It’s fine but self-hosting is better.

The cool thing about substack is that it’s part of a community of writers. Especially with the “notes” aspect.

If I was one of your readers, I’d much rather read on your self-hosted blog (bonus points if there’s RSS)… But I’m not. Since I’m neither a reader, nor the one who defines what fun means to you, I’m not sure my—and other commenters’—words should have too much bearing in your decision.

I say, do what makes you happiest. Even if medium is by some measure bad, I’d guess it’s “only” about as bad as every other closed-up commercial option—I think they all suck. Look into what you actually care about, e.g. privacy, then make your own call.

For what it’s worth, I agree with people saying medium is almost inexplicably annoying. I consider myself a patient person most of the time, yet nothing kills my interest in an article faster than seeing websites like medium full of popups and newsletters and signups on the other side of a link.

But maybe we’re simply the wrong crowd to ask.

I would rather post something on a neocities or custom website

I liked Medium for a while, but now I avoid it like the plague. Too much junk and too many paywalls it’s not worth bothering. I’m more likely clicking on anything else when it shows up in my search results.

Medium has gone to shit after a few years. I’ve been a blogger since 2000s and jump to new platforms just to check it out.

It was a good alternative for blogging in like 2015. But then it fell into rage bait where they promote shitty hot takes for engagement. Around 2019, it’s where marketers post to brag about their products to each other. Now it’s just AI garbage.

Substack has a whole “we believe in free speech except when we don’t”. They have no problem hosting white supremacy. So your content will share digital real estate with some spicy posts.

Since it’s for fun, if you want the bare minimum… Go with the old school blogging tools. Blogger. Or WordPress.com. Or do longform posting on mastadon. Or find a Lemmy community and do long posts.

If you want to own your data, it’s pretty easy to buy a server and set up WordPress. (Mine cost like $15/year).

If youre a developer, it’s also easy to get free hosting. My other blog is on eleventy using markdown files, and runs on a free Oracle cloud instance.

I made an paid account with medium to see posts related to my work, and I really enjoy it. I get an email every day with a handful of articles based on what I said my interests are/followed authors and I can read them with none of the issues other people are talking about (obviously because I’ve already caved to their business model, just pointing out the annoyances do actually stop, unlike some premium services).

If you think your readers will follow you to a paid platform, I don’t see anything wrong with it. But if they don’t want to pay, it sounds like it will be a bad experience. I would be skeptical of having a broader reach, also, since there is a lot of competition, not all of it human.

Pop-up riddled shit that annoys anyone who tries to read it. Substack is apparently riddled with Nazis, but then that was a characteristic I heard here, so take that with a pinch of salt.

Maybe github pages?

I have been trying to get into Medium for a while now. It seems okay but lacks a lot quality content and their website somehow do not give me recent blogs. The site always gives me blogs from 2017-2020, never from 2024.

The site is immensely paywalled, almost all articles are paid. Now if the articles/ content was actually decent, I might’ve paid. However, sadly it is not and there’s a way to read the premium articles for free. So there’s that.

Been trying to find other places to read blogs but can’t seem to find a good place.

When you highlight text on Medium, it pops up a little bubble thing.

I HATE that.

I can’t read online without casually highlighting random bits as I go. Not sure why I do, but I do.

here’s a really shitty blog i found, i think it’s someone who’s trolling. https://medium.com/@ftopaas797/the-gimp-move-tool-c68b731c40e5

While I understand the content on medium is different per author, I associate it with poor quality content. It may pop up in search results, but I actively avoid the results because of the association. Point being, the exposure you get may not be the type you want.

Also don’t forget your content will be subject to the user experience medium decides to provide. I think it’s already subpar with it being full of popups and prompts to register and pay for an account, but consider how companies constantly enshittfy. You are giving away the control of how you are represented.

I am on medium to follow one person, ecause I hate using the Reddit app, which is the other way to read them. I have tried reading other stories, but always hit a paywall. So I think it’s pointless, just my two bits.

It requires an email to even read the first article, or at least has appeared to any time I’ve tried to go over there and read stuff

Most places that do that, I am fine putting my email into, sometimes even paying for them, but for some reason I don’t understand, medium.com has some kind of anti Feng shui that makes me just hit the back button annoyed any time I click on an article and the thing pops up. It’s like somehow their web site design has it timed and positioned at the perfect psychological moment to create irritation

It is purely irrational and purely only my personal reaction to it but that is how I react to it

I’m not making a Medium account just to read some half assed blog post. That’s my biggest gripe with the service.

It’s not like running a Ghost instance is particularly hard or resource consuming.

I personally like the static site generator blogs people host on GitHub Pages, at least those don’t demand my personal information just to read a blog post.