We Never Realized We Were Witnessing the End of An Era on Medium

Once upon a time, waking up every morning and logging into my Medium account continued to give me a small sense of possibility.

Not certainty. Not even stability. But possibility.

As I look back to the end of 2024, I can see how so many of us writers were still hanging on emotionally, even while quietly questioning whether the platform we used to love so much, was changing into something we no longer recognized.

I remember waking up one morning and reading one of the CEO’s “State of Medium” updates. Oddly enough, it made me feel hopeful for a few hours.

The message talked about quality writing, meaningful community, global voices, and creating a healthier online environment.

At the time, I genuinely wanted to believe every word of it.

And to be fair, some parts of the message were actually inspiring.

For instance, I appreciated the emphasis on lived experience and authentic storytelling. I loved the idea that ordinary people could still bring value to the table simply by sharing what they had survived, learned, or observed in life.

That part still resonates with me today.

But beneath all the hopeful language, many of us were already beginning to feel something else: fatigue.

And it wasn’t just writing fatigue. It was also community fatigue.

The kind that slowly builds when a platform starts rewarding visibility performance more than human connection.

It’s funny how back then, most of us didn’t quite know how to explain what we were feeling. We just knew something felt… off.

Writers were trying harder than ever to stay visible. Certain words were drilled into our skulls…

Comment more.

Read more.

Engage more.

Support more.

Somewhere along the way, creativity quietly started turning into maintenance.

And the strange thing is, many of us were openly discussing these concerns in comment sections of our stories, long before the major migration of writers ever took place in 2025.

In hindsight I can see how we were already sensing the shift that was about to occur. Since writing meta stories was my particular niche, I spent time touching on the changes I was starting to notice.

Those writers who were too busy or too uninvolved to notice the changes, were appreciative of the informative discussions I managed to generate, due to my related stories. I received comments like:

“I love the support you have for Medium but you're not afraid to be honest about the concerns…”

At one point, I made this acknowledgement in a story:

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the Medium website, and the sense of community that I’ve found here.”

One writer responded by saying:

“Me too, but the changes worry me.”

Another time, a writer wrote the following in a comment:

”The constant grind of engagement hunting has been exhausting to say the least. Important and necessary, but absolutely a grind.”

And then of course, there was the writer who made the following statement, almost as if they were foreseeing the future when they stated:

“...I get the feeling that Medium only really wants to engage with writers as and when it suits them and only up to a point, at times it seems as though we are seen as an obstacle or overhead on the route towards profitability! :)

Looking back at things, I don’t believe writers were aware enough to fully comprehend the changes that were beginning to take place and ultimately shape what the new Medium would look like.

I think many of us were going through an early grieving process, because of something we could see and feel ourselves losing, right before our eyes, in real time.

Gone was that same sense of intimacy we once had as a community, and often prided ourselves in having.

Discovery, connection, hope. All of it was drifting away, and by the time spring 2025 rolled around, the transition was in full bloom, but the changes that occurred, in no way favored the writers.

How did we writers take it? How do you imagine?

For years, Medium had felt like more than a website to many of us. It was like a creative home. And maybe that’s why the disappointment hit so hard when the atmosphere began to shift.

What none of us realized at the time was this: We weren’t just reacting to platform updates. We were witnessing the emotional beginning of the end of an era.

Stay tuned for more on this topic in future stories.