds of others. It also would have provided my subscribers a chance to chime in with their own thoughts in a valuable debate.

But the silencers are not really interested in a debate, are they?

I’ve said it before: what is there to fear from an idea you don’t agree with? If it truly is wrong, you have an opportunity to educate and enlighten others. If it is right, you have an opportunity to correct your own thinking. Either way, you are made stronger through engaging the idea.

If you really disagree with an idea, mount an argument. If you truly know what you think you know, you should be able to do so. If the idea you disagree with is especially untrue, you should be able to do so easily.

The one wrong way to approach an idea is to silence it.

a) silencing does not actually kill the idea;

b) it does not change anyone’s mind, only embolden its defenders;

and…

c) it sends a pretty loud message that you are not capable of presenting your own case. Silencing an idea is admission that you have no argument.

(It’s also an admission that you don’t really believe what you believe, or that you believe, on some level that the idea you are silencing is true and you really don’t want others finding that out.)

As the American abolitionist Wendell Phillips said:

“He who stifles free discussion secretly doubts whether what he professes to believe is really true.”

Medium, like so many other platforms now, does not want readers to think for themselves. They see themselves as another arbiter of what information gets to be seen.  Which, I don’t know about you, I am getting goddamned sick of. People, on this view, are infants incapable of forming their own ideas and opinions or defending them. So Medium, the parent, takes care of that and just presents the information it deems worthy, via the wonderful “Trust and Safety” department.

So, finally censored. You’d think there’d be a sense of outrage and injustice. But no, when you are a warrior for truth and they censor you, there’s a strange kind of quiet, calm validation: I said something they didn’t like. Something they deemed threatening enough to silence.

You have to laugh: the Medium support email is yourfriends@medium.com.

You know, it sure doesn’t feel like we are friends. Friends generally don’t put duct tape over each other’s mouths, in my experience.

Anyway, Medium, so long. It’s been a fun seven years. Let me when you want to play again.

For now I’m taking my ball and playing over at Substack’s house.