Medium Cheating Members of Payments?

A Maguire
1 min readMay 1, 2023

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I’ve long wondered about Medium’s Payment Program, but this month had proof that their algorithms or whatever convoluted system they use to measure reader engagement on stories don’t apparently register small numbers. Perhaps as a cost saving measure?

One of my stories, a Member Only story, was read and clapped in April by a paying member. The proof is in the notification listing and in the listing of claps for the story. It is sadly missing entirely from the Payment summary for April 2023. No one — apparently — read or clapped for the story in April 2023.

What does that mean, Medium? Are you running a shonky show or are you skimming off your cents to pay more popular authors their dollars? What is the point of authors providing content to the site if they’re going to be robbed of the few cents it was supposed to provide?

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A Maguire

Writer, dreamer, developmental editor, book coach, farmer and mother.