1) It's essentially halo-effect-as-a-service. People assume that since it's on Medium, it'll be a high-quality of work, but more often than not, Medium posts lie on the pseudo part of pseudointellectual. Which leads into...
2) Complete lack of any personal branding. Not even a username in the URL. Yes, it keeps things simple, but it dramatically reduces the personal benefit from posting on Medium. Even worse, in line with the previous bullet point, the lack of branding leads writers to spam links to their Twitters with the cliche "if you liked this, follow me on Twitter!" And recently, I've seen people say in bolded text "PLEASE CLICK RECOMMEND." It's jarring.
I agree, especially with #2. In fact, I explain why I think Medium is actually a magazine, not a service (like Svbtle, Blogger, Wordpress.com) in this post: http://thetypist.com/329/medium-magazine/
"One shouldn’t compare Medium with services like WordPress.com because, while successfully touted as such, Medium isn’t a service. It’s a magazine. The only “service” in Medium is the service that (mostly) unpaid writers do in return for the potential exposure. Authors that have their own sub-page with a picture and a list of their articles is something online magazines have implemented back in the nineties."
It's a distinction not enough aspiring writers are paying attention to.
It's a content factory - the term 'playbor' seems appropriate. Just glossy and pretty enough that it distracts people from the fact they're working for this centralized for-profit entity for free.
1) It's essentially halo-effect-as-a-service. People assume that since it's on Medium, it'll be a high-quality of work, but more often than not, Medium posts lie on the pseudo part of pseudointellectual. Which leads into...
2) Complete lack of any personal branding. Not even a username in the URL. Yes, it keeps things simple, but it dramatically reduces the personal benefit from posting on Medium. Even worse, in line with the previous bullet point, the lack of branding leads writers to spam links to their Twitters with the cliche "if you liked this, follow me on Twitter!" And recently, I've seen people say in bolded text "PLEASE CLICK RECOMMEND." It's jarring.